How 1 judge in Texas can end abortions in Arizona (and every other state)
Social media makes it seem as if anything that happens anywhere happens everywhere and at the same time.
It shrinks the world, squeezes it into your neighborhood, your house, skewing our sense of locale and stressing us out over actions or events that will never impact our lives.
Except … not always.
Last week, a federal judge in Texas tossed a pebble into the legal pond that could generate a tidal wave sized ripple capable of eliminating abortion rights in Arizona and every other state.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs taken in pill form in medication abortions.
It accounts for roughly 50% of abortions in the United States.
2 competing mifepristone rulings
Mifepristone has been used safely in the United States for more than 20 years.
To justify his ruling, Judge Kacsmaryk (appointed by former President Donald Trump) said the drug was improperly approved and relied on an 1873 anti-pornography law called the Comstock Act, claiming that chemical abortion drugs are “nonmailable”.
Also in court: GOP lawmakers will defend Arizona abortion law
Not long after the Texas ruling, U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice in Washington state issued a competing order blocking the FDA from pulling mifepristone from the market.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Justice Department is appealing the Texas decision, saying it “overturns the FDA’s expert judgment, rendered over two decades ago, that mifepristone is safe and effective.”The people hoping to outlaw medication abortion specifically filed their case in the Texas court.
Case could go to the Supreme Court
They wanted Judge Kacsmaryk, who has previously expressed antagonistic and dismissive opinions about reproductive freedom, same sex marriage and the LGBTQ community.
Before he was appointed, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 national organizations, urged the U.S. Senate not to confirm him.
The Republican majority at the time did so, anyway.
The case now could be headed to the Supreme Court, which last year struck down Roe v. Wade.
Judge could send the nation back to 1873
In The New York Times, columnist Michelle Goldberg pointed out how some experts believe Kacsmaryk’s ruling, if allowed to stand, might not only end medication abortions, but all abortions.
Even though more than 60% of Americans believe abortion should be legal.
Goldberg pointed to an article being prepared for the Stanford Law Review describing what Kacsmaryk’s opinion preventing patients from getting mifepristone by mail could mean.
The authors say, “Absent the narrowing construction applied by the federal circuit courts, the law’s plain terms could effectively ban all abortion nationwide because almost every pill, instrument or other item used in an abortion clinic or by a virtual abortion provider moves through the mail or an express carrier at some point.”
All because a judge you’ve never heard of, living a state where you don’t reside, holding an opinion not shared by most Americans, decided to send the country back to 1873.
Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How Texas mifepristone ruling can end abortions in Arizona
