The Texas judge who previously halted approval of the nation’s most common method of abortion ruled Thursday that three states can move ahead with another attempt to roll back federal rules and make it harder for people across the U.S. to access the abortion drug mifepristone.
Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri requested late last year to pursue the case in federal court in Amarillo, Texas, after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling finding that abortion opponents who first filed the case lacked the legal right to sue.
The states want the federal Food and Drug Administration to prohibit telehealth prescriptions for mifepristone and require that it be used only in the first seven weeks of pregnancy instead of the current limit of 10 weeks. They also want to require three in-person doctor office visits instead of none to get the drug.
That's because, the states argue, efforts to provide access to the pills “undermine state abortion laws and frustrate state law enforcement,” according to court documents.
Meanwhile, federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk said they shouldn't be automatically discounted from suing in Texas just because they're outside the state.
The ruling comes days before President-elect Donald Trump begins his second term as president. Trump has repeatedly said abortion is an issue for the states, not the federal government, though he’s also stressed on the campaign trail that he appointed justices to the Supreme Court who were in the majority when striking down the national right to abortion in 2022.
In the years since, pro-life activists have increasingly targeted abortion pills, largely due to most U.S. abortions being carried out using drugs rather than through surgical procedures. So far, at least four states — Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Tennessee — have seen Republicans introduce bills aimed at banning pills. None take the same approach as Louisiana, which last year classified the drugs as controlled dangerous substances.
Previously, Kacsmaryk sided with a group of pro-life doctors and organizations that wanted the FDA to be forced to rescind entirely its approval of mifepristone in 2000.
Yet the states are pursuing a narrower challenge. Rather than target the approval entirely, they sought to undo a series of FDA updates that have eased access.
Across the U.S., 13 states under Republican legislative control bar abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions, and four more ban it after the first six weeks.
Mifepristone is usually used in combination with a second drug for medication abortion, which has accounted for more than three-fifths of all abortions in the U.S. since the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.