What initially looked like an outright victory for anti-abortion activists Friday evening soon became more complicated.
US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Texas, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, first ruled Friday that the Food and Drug Administration’s 2000 approval of mifepristone – one of the drugs used to terminate a pregnancy – needed to be halted.
But less than an hour after Kacsmaryk’s ruling, US District Judge Thomas Owen Rice of the Eastern District of Washington, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, ordered the federal government to keep the drug available in 17 states plus the District of Columbia.
