A judge in Texas ruled Thursday that three other states can move ahead with their effort to roll back federal rules and make it harder for people across the U.S. to access the abortion drug mifepristone.
The states of Idaho, Kansas and Missouri made the request in U.S. District Court in Amarillo, Texas. The only judge based there is Matthew Kacsmaryk, a nominee of former President Donald Trump who previously ruled in favor of a challenge to the pill’s approval.
The states want the federal Food and Drug Administration to prohibit telehealth prescriptions for mifepristone and require that it be used only in the first seven weeks of pregnancy.
Mifepristone is usually used in combination with a second drug for medication abortion, which has accounted for more than three-fifths of all abortions in the U.S. since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade ended the national right to abortion. Even in states where nearly all abortions are now illegal, women are having abortions at similar rates, using these pills, according to a recent survey.
Abortion opponents have increasingly targeted abortion pills. Previously, Kacsmaryk sided with a group of anti-abortion doctors and organizations that wanted the FDA to be forced to rescind entirely its approval of mifepristone in 2000. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that those groups did not legal standing to sue.
The states are pursuing a narrower challenge. Rather than target the approval entirely, they sought to undo a series of FDA updates that have eased access.
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AP writer Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington contributed.