Abortion Pills Could Be Banned Everywhere Within Days. Here’s What You Need to Know. | Abortion

“People in every state—including states like New York, Illinois and California—can’t get abortion pills.”

A common, effective abortion drug could be banned nationwide within days, thanks to a “loose cannon” by a judge appointed by former President Donald Trump.

In late 2022, four doctors and anti-abortion groups sued the Food and Drug Administration, accusing the agency of overstepping when it approved the use of the drug mifepristone in abortions in 2000. Opponents of the This abortion group wants to rescind that approval—a move that would take mifepristone off the market across the United States, regardless of whether a state protects access to abortion after Roe v. Wade last year.

Mifepristone is one of the most studied drugs on the market, say the experts. Not only is it proven to be safer than drugs like penicillin and Viagra, but it is 18 times safer than childbirth.

“This case could effectively ban medical abortion nationwide. That would mean people in every state—including states like New York, Illinois, and California—would not be able to get abortion pills,” Jenny Ma, senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, told VICE News in a statement. “Medication abortion is incredibly safe and has been used in the US for over 20 years. More than half of abortions in the US are performed with medication abortion. The science and evidence is indisputable.”

But that science and evidence may not matter, according to abortion rights supporters, as this case was filed in federal court in Amarillo, Texas. Filing a lawsuit that could reshape abortion access nationwide in a far northwest Texas town (with a population of 201,000) may seem random, but it’s actually a shrewd tactic. That’s because that court is presided over by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a 2019 Trump appointee famous for his conservative views on abortion and LGTBQ rights—and his willingness to take a hammer to national policy.

In other words, for anti-abortion activists looking for a friendly ear, Kacsmaryk might just be perfect. And if Kacsmaryk supports the new lawsuit by anti-abortion activists, his decision could be appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which is famously conservative, then to the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority. .

“People are more concerned not because the legal theory starts to make more sense when they think about it. They’re more concerned because they realize it’s going to a judge who is likely to rule in a purely ideological and not related to the law,” said Joanna Grossman, a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, who called Kacsmaryk a “loose cannon.” He added, “It is not a good claim, and yet it is likely to be accepted.”

Formerly an attorney at a law firm that specializes in handling religious liberty cases, Kacsmaryk previously said calls being transgender “a delusion.” In 2015, he wrote an article which condemned “the lie that man is an autonomous blob of Silly Putty unconstrained by nature or biology, and that marriage, sexuality, gender identity, and even the unborn child must succumb to erotic desires of independent adults.”

Then, in 2022, Kacsmaryk focused on Title X, the nation’s largest family planning program and a major source of contraception for the poor and minors. Kacsmaryk claimed the program was illegal, because it didn’t require minors to get parental consent before they could get help through Title X. His leadership is the first major legal attack on birth control since Roe was overturned.

In the wake of Roe’s reversal last year, abortion pills have become an increasingly important frontier in the US abortion wars. Although the Biden administration has repeatedly moved to make them more accessible, including allowing normal pharmacies to dispense the pills to anyone with a prescription, abortion opponents hit back by suggesting that pharmacies that end up carrying the pills could face serious legal consequences. At the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington, DC, last month, activists proposed that allowing pharmacists to dispense abortion pills would turn every CVS and Walgreens into an abortion clinic.

The anti-abortion doctors and groups behind the Texas lawsuit are represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a powerhouse legal advocacy group that has architected much of the religious right’s attack on abortion and LGBTQ rights. The organization was behind the Mississippi abortion ban that was at the heart of the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe.

At the Summit, Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Denise Harle told a room of excited young anti-abortion activists about the Texas case. “Really, primarily, it’s about protecting women and girls,” she told them. (One of the doctors who filed the lawsuit, Dr. George Delgado, became famous after he advocated an unproven protocol to “reverse” people’s abortions. A study was completed on that protocol Soon after three of the women involved were bleeding so they had to go to the ER.)

Law professors David S. Cohen, Greer Donley and Rachel Rebouché push Harle’s kind of rhetoric into a recent draft of a law article which comprehensively reviews the state of play on abortion pills. The authors point out that the Government Accountability Office audited the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in 2008, and concluded that there was nothing wrong with the agency’s approval process. If the lawsuit succeeds, it would mark the first time a court has invalidated the FDA’s new drug approval process “unilaterally and over the FDA’s objection.”

If mifepristone is taken off the market, telehealth groups that offer remote abortion medications will likely have to close or pivot to using an off-label use of another drug, misoprostol, to induce the abortions. Even seven abortion providers told Jezebel Tuesday they were ready to start using a misoprostol-based protocol. That protocol is generally less effective than using both mifepristone and misoprostol, as is standard in the United States, but is still widely considered safe. The World Health Organization has a recommended protocol for its use.

Still, brick-and-mortar abortion clinics, which are already struggling with the flood of patients since overturning Roe v. Wade last year, it may be necessary to force patients to have surgical abortions—or, at least, to try.

Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxnvdx/abortion-pill-ban-mifepristone