Transcript of Abortion Pill Hearing Reveals Texas Judge Used Anti-Abortion Terms During Questioning
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk promised on Wednesday to issue his “order and opinion as soon as possible” following a hearing in the federal case that could decide the future of mifepristone, an abortion drug that’s been on the market for two decades. But the details of the hearing weren’t publicly available until Friday night, when a transcript was finally released to the media.
According to the transcript, Kacsmaryk—a conservative Trump appointee with ties to the anti-abortion industry—seemed open to arguments made by the rightwing organization Alliance Defending Freedom to restrict mifepristone. In a back-and-forth with Julie Straus Harris, the Justice Department attorney representing the Food and Drug Administration, Kacsmaryk asked about “abortionist/patient relationships,” a term common in anti-abortion rhetoric.
ADF senior counsel Erik Baptist told the court that the “only practical and reasonable way” forward in the case was to issue an preliminary injunction blocking mifepristone use nationally (or at least rescind the FDA’s approval of the drug). “The FDA’s unlawful actions have harmed women and girls for far too long,” Baptist said. When it concerns mifepristone, that is categorically untrue.
Medication abortion is safer than penicillin and Viagra, and, in the U.S. where maternal mortality rates are already higher than in other developed countries, it’s also safer than carrying a pregnancy to term. If Kacsmaryk issues an injunction to—at least temporarily—ban mifepristone, it would throw chaos into the abortion care arena, where patients are already dealing with a dwindling number of providers and safe states to access care. However, a number of providers have said they are able to switch to using only misoprostol, which is currently used in conjunction with mifepristone in medication abortions.
https://news.yahoo.com/transcript-abortion-pill-hearing-reveals-170000480.html
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