A federal judge in Texas publicly revealed Monday afternoon that he had scheduled a hearing in a case searching for to overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the mifepristone abortion pill, after media criticized him for attempting to keep the proceedings secret until the last minute.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas within the US ordered a hearing within the case Wednesday at 9 a.m. CT, based on court records. The trial will happen in Amarillo, Texas.
Kacsmaryk was appointed by former President Donald Trump.
The Washington Post, citing people accustomed to the case, reported over the weekend that Kacsmaryk set a trial date in a Friday conference call with lawyers involved within the case, but didn’t plan to disclose the date until late Tuesday.
The media filed a letter on Monday calling on Kacsmaryk to right away disclose the date of the trial. Selling points included the NBCUniversal News Group, of which CNBC is an element, The Washington Post, ProPublica, Texas Press Association and Gannett.
A coalition of doctors against abortion asked Kacsmaryk in November to order the FDA to withdraw approval for mifepristone, which has been on the US market since 2000. They argued that the way in which the FDA approved mifepristone violated federal law.
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The FDA strongly disputed the group’s claims and warned that removing mifepristone from the U.S. market would put women’s health in danger and dramatically harm the general public interest. Agency lawyers said revoking the approval would also weaken the authority of the FDA.
“If it were really easy to acquire FDA approvals for long-term drugs, even many years after they were released, pharmaceutical firms would definitely not give you the option to depend on FDA approval decisions to develop the pharmaceutical-drug infrastructure that Americans depend on to treat a wide range of medical conditions. Biden administration lawyers wrote.
Mifepristone, used together with misoprostol, is essentially the most common approach to abortion in the USA, accounting for about half of all abortions.
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