PanamaTimes

Thursday, Jul 03, 2025

Texas judge's ruling to ban mifepristone nationwide cites Wikipedia, contains pro-life talking points, and gets basic facts about abortion wrong: Experts say it's 'completely flawed'

Texas judge's ruling to ban mifepristone nationwide cites Wikipedia, contains pro-life talking points, and gets basic facts about abortion wrong: Experts say it's 'completely flawed'

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk overturned FDA approval of an abortion medication with a ruling full of inaccuracies, legal and healthcare experts told Insider.

A Texas judge on Friday overturned the nationwide FDA approval of abortion medication with a ruling that legal and healthcare experts told Insider is full of inaccuracies.

In addition to citing the Wikipedia definitions for both "pregnancy" and "disease" in his ruling, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk falsely claimed abortion medication "ultimately starves the unborn human until death" and made sweeping generalizations about the psychological impact of abortions on women who receive them — which health care providers told Insider aren't accurate.

"Whim and caprice aren't the same as facts and evidence, and are not an objective foundation for good law," Los Angeles attorney Vineet Dubey, co-founder of Custodio & Dubey LLP, a law firm specializing in injury, environmental litigation, and civil rights cases, said in a statement emailed to Insider, indicating the judge's ruling came "without the knowledge necessary to make an informed decision."

Dubey added: "Judges aren't intended to be subject matter experts outside of interpreting the law."


The ruling misstates how the drug works


The conservative, Trump-appointed Texas judge behind the ruling in the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA case has long supported the anti-abortion movement. His mother, Dorothy, is a microbiologist who began working at anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, his sister, Jennifer Griffith, told The Washington Post.

In his ruling, Kacsmaryk included common phrases used by anti-abortion activists, not scientists, and misinformation.

"Mifepristone — also known as RU-486 or Mifeprex — is a synthetic steroid that blocks the hormone progesterone, halts nutrition, and ultimately starves the unborn human until death," Kacsmaryk's ruling reads, calling those who provide the medication "abortionists."

But an OB-GYN told Insider the judge's interpretation of what the drug does is medically inaccurate.

"I would say that's not a medical description of the way that that it works," Daniel Grossman, MD, the director of the University of California San Francisco's reproductive health care program, Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), told Insider.

Mifepristone, Grossman said, blocks the progesterone receptor early in the pregnancy to keep the lining of the uterus from getting thick enough for an embryo to successfully implant on it, causing the pregnancy to start to separate from the uterine wall. Working in tandem with a second medication called misoprostol, which causes the contraction of the uterus, the drugs cause the expulsion of the embryo.

The process is "kind of like having a really heavy, crampy period," according to Planned Parenthood.

"From a medical perspective, we call the developing pregnancy an embryo at this stage. Mifepristone and misoprostol are sometimes used before we can even see an embryo on ultrasound," Grossman told Insider. "So, that term 'unborn human' — that's not a medical term that we use."

He added: "And the language around nutrition and starvation is certainly very emotional language, but those aren't the medical terms that we use in this context."

Prior to implanting in the uterine lining and the development of a placenta, an embryo relies on nutrients from endometrial secretions, which are present during the second half of the menstrual cycle whether a pregnancy occurs or not, according to SITNBoston, a Harvard science publication.


"Inappropriate, unethical, and jarring" misinformation


But the medical processes and descriptions of how the drugs work weren't the only inaccuracies in the judge's ruling.

M. Antonia Biggs, PhD and social psychologist at ANSIRH, told Insider that Kacsmaryk was "perpetuating misinformation and propagating the myth that abortion causes mental health harm" through his ruling.

"What we do know is that abortion does not increase people's risk of having depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, suicidal ideation, or substance use disorders, which is completely against many of his claims," Biggs told Insider. "We also know that people do not come to regret their abortions."

In the ruling, Kacsmaryk writes that women who receive an abortion are at higher risk of death by suicide, "self-destructive tendencies, depression, and other unhealthy behavior aggravated by the abortion experience," citing studies debunked by the broader scientific community, Biggs said.

Kacsmaryk also claims women experience "intense psychological trauma" from seeing an expelled embryo.

Biggs said when she worked on a longitudinal research project called The Turnaway Study, examining the mental, physical, and socioeconomic consequences of receiving an abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term, the results showed the opposite — 95% said that they felt that it was the right decision for them.

"When we did find harm, any kind of psychological harm, it was not to people who had an abortion, but it was people who were denied abortion," Biggs told Insider. "So people who are denied abortion experience short-term, elevated levels of stress, anxiety, and low self-esteem."

Spreading such misinformation through an official judicial ruling, Biggs said, is "inappropriate, unethical, and jarring."

"When you're issuing a ruling that's going to impact people nationally, one would hope that that ruling would be evidence-based and that it would look at the body of evidence instead of cherry-picking studies that are really not in line with the scientific consensus on the topic," Biggs said, adding, "so many of the things in this ruling I would say are completely flawed. It's definitely not going to help or prevent mental health harm or physical harm as it claims – it's going to do the opposite."

Kacsmaryk did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Newsletter

Related Articles

PanamaTimes
0:00
0:00
Close
House Oversight Committee Subpoenas Former Jill Biden Aide Amid Investigation into Alleged Concealment of President Biden's Cognitive Health
OpenAI Secures Multimillion-Dollar AI Contracts with Pentagon, India, and Grab
Brazilian Congress Rejects Lula's Proposed Tax Increase on Financial Transactions
Landslide in Bello, Colombia, Results in Multiple Casualties
Papa Johns pizza surge near the Pentagon tipped off social media before Trump's decisive Iran strike
Juncker Criticizes EU Inaction on Trump Tariffs
Minnesota Lawmaker Melissa Hortman and Husband Killed in Targeted Attack; Senator John Hoffman and Wife Injured
Wreck of $17 Billion San José Galleon Identified Off Colombia After 300 Years
Sole Survivor of Air India Crash Recounts Escape
Coinbase CEO Warns Bitcoin Could Supplant US Dollar Amid Mounting National Debt
UK and EU Reach Agreement on Gibraltar's Schengen Integration
Israeli Finance Minister Imposes Banking Penalties on Palestinians
U.S. Inflation Rises to 2.4% in May Amid Trade Tensions
Trump's Policies Prompt Decline in Chinese Student Enrollment in U.S.
Global Oceans Near Record Temperatures as CO₂ Levels Climb
Trump Announces U.S.-China Trade Deal Covering Rare Earths
Smuggled U.S. Fuel Funds Mexican Cartels Amid Crackdown
Protests Erupt in Los Angeles with Symbolic Flag Burning
Trump Administration Issues New Travel Ban Targeting 12 Countries
Man Group Mandates Full-Time Office Return for Quantitative Analysts
JPMorgan Warns Analysts Against Accepting Future-Dated Job Offers
Builder.ai Faces Legal Scrutiny Amid Financial Misreporting Allegations
Japan Grapples with Rice Shortage Amid Soaring Prices
Goldman Sachs Reduces Risk Exposure Amid Market Volatility
HSBC Chairman Mark Tucker to Return to AIA as Non-Executive Chair
Israel Confirms Arming Gaza Clan to Counter Hamas Influence
Judge Blocks Trump's Ban on International Students at Harvard
Trump Proposes Travel Ban on 'Uncontrolled' Countries
Panama Port Owner Balances US-China Pressures
Trump Administration Accused of Obstructing Deportation Cases
Trump’s China Strategy Remains a Geopolitical Puzzle
Eurozone Inflation Falls Below ECB Target to 1.9%
Call for a New Chapter in Globalisation Emerges
Blackstone and Rivals Diverge on Private Equity Strategy
Mayor’s Security Officer Implicated | Shocking New Details Emerge in NYC Kidnapping Case
Bangkok Ranked World's Top City for Remote Work in 2025
Denmark Increases Retirement Age to 70, Setting a European Precedent
Netanyahu Accuses Western Leaders of 'Emboldening Hamas'
Escalating Trade Tensions and Market Reactions
OnlyFans Reportedly in Talks for $8 Billion Sale
JBS Gains Shareholder Approval for U.S. Stock Listing
Booz Allen Hamilton to Cut 2,500 Jobs Amid Federal Spending Reductions
Trump Signs Executive Orders to Accelerate Nuclear Energy Development
Harvard Temporarily Blocks Trump Administration's International Student Ban
Nippon Steel Forms Partnership with U.S. Steel, Headquarters to Remain in Pittsburgh
Trump Expands Tariff Threats to Apple and Samsung Devices
Oracle and OpenAI Plan $40 Billion Nvidia Chip Purchase for AI Data Center
Trump Threatens 50% Tariff on EU Goods, Markets React
The Daily Debate: The Fall of the Dollar — Strategic Reset or Economic Self-Destruction?
Former FBI Director James Comey Questioned by Secret Service Over Social Media Post
×