The right is stealthily working to remove Americans’ access to abortion medication
This week a Republicanappointed federal judge weighed whether to grant an injunction that could remove mifepristone, the drug used in most American abortions, from the market nationwide. And the hearing almost happened in secret.
US district court judge Matthew Kacsmaryk had initially planned to keep Wednesday’s hearing in the case – in which a group of rightwing antiabortion groups are suing the FDA to reverse its 20-year-old approval of mifepristone – quiet. In a conference call with lawyers for the anti-choice groups and the Department of Justice, Kacsmaryk asked attorneys not to disclose the existence of the hearing (“This is not a gag order,” he said repeatedly), and said that the event would only be made public late on Tuesday to minimize popular awareness. “It may even be after business hours.” The judge’s courtroom in Amarillo, Texas, is hours away from any major city. It was only because of a press leak that the hearing was known to the public at all.
It was just one of many of the alarming irregularities in the lawsuit, in which Kacsmaryk seems poised to grant the plaintiffs’ wish and issue an injunction that will radically reduce access to abortion nationwide.
For one thing, the plaintiffs’ standing is exceptionally shaky: it’s not clear why the collection of abortion opponents – including one doctor, George Delgado, whose attempt to design an abortion-reversal clinical trial sent 25% of the test subjects to the hospital – have standing to sue the FDA. It’s especially unclear why they have standing to sue in Amarillo; the federal judicial district has become a popular venue for rightwing litigation in part because Kacsmaryk, an exceptionally conservative jurist willing to publish poorly reasoned, policy-driven opinions, is the only federal judge there.
For another thing, the plaintiffs’ requests are exceptionally far-reaching. The anti-abortion groups want Kacsmaryk to declare the FDA’s approval of mifepristone illegal, even though the drug has been available in the US, and proven to be safe, for more than 20 years, and even though a judicial reversal of FDA approval for a medication would be highly unusual and