President Joe Biden’s Justice Department wasted no time Monday asking an appeals court to freeze a Texas-based federal judge’s decision to make a medication abortion drug unavailable nationwide. While the ruling will not affect abortion bans in states such as Texas, it does further restrict options for those seeking abortions elsewhere. Abortion providers across the country are closely watching this new chapter in the battle over abortion rights.

What You Need To Know

  • The Justice Department is appealing a Texas court ruling that would halt approval of a drug used in the most common method of abortion in the U.S.

  • U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued his decision Friday but ruled it would not take effect for seven days

  • Kacsmaryk sided with the anti-abortion groups that challenged the 2000 FDA decision that mifepristone was safe and effective

  • “Until we hear from the FDA, every Whole Woman's Health clinic and all of our telemedicine practices are still dispensing mifepristone. We're still providing abortions with pills to people,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, said

The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo broke new legal ground almost 10 months after the Supreme Court’s reversal of the constitutional right to an abortion, in the case called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

At the time, the court's conservative justices said that abortion is a matter best left to individual states to decide.

“If they thought that Dobbs was going to return this issue to the states, and everyone would move on happily from there, I think this shows that we're in for quite a bit more litigation on this topic,” said Emily Berman, an associate professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, issued his ruling Friday evening, suspending the Food and Drug Administration’s more than 20-year-old approval of mifepristone. The drug is used in more than half of the abortions in the country. Abortion rights supporters called the decision unprecedented.

“He has made some crazy claims in the decision. The rhetoric he uses is political in nature. It's not medical or scientific by any stretch, and it's pretty scary to think of an idealogue judge like that, to be able to have such influence over medical practice,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, told Spectrum News.

Kacsmaryk sided with the anti-abortion groups that challenged the 2000 FDA decision that mifepristone was safe and effective.

“The FDA put women and girls in harm's way, and it's high time the agency is held accountable for its reckless actions. Pregnancy is not an illness and chemical abortion drugs don't provide a therapeutic benefit,” Erik Baptist, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, said. “This is a significant victory for the doctors and medical associations we represent.”

Kacsmaryk said his ruling would take effect at the end of this week, if it stands. Less than an hour after the decision was handed down late Friday, a federal judge in Washington state ordered the FDA to keep mifepristone available in 17 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia.

Hagstrom said while her organization totally shut down abortion services in Texas last June, it continues to see Texans at its clinics across the country, including mostly recently in nearby New Mexico. The organization said it is working on public awareness campaigns and helping people travel to states where abortion is legal.

“If mifepristone is removed from the market, we will still proceed with other methods so that we can maintain access to safe abortion, no matter what for the people that come to us in the places where abortion is still protected,” Hagstrom Miller said. 

“Until we hear from the FDA, every Whole Woman's Health clinic and all of our telemedicine practices are still dispensing mifepristone. We're still providing abortions with pills to people,” she continued. 

Some legal experts believe this fight over the abortion pill is likely to end up before the Supreme Court. One issue is whether the plaintiffs who brought this case to Kacsmaryk have the legal standing to challenge the FDA's approval of the drug.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.