A Texas lawsuit seeking to take a drug used in medication abortion off the market could have an immediate impact on people seeking to end their pregnancy across the United States.
The lawsuit, filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) on behalf of several anti-abortion organizations, seeks to reverse the Food and Drug Administration’s decades-old approval of mifepristone, one of the two medications typically used to provide medication abortion care.
ADF — a prominent conservative legal advocacy organization designated as an extremist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center due to its decades-long work against LGBTQ rights — was involved in the Mississippi case that eventually led to the overturn of Roe v. Wade last year.
A federal judge could issue a ruling as early as Feb. 24, according to the Washington-based rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America.
If the Trump-appointed judge, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, sides with the abortion opponents, the results would be “devastating,” reproductive rights advocates say.
“The impact of this case could be sweeping and horrifying,” NARAL researchers said Friday in a statement. “Medication abortion is now used to provide more than half of all abortion care nationwide. If mifepristone were made unavailable throughout the country, it would eliminate the most commonly used method of abortion care.”
More than 40 million people across the U.S. could lose access to medication abortion, NARAL researchers said.
Even though Kacsmaryk hasn’t indicated how he plans to rule, abortion advocates say he could grant an emergency injunction that would force the FDA to withdraw its approval of mifepristone.
The move would pull the drug off the market and effectively ban medication abortion — which accounts for more than half of abortions in the country.
“It could have an immediate impact on the country,” said Mini Timmaraju, the organization’s president. “In some ways this is a backdoor ban on abortion.”
Since the FDA’s approval in 2020, mifepristone has been used as a safe and effective option for ending an early, and also for miscarriage management.
But the ADF argues the agency overstepped its authority when approving the drug.
“The FDA never had the authority to approve these dangerous drugs for sale,” Julie Marie Blake, senior counsel at ADF, said in a statement.