By GEOFF MULVIHILL and LINDSAY WHITEHURST
A judge in Texas ruled Thursday that three other states can move ahead with their effort to roll back federal rules and make it harder for people across the U.S. to access the abortion drug mifepristone.
The states of Idaho, Kansas and Missouri made the request in U.S. District Court in Amarillo, Texas. The only judge based there 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 prohibit telehealth prescriptions for mifepristone and require that it be used only in the first seven weeks of pregnancy.
Kacsmaryk said they shouldn’t be automatically discounted from suing in Texas just because they’re outside the state.
The American Civil Liberties Union said the case should have been settled when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously preserved access to mifepristone.
Kacsmaryk’s decision “has left the door open for extremist politicians to continue attacking medication abortion in his courtroom,” the ACLU said.
The ruling comes days before Trump begins his second term as president, so his administration will likely be representing the FDA in the case. 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.
Abortion opponents have increasingly targeted abortion pills. Previously, Kacsmaryk sided with a group of anti-abortion doctors and organizations that wanted the FDA to be forced to rescind entirely its approval of mifepristone in 2000.
The plaintiffs vowed to continue fighting mifepristone access after their defeat at the Supreme Court. The justices issued a narrow ruling finding that abortion opponents who first filed the case lacked the legal right to sue.
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.
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 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade ended the national right to abortion. Even in states where nearly all abortions are now illegal, women are having abortions at similar rates, using these pills, according to a recent survey.
Whitehurst reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed.