Access to abortion pill in the balance, awaiting Texas federal judge’s decision

During a four-hour hearing last week that could eliminate nationwide access to a common and widely used abortion pill, federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, of the Northern District of Texas, often signaled his conservative Christian beliefs.

Speaking from the bench in a courtroom in Amarillo, Texas, Kacsmaryk repeatedly used language that mimicked the vocabulary of anti-abortion activists. It also reflected the wording of the lawyers seeking to overturn the FDA’s two-decade-old approval of mifepristone, one of the drugs in the two-pill regimen approved for early pregnancy termination.

Each time a lawyer from the Department of Justice, representing the FDA, referred to “medication abortion,” Kacsmaryk returned to the language of conservative Christian activists, using monikers like “chemical abortion” and “mail-in abortion,” phrases at odds with conventional medical terminology.