Christian rights and anti-abortion groups have been villainizing medication abortion for years; FDA decision expand reach 2021 only angered them more. Allowing providers to prescribe mifepristone via telehealth is “death delivered to your door”. Claimed Student for Life of US President Kristen Hawkins in 2021. Abortion rights opponents commonly refer to mifepristone as a “chemical abortion”. used In this recent case, by the judge including those Ask To rule on it, federal judge Matthew Kaczmarik of Texas. On 7 April, when Kacsmaryk given In this case at the request of abortion rights opponents for an injunction, what he was really doing was trying to rescind the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.
In his decision, Kacsmaryk also agreed with the argument of abortion rights opponents – to the consternation of many – that under existing federal law, mailing mifepristone was already a crime. Alliance is Defending Freedom Cited To make this untenable case the Comstock Act, an anti-vice law from 1873. The Comstock Act broadly defines “obscene” and “obscene” materials and makes it a crime to send or distribute them by mail. Under the Comstock Act “every article or thing intended to be designed, adapted, or abortive” is considered “malleable”, and is subject to fine, imprisonment, or both. When ADF senior counsel Erin Hawley argued Case in March in Kasmarck’s court, he raised Comstock several times to challenge the FDA’s regulation of mifepristone. “The Comstock Act explicitly prohibits the mailing of drugs that are designed, manufactured or intended for use as an abortifacient,” Hawley said. “We submit that clearly applies to the FDA’s actions here.”
“It is undisputed that chemical abortion drugs are both ‘drugs'[s]’ and ‘to cause abortion,’” Kaksmarić wrote in his decision, concurring with Hawley; And that, he argued, makes it illegal to mail drugs. It’s hard to overstate the potential implications of this line of reasoning: Taking this argument to a possible conclusion, lawyers and jurists may claim that any surgical or medical supplies used for abortion are also “nonmalleable” under criminal law, jeopardizing the supply chains needed for in-clinic abortion in states where abortion is legal.
