In April 2023, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk made headlines when he suspended FDA approval for mifepristone, an abortion pill that has been available for decades. On Feb 5, a medical journal announced it had retracted three of the scientific articles used by Kacsmaryk to justify his unprecedented and widely criticized ruling.
Red flags
The peer-reviewed articles used by Kacsmaryk in his decision were published in 2019, 2021, and 2022 in Sage, a prominent and reputed medical journal. However, Sage was later contacted by a reader who voiced a number of concerns about the piece, which was published in 2021.
Major issues
As well as problems with the data used in the article, Sage confirmed that “all but one of the article’s authors had an affiliation with one or more of Charlotte Lozier Institute, Elliot Institute, and American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, all pro-life advocacy organizations, despite having declared they had no conflicts of interest when they submitted the article for publication or in the article itself.”
Extreme groups
According to Pro-Lies, a watchdog operated by Equity Forward, the Charlotte Lozier Institute pushes “alarmist narratives about abortion,” works with “other extremist anti-abortion organizations,” and spreads “lies about research employing fetal tissue and [advocates] for deceptive anti-abortion centers.”
Further problems
While reviewing the 2021 and 2022 articles, which used the same dataset, multiple experts found “fundamental problems with the study design and methodology, unjustified or incorrect factual assumptions, material errors in the authors’ analysis of the data, and misleading presentations of the data.”
Conclusion
As Sage stated on Feb 5, the issues in both articles “demonstrate a lack of scientific rigor and invalidate the authors’ conclusions in whole or in part.”
Additional flaws
Despite using a different dataset, the 2019 article was also found by multiple experts to be severely flawed. It contained “unsupported assumptions and misleading presentations of the findings that, in their opinions, demonstrate a lack of scientific rigor and render the authors’ conclusion unreliable.”
On pause
Kacsmaryk’s ruling was partially blocked by a federal appeals court soon after he issued it in April 2023. Biden called Kacsmary’s ruling “completely out of bounds.”
Widely accepted
The case against mifepristone was filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group. Because Kacsmaryk is the only judge in his division, the case was heavily criticized as an example of judge-shopping, where parties file suits before specific judges they believe will rule in their favor.
Suspicious language
Indeed, critics pointed out that Kacsmaryk used various anti-abortion terms in his ruling, such as “unborn human” instead of fetus or embryo and “chemical abortion” instead of medication abortion. “It is very clearly anti-abortion movement language,” a Boston University health law professor told ABC News.
Critics pile on
“The legal system is not supposed to work this way,” a constitutional law professor in Texas told ABC News. “You’re not supposed to be able to handpick your judge.”
Suspicious history
Kacsmaryk was appointed to his lifetime judicial position by President Trump in 2019. Before this, the New York Times reported, he “had written critically about Roe v. Wade and worked for the First Liberty Institute, a conservative Christian legal activist group.”
Widely used
According to Planned Parenthood, an FDA review in 2019 found that medication abortion has a safety record of over 99%. “More than 100 scientific studies,” the New York Times reported, “spanning continents and decades, have examined the effectiveness and safety of mifepristone and misoprostol, the abortion pills that are commonly used in the United States. All conclude that the pills are a safe method for terminating a pregnancy.”
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