As I reported earlier today, the Republican Attorneys General of Kansas, Missouri, and Idaho have filed an amended complaint against the FDA—a suit that seeks to significantly roll back access to mifepristone and ban the shipping of abortion medication.
The attack on abortion medication comes just weeks before an election that’s been defined by abortion rights and Republicans’ attempts to run from voters’ post-Roe fury. (There’s a reason that the three AGs aren’t shouting the case from the rooftops!)
The suit—which is filled with anti-abortion misinformation, scare tactics, and bizarre claims about women and girls’ health, including the idea that abortion medication “starves the baby to death in the womb”—is conservatives’ latest attempt to go after mifepristone. This summer, the Supreme Court ruled that previous plaintiffs didn’t have standing to challenge the FDA.
Anti-abortion groups are hoping that this newer complaint will have better luck.
It’s also worth noting that the complaint was filed with Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, the ultra-conservative asshole who ruled in favor of the previous mifepristone suit and tried to take mifepristone off the shelves. What’s interesting is that obviously none of these AGs are from Texas—so why did they get to file in Amarillo? Essentially, they were able to ensure they’d be in front of Kacsmaryk by filing their case as an “intervening” complaint—piggybacking off the old mifepristone case. Sneaky stuff.
Before I get into the nitty gritty of the complaint, a few important things to remember: While this case was brought by three specific states, a ruling would impact the entire country—even pro-choice states. And for as much as Republicans are trying to run from their anti-abortion extremism, this complaint makes crystal clear just how hyper-focused they are on banning abortion everywhere.
As law professor David S. Cohen tells me, “Believe what the Republicans do, not what they say.” He points out that the filing proves everything we’ve warned about—from Republicans trying to get abortion pills off the market to using the Comstock Act to enact a back-door ban.
“This might as well have been written by the people who wrote Project 2025,” he says.
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