Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski Criticizes Texas Decision to Stop Abortifacient Drug

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) criticized Monday’s unprecedented ruling by a US district judge that halted approval of a drug that is most widely used for abortion care and miscarriage in the United States. Joined.

“After 20 years of the FDA’s approval that it would again question a woman’s ability to have a say in her reproductive health, I am quite concerned,” Murkowski told HuffPost.

The US Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medical abortion, in 2000. Millions of pregnant Americans have used it safely for more than two decades.

But earlier this month, right-wing Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas said the FDA rushed the approval process for mifepristone to “give the green light to large-scale elective chemical abortions.” He ordered its suspension nationwide.

The matter is now being appealed to the US Supreme Court, which has stayed Kacsmaryk’s order until it can consider the case. A separate federal judge in Washington state also issued a ruling in competition this month that prevented the FDA from removing mifepristone from the market in 17 states and the District of Columbia, where abortion is legal.

Murkowski, one of two Republican senators who support abortion rights (along with Maine’s Susan Collins), voted with nearly all of her colleagues to confirm Kacsmaryk after he was nominated by the president. donald trump.

Asked Monday if she would still support him today, the Alaska Republican said she “probably” would not.

“When I had the opportunity to look at his record and research it, it showed me that he had the credentials as a judge,” Murkowski said, noting that she also voted to confirm the federal judge who issued the competing order in Washington state.

Kacsmaryk’s credibility has been questioned in recent days. According to an article in the washington post, removed his name from a 2017 Texas Review of Law and Politics article and did not disclose his work on the article to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which requires nominees to disclose all postings by nominees before the panel. The article criticized the protections added during the Barack Obama administration for transgender people and those seeking abortions.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said he did not approve of withholding information from the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“I don’t think anyone should do that, but I haven’t independently verified that information or investigated it,” Cornyn, a member of the panel, told reporters Monday. “The process only works if we have honest and truthful answers, so that’s significant.”

Still, it’s not like Kacsmaryk’s anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion views. were not publicly known before his appointment. Collins, the only Republican to oppose Kacsmaryk’s nomination, warned about his far-right views in a 2019 statement:

Several of Mr. Kacsmaryk’s writings and interviews indicate an alarming bias against the rights of LGBTQ Americans and a disregard for Supreme Court precedents. For example, Mr. Kacsmaryk has dismissed advocates of reproductive choice as “sexual revolutionaries” and has dismissively criticized the legal foundations of Roe v. Wade. He has described the “same-sex marriage campaign” as “characterized by lawlessness” and has mocked the Supreme Court’s Obergefell opinion.

Such extreme statements reflect poorly on Mr. Kacsmaryk’s temperament and suggest an inability to respect precedent and apply the law fairly and impartially.