Tufts community members talk mifepristone access, courts on reproductive rights

by Ella Kamm Deputy News Editor

The Supreme Court issued a stay on April 14 before blocking a decision by a Texas judge that would threaten widespread access to mifepristone, a drug used as part of a medication abortion. The Daily spoke with experts on abortion access about what this decision means for reproductive health care access and how states are responding.

The case was initially brought by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a coalition of anti-abortion doctors and organizations.

“They went to Texas specifically … so they could get this particular judge to hear this case, because Judge Kacsmaryk, before he was seated on the bench, was an anti-abortion activist, and his family still is,” Sarah Lee Day, a lawyer, said. Day has taught an ExCollege class on abortion and the U.S. judicial system for two semesters.

On April 7, Texas U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that 23 years ago, the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved mifepristone as a way to terminate a pregnancy, arguing that the agency had ignored safety concerns. Kacsmaryk has previously criticized Roe v. Wade and has worked for the First Liberty Institute, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group.

Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone from being released, and when taken with the drug misoprostol, is used to end a pregnancy up to 10 weeks gestation. If mifepristone’s FDA approval is revoked, misoprostol will still be available and can be used by itself to trigger an abortion, albeit with worsened side effects.

“We know that medication abortion is safe and effective,” Day said. “We know that it’s safer than Tylenol; we know that it’s safer than Viagra. There’s already a very, very, very, very low percentage of the time that medication abortion isn’t going to be effective. … These doctors should never have had standing to bring this case.”

Around the same time Kacsmaryk issued his ruling, another U.S. District Court in Washington issued an injunction protecting access to mifepristone in 17 states and the District of Columbia.

“You’ve got these dueling injunctions,” Day said. “So they went to the Fifth Circuit.”

The Fifth Circuit, which Day said is known to be a conservative court, issued a preliminary ruling that partially overturned Kacsmaryk’s decision, finding that the statute of limitations to challenge the FDA’s initial