BREAKING: Federal Judge Issues Ruling On Access To Abortion Pills

By Jennifer Shutt, Colorado Newsline

April 7, 2023

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Texas released his ruling Friday in a case designed to put more than two decades of access to medication abortion in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Joseph Kacsmaryk’s opinion in the case, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, can be found here.

The lawsuit, filed in mid-November by anti-abortion organizations, argued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration “exceeded its regulatory authority” when it approved mifepristone and misoprostol to end pregnancies.

"Medication abortion, a two-step regimen, is used in more than half of pregnancy terminations in the United States," according to the Guttmacher Institute.

The medication is approved up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy, though it was originally approved in 2000 for up to seven weeks.

“This decision is an attack on people seeking abortion care and pro-abortion rights states like Colorado,” Karen Middleton, president of Colorado-based reproductive rights organization Cobalt, said in a statement Friday evening. “It amounts to Mitch McConnell and Trump judges getting a national abortion ban through the courts that they can’t get through Congress. It puts extremist politics above science and medicine.”

Middleton added, “We’ve said it before: Republicans promised to ban abortion nationwide. It’s time we believe them.”

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Democracy functions only when people have access to reliable information about government and society. Colorado Newsline’s mission is to be a trusted source of such information. Newsline is nonprofit, nonpartisan and independent, and it provides fair and accurate reporting on politics, policy and other stories of interest to Colorado readers.