A federal judge in Texas publicly disclosed Monday afternoon that he scheduled a hearing in a case searching for to overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, after media outlets criticized him for attempting to maintain the proceedings secret until the last minute.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. Northern District of Texas ordered oral arguments within the case to happen on Wednesday at 9 a.m. CT, in accordance with a court filing. The hearing will happen in Amarillo, Texas.
Kacsmaryk was appointed by former President Donald Trump.
The Washington Post, citing people accustomed to the matter, reported over the weekend that Kacsmaryk had set the hearing date during a conference call on Friday with lawyers involved within the case but didn’t plan to reveal the date until late Tuesday.
Media outlets filed a letter on Monday urging Kacsmaryk to reveal the date of the hearing immediately. The outlets included NBCUniversal News Group, of which CNBC is a component, The Washington Post, ProPublica, the Texas Press Association, and Gannett, amongst others.
A coalition of physicians who oppose abortion asked Kacsmaryk in November to order the FDA to withdraw its approval of mifepristone, which has been on the U.S. market since 2000. They argued that the way in which the FDA approved mifepristone violated federal law.
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The FDA has strongly disputed the group’s claims and warned that pulling mifepristone from the U.S. market would put women’s health in danger and dramatically harm the general public interest. The agency’s lawyers said overturning the approval also would weaken the FDA’s authority.
“If longstanding FDA drug approvals were so easily enjoined, even a long time after being issued, pharmaceutical firms can be unable to confidently depend on FDA approval decisions to develop the pharmaceutical-drug infrastructure that Americans depend upon to treat a wide range of health conditions,” the Biden administration lawyers wrote.
Mifepristone, used together with misoprostol, is essentially the most common option to terminate a pregnancy within the U.S., accounting for about half of all abortions.
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