Abortion Pill Lawsuit Hearing Scheduled, But Texas Judge Delays Public Announcement

TEXAS, USA. A Texas judge who could overturn the government’s approval of a key abortion drug set the case’s first hearing for Wednesday but took unusual steps to keep it from going public, according to people familiar with the plans.

The hearing will provide an opportunity for lawyers from the Justice Department, the drug company, and the conservative group that is contesting it to present their positions to U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kachsmarik. Once they have done so, the judge may decide at any time.

Kaczmarik scheduled the hearing during a phone call with lawyers on Friday, said several people familiar with the call, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. Kaczmarik said he would delay making the hearing public until late Tuesday to try to minimize disruptions and possible protests, and asked lawyers over the phone not to share information about it until then, people said.

Public access to federal trials is a key tenet of the American judicial system, and Kaczmarik’s apparent delay in getting hearings on record is highly unusual. The judge and his staff did not respond to emails asking for comment on Saturday night.

The lawsuit seeks to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medical abortion. The case attracted widespread attention and protests.

Kaczmarik’s decision to suspend FDA approval of mifepristone will immediately lead to major changes in the number of abortion clinics across the country. Some plan to switch to a misoprostol-only protocol immediately, while others plan to offer only surgical abortions. Any decision is likely to be appealed to the conservative US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and possibly the Supreme Court.

Lawyers who spoke to Kaczmaryk on Friday included representatives of the Freedom Defense Alliance, which filed the lawsuit; the Department of Justice, which is represented by the FDA; and a pharmaceutical company that makes mifepristone. Representatives for each declined to comment or did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday night.

Kaczmarik told lawyers that he also wanted to delay public disclosure of the hearing because, according to people familiar with the call, members of the court received threats after the trial. Several people close to Kaczmarik say the judge and his family have faced security threats since he entered the federal bench in 2019, and those threats have intensified ahead of the abortion pill decision.

Before and after Friday’s phone call with lawyers, The Washington Post made repeated calls and emails to Kaczmarik’s chambers seeking information about the matter, but received no response. Kaczmarik’s chambers also did not respond to a request to allow journalists to join the call.

Kaczmarik was nominated by President Donald Trump and is known for his conservative views on issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion.

By not waiting for the hearing time to be announced, Kaczmarik and his staff may have made it difficult for the public, the media and others to enter the Amarillo courthouse. The remote, deeply conservative city has almost no direct flights except from Dallas or San Antonio, and is at least four hours from any of the state’s major predominantly Democratic cities. However, more than 150 abortion rights advocates gathered there on a Saturday in mid-February to show their support for abortion pills.

The Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit in November on behalf of four anti-abortion medical organizations and four doctors who claim to have treated patients with mifepristone.

The FDA has repeatedly recognized the two-stage medical abortion protocol as safe and effective. But the lawsuit alleges that the regulatory agency should never have approved mifepristone back in 2000, arguing that the government deliberately ignored what the plaintiffs say are harmful side effects.

Leading organizations of physicians and other public health professionals strongly disputed these claims and told Kaczmarik that withdrawing FDA approval for mifepristone “would cause serious and irreparable harm to patients across the country.”

Mifepristone medical abortions, which account for more than half of the abortions performed in the United States each year, have an “exceptionally low complication rate,” according to their brief.

First, the patient takes one tablet of mifepristone, which blocks the hormone progesterone, preventing pregnancy. About 24 hours later, the patient usually takes four tablets of misoprostol, a drug introduced in 1973 to treat stomach ulcers, to soften the cervix and hasten contractions that result in expulsion of the embryo or fetus.

The two-stage procedure is standard in the United States and is approved as safe for the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, which begins on the first day of a woman’s last menstrual cycle. (The World Health Organization states that medical abortion is safe in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.)

It is also possible to terminate a pregnancy using misoprostol alone, which requires three doses of four tablets each. Although misoprostol is widely used on its own for abortion worldwide, studies show that it is less effective than the two-stage regimen and usually causes more cramping and bleeding.

Because the Supreme Court overturned Rowe vs. Wade Last summer, with the abolition of a person’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy and the introduction of a ban on abortion in more than a dozen states, many abortion advocates focused on trying to limit the availability of medical abortion, even in states where the procedure is legal.

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