The United States abortion opponents are hoping for a national ban on a widely used abortion pill when their lawsuit against government drug regulators is argued Wednesday in the Texas court of a deeply conservative judge believed to be sympathetic to their cause.
Galvanized after the US Supreme Court ended the nationwide right to abortion last June, anti-abortion forces are now targeting the prescription drug mifepristone in their campaign to win a total ban on the practice.
The suit against the US Food and Drug Administration, FDA, aims at a pill involved in 53 percent of all abortions in the United States, or more than a half-million every year.
While the FDA has never been challenged like this before on its approval of a drug that has proven safe and effective, the plaintiffs, a coalition of anti-abortion groups, believe they can win a national freeze on distribution of mifepristone.
Presiding over the case in federal court in Amarillo, Texas will be Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a deeply conservative Christian with a personal history of opposition to abortion and a court record of favoring right-wing causes.
The case ended up in his court via what critics call “judge-shopping,” in which plaintiffs take legal action in a district where the judge has a history of rulings that support their case.