Opinion writers explain the imminent — and future — problems with the decision.
It's reasonable to wonder whether Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk was less than eager for the public to read about the ruling he issued on Friday evening, invalidating the Food and Drug Administration's 23-year-old approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs typically used in a medication abortion in the United States. |
Last month, in an atypical move, the federal judge scheduled a critical hearing in the case without announcing it at first. (Details emerged after The Washington Post reported on a conference call during which the hearing was arranged. According to The Post, the judge wanted to minimize disruptions and threats around the case.) |
Then Kacsmaryk waited weeks to issue his ruling, finally doing so at the tail end of one of the noisier news weeks in recent memory — one that included, among other things, the arraignment of a former president. |
Why might the judge, a Donald Trump appointee, have taken these steps? As my colleague Michelle Goldberg, a Times Opinion columnist, has noted, anti-abortion Republicans face an "electoral predicament" in the wake of Roe v. Wade's demise: For decades, they've been running on ending abortion, but anti-abortion measures are proving unpopular with voters. In response to Kacsmaryk's Friday ruling, Goldberg wrote that "just a year ago," predicting the legal underpinning of the judge's ruling "would have seemed hysterical." But here we are. |
Kate Shaw, a law professor and a Times Opinion contributing writer, explained in a guest essay how both the ruling and the circumstances of the case are highly unusual. "Much of the opinion is tonally shocking and medically unsound," she wrote, arguing that the Biden administration has an obligation to intervene in any way it can. (The Justice Department already has appealed.) |
Joshua Sharfstein, who was the F.D.A.'s principal deputy commissioner from 2009 to 2011, wrote in another guest essay that the ruling "poses new risks to the F.D.A.'s integrity": "Trust in the agency's work rests on the idea that decisions that affect a nation are based on facts, not ideology or influence," he wrote. |
As for what comes next: With Kacsmaryk's ruling at odds with a separate ruling issued in Washington State on Friday, the matter seems destined for the Supreme Court. In the meantime, doctors and abortion rights advocates are preparing for what to do if mifepristone becomes unavailable nationwide, as is possible because of Kacsmaryk's decision — a move that would have, as Shaw explained, "extremely damaging consequences" for women. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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