A judge in Texas ruled Thursday that three more states can proceed their efforts to roll back federal regulations and make it harder for people within the U.S. to access the abortion drug mifepristone.
The states of Idaho, Kansas and Missouri filed the motion in U.S. District Court in Amarillo, Texas. The only resident judge is Matthew Kacsmaryk, a nominee of former President Donald Trump who previously ruled in favor of a challenge to the pill's approval.
The states want the federal Food and Drug Administration to ban telemedicine prescriptions for mifepristone and require it for use only in the primary seven weeks of pregnancy, as an alternative of the present limit of 10 weeks. You also wish to require three visits to the doctor as an alternative of none to receive the medication.
That's because, the states argue, efforts to offer access to the pills “undermine state abortion laws and impede state law enforcement,” in keeping with court documents.
Meanwhile, Kacsmaryk said they shouldn't be robotically barred from suing in Texas simply because they're out of state.
The American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that the case must have been settled when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld access to mifepristone last 12 months, with the justices noting in a narrow ruling that abortion opponents who first filed the case , didn’t have the legal right to sue.
Kacsmaryk's decision “left the door open for extremist politicians to continue to oppose medication abortion in his courtroom,” the ACLU said.
The ruling comes days before Trump's second term as president, so his administration will likely represent the FDA within the case. Trump has repeatedly said that abortion is a matter for the states, not the federal government, although he also emphasized through the campaign that he appointed Supreme Court justices who were in the bulk in striking down the nation's right to abortion in 2022.
Since then, abortion opponents have increasingly targeted abortion pills, largely because most abortions within the United States are performed with medication fairly than surgery. So far, Republicans in no less than 4 states — Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire and Tennessee — have introduced bills geared toward banning pills. None are taking the identical approach as Louisiana, which classified the drugs as controlled dangerous substances last 12 months.
Previously, Kacsmaryk had sided with a bunch of abortion opponents and organizations that wanted the FDA to completely revoke the approval of mifepristone in 2000.
But states are pursuing a narrower challenge. Rather than fully targeting approval, they sought to reverse a series of FDA updates that had made access easier.
But as state leaders push to sharply restrict access to the drugs, Missouri voters sent a unique message in November after they approved a ballot measure to repeal one in all the country's strictest bans. In Idaho, abortion is against the law in any respect stages of pregnancy. In Kansas, abortion is mostly legal until the twenty second week of pregnancy.
In the US, 13 states under Republican legislatures ban abortions in any respect stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions, and 4 more ban them after the primary six weeks – often before women even realize they’re pregnant.
Mifepristone is usually used together with a second drug for medication abortions, which has been common because the Supreme Court's ruling overturning Roe v. Wade is liable for greater than three-fifths of all abortions within the United States.
The drugs differ from Plan B and other emergency contraceptives, that are typically taken inside three days of possible conception, weeks before women realize they’re pregnant. Studies have shown that they’re generally protected and lead to accomplished abortions in greater than 97% of cases, which is less effective than procedural abortions.
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