A Texas federal judge, known to be hostile to abortion, must decide on the future of the abortion pill, after an appeal filed by opponents of abortion who ask him to ban the drug on all of American territory.
Will the fight of American conservatives against abortion take a new step? This Wednesday, March 15, the magistrate Matthew Kacsmaryk, federal judge of Texas, examined an appeal filed by opponents of abortion who ask him to ban the abortion pill throughout the United States.
The anti-abortion group, which includes doctors in particular, claims that the safety of the drug has never been properly studied, and therefore requests that the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), the American authority which issues marketing authorizations. on the drug market, withdraws mifepristone, a pill authorized for more than 20 years in the United States for medical termination of pregnancy.
As a strategy, the coalition filed its appeal in Amarillo, Texas, where Matthew Kacsmaryk is the only federal judge, and has never hidden its hostility to abortion. He was also appointed to this post by former US President Donald Trump. He was previously a lawyer in a Christian organization. He therefore listened carefully to the arguments of opponents of abortion on the potential dangerousness of the abortion pill.
The right to abortion even more in danger
Advocates, including the FDA and the drug company that makes the pill, instead pointed to the fact that in 23 years of approval, mifepristone has been used by more than 5 million women across the United States. States and that there were extremely few complications (less than 1,500).
After a four-hour hearing on Wednesday, Judge Kacsmaryk announced he would issue his decision as soon as possible on a potential preliminary injunction that could, at least temporarily, remove the abortion pill from the US market.
This case could have serious consequences in states where abortion is still legal, and where many American women go to access abortion since the revocation of the federal right to abortion by the Supreme Court last June. Since then, fifteen states have banned or severely restricted the right to abortion. Some 500,000 women also use the abortion pill every year.
