https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/08/7-questions-from-the-texas-ruling-on-abortion-pills-00091101

The most important implications of this ruling have to do with abortion. But the legal arguments centered on procedure and whether mifepristone received proper scrutiny from the FDA more than two decades ago.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group that brought the case on behalf of providers who oppose abortion, argued that the FDA went beyond its authority when it approved the medication. Their lawyers also argued that a 19th century anti-obscenity law, the Comstock Act, prohibits the mailing of any medication used for abortion.

What did the judge say?
Kacsmaryk ruled that both the initial approval of the pills in 2000 and a more recent decision to allow them to be prescribed via telemedicine were unlawful.

“The Court does not second-guess FDA’s decision-making lightly,” he wrote. “But here, FDA acquiesced on its legitimate safety concerns — in violation of its statutory duty — based on plainly unsound reasoning and studies that did not support its conclusions. There is also evidence indicating FDA faced significant political pressure to forego its proposed safety precautions to better advance the political objective of increased ‘access’ to chemical abortion — which was the ‘whole idea of mifepristone.’”