Texas Judge Rejects Request for Accelerated Trial in Lawsuit Seeking to Ban Abortion Pill Sales in the U.S.

(CTN News) – In a case that may significantly restrict access to medication abortion throughout the country, a federal court in Texas on Tuesday declined to establish an expedited trial timetable for a lawsuit brought by anti-abortion organizations seeking to stop sales of the abortion drug mifepristone in the United States.

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court in Amarillo denied the organizations’ request to forgo a hearing on whether to temporarily prohibit pill sales until the matter is completely heard and instead proceed directly to trial. The Biden administration had rejected the proposal.

Anti-abortion organizations, including the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last November, alleging that the agency’s 2000 approval of the drug mifepristone was improperly handled and that it failed to adequately consider the drug’s safety for children.

Combining misoprostol with mifepristone is permitted for medical abortion during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. More than half of abortions in the United States are performed with medication.

Suing in Amarillo, where the Alliance had been established three months previously, insured that Kacsmaryk, a trustworthy conservative and former Christian activist, would hear the case.

The government has responded that data adequately backed the decision to approve the medicine and that the challenge, made 22 years after the event, is much too late.

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which had guaranteed abortion rights everywhere, last year, the focus has grown on medication aborting.

In reaction to the verdict, Democratic President Joe Biden ordered federal agencies to provide access to medication abortion.

This permitted more than a dozen states with Republican governors to enact fresh abortion prohibitions.

In a court filing last month, the FDA said that removing mifepristone from the market would “dramatically impair” the public interest by forcing women to undergo needless surgical abortions and significantly lengthening wait times at already overcrowded clinics.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a major medical body, spoke out last week in favor of the government, stating that mifepristone “has been well investigated and is safe.”

State attorneys general have also filed documents in the case, with Republicans supporting and Democrats opposing it.

Moreover, mifepristone is the focus of legal actions in West Virginia and North Carolina that aim to increase access to the medication by claiming that state limitations on it violate federal law.

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