Extremist judge in Texas poised to take unprecedented action to ban medication abortion – By Joan McCarter (Daily Kos) / Mar 15, 2023
U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s attempt to keep secret the hearing on his inevitable abortion pill ban failed, and the hearing proceeded on Wednesday in a partly public manner. Kacsmaryk allowed just 19 members of the press and 19 members of the public in the room. No devices were allowed in the courtroom, and audio of the hearing was not livestreamed.
The result of this hearing could be a preliminary injunction attempting to force the FDA to suspend or withdraw approval from an abortion drug that’s been on the U.S. market for two decades, effectively ending the use of the drug nationally.
There’s so much that is blatantly political and absolutely dangerous in this—including the safety of people getting medication abortions—and that is so ripe with the far-right’s corruption of the federal judiciary that of course the case has drawn national attention. Which is why Kacsmaryk was trying to proceed secretly. He wanted the case to be presented out of the public eye. Particularly since, as was entirely predictable giving his extremist history, he seems very likely to take the unprecedented step of telling the FDA to remove a drug that has been approved for decades from the market
