By Carrie Baker for Ms. Magazine.
Broadcast version by Roz Brown for Texas News Service reporting for the Ms. Magazine-Public News Service Collaboration

On Nov. 18, anti-abortion advocates filed a federal lawsuit challenging the FDA approval of the medication mifepristone in 2000-as well as subsequent updates to the approval in 2016, 2019 and most recently in December 2021, when the agency began allowing clinicians to mail abortion pills to their patients.

The lawsuit alleges the FDA did not have proof of the medication's safety, despite extensive evidence showing abortion pills are safe and effective-more so than many other medications, including over the counter drugs such as Tylenol.

"This is yet another attempt by anti-abortion extremists to force their beliefs on all of us," said Kirsten Moore, director of Expanding Medication Abortion Access Project (EMAA Project), which advocates for increased access to mifepristone for abortion and miscarriage care.

The conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed the lawsuit on behalf of four antiabortion medical organizations and several doctors against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ADF represented Mississippi in the case that led the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade and they have helped draft anti-abortion laws adopted in many states.

The 113-page complaint argues the FDA unlawfully fast-tracked the approval of mifepristone in 2000 and did not have the required research to prove the safety of the drug under the labeled conditions of use.

To the contrary, a 2018 Government Accountability Office report concluded that the FDA "followed its standard review process when it approved the application ... for the drug Mifeprex" and "based its approval on reviews of peer-reviewed published studies, articles, and other information submitted by Mifeprex's sponsor." The FDA subsequently conducted extensive reviews of the mifepristone's safety again in 2016.

The ADF complaint regurgitates many of the objections raised by anti-abortion groups to the 2021 modification of the mifepristone approval. The FDA published a 40-page rebuttal letter to these objections, which ADF fails to address in their complaint.

Moore said the anti-abortion movement is trying to "put the genie back into the bottle" and is "trying to undo progress."

"When they look at the courts, they think, 'Why wouldn't the courts be friendly to us even if we are making new things up?' The Supreme Court just overturned a 50-year precedent that took away half the population's fundamental right to control their bodies, so why wouldn't they try?"

The ADF chose to file the case in the Amarillo Division of the Northern District of Texas, where it was assigned to a 45-year-old Trump appointee Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, who for five years before becoming a federal judge was deputy general counsel for First Liberty Institute, a Christian conservative legal organization that specializes in representing religious groups claiming they have experienced discrimination.

n 2015, Kacsmaryk wrote an op-ed for the National Catholic Register stating his opposition to same-sex marriage, no-fault divorce, birth control, abortion and sex outside of marriage-and his support for "complementarianism," a religious belief that assigns primary headship roles to men and support roles to women based on their interpretation of certain biblical passages.

"He is an anti-LGBT activist and culture warrior who does not respect the equal dignity of all people," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) during his Senate confirmation hearing, reading from a letter of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "His record reveals a hostility to LGBT equality and to women's health, and he would not be able to rule fairly and impartially in cases involving those issues."

Just last week Kacsmaryk ruled that the Biden administration wrongly interpreted a provision of the Affordable Care Act as barring healthcare providers from discriminating against LGBTQ+ Americans.

Texas is within the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has a majority of conservative judges-six of whom were appointed by Trump. This same court repeatedly upheld the Texas bounty hunter law last year.

Most shockingly, the ADF lawsuit asks Judge Kacsmaryk to revive the 1873 Comstock Law, which banned sending obscene literature, contraceptives, abortifacients or any sexual information through U.S. mails. After the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 that people have a fundamental right to access and use contraception, Congress removed the language concerning contraception in 1971, but left the part of the law criminalizing mailing abortifacients and information about abortion.

Before Roe v. Wade, federal courts ruled this part of the law applied only to "unlawful" abortions. After the Roe decision, the Comstock law remained on the books but was not enforced. Now that the Supreme Court has reversed Roe, ADF hopes to bring the law back into effect.

"The law that conservatives used to shut down contraceptive pills at the turn of the century-this is where they want to take us back to," said Moore.

The lawsuit seeks to reverse the increasing availability of medication abortion and telemedicine abortion. In 2020, medication abortion accounted for 54 percent of all pregnancy terminations in the U.S. After a federal court lifted the FDA requirement that clinicians distribute the medication in person in July of 2020, telemedicine abortion services surged across the United States, becoming available in 20 states, expanding further after the FDA permanently lifted the in-person distribution requirement in December of 2021.

Carrie Baker wrote this article for Ms. Magazine.

March is Women's History Month and an Arkansas native has made history by being honored with a $1 coin from the U.S. Mint.

The late Raye Montague was an engineer with the U.S. Navy and created the first computer-generated rough draft of a U.S. naval ship in 1971. Because of her work, ships could be designed in 18 hours instead of two years.

David Montague, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Raye's son, said his family worked closely with the mint to create the coin's design.

"It was her with her hand over her heart, which is patriotic, and then looking over the ship that she designed, the Oliver Hazard Perry," Montague explained. "That struck me immediately. And then the background, underneath the ship is the sea, and then that is actually a computer grid."

He recalled when he was a child, he collected coins with his mother, so it is fitting she would receive the honor. She died in 2018.

Last year, the federal building where she worked, in Bethesda, Maryland, was renamed the Raye Montague Center for Maritime Technology. Her son pointed out although his mother faced obstacles, she created time to help others.

"She saw it as the natural course of her professional opportunities," Montague observed. "If she was able to gain opportunities to do things and grow as a human being, she wanted to make sure that she opened doors for other people and was trying to make the world a better place."

The coin was released earlier this year and Montague noted it is already being used to continue his mother's legacy. The currency was shared with kids in an Arkansas youth group.

"They used the coin to say you all are Arkansas youth and this person was an Arkansas youth, and look, they're on a dollar coin," Montague added. "If she can do great things, as long as you work hard and you push for opportunities, then you have options as well."


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Women in rural areas struggle more with menopause than their urban counterparts, according to a study from the University of Washington.

Rural women reported more symptoms like joint pain and mood swings in one of the first studies to look at menopausal rural-urban discrepancies.

Dr. Susan Reed, program director at the University of Washington Women's Reproductive Health Research Center and an author of the report, said she's not surprised by the results. She stressed the study is a signal medical providers need to do better for the rural population.

"If people transition through this period in a healthy fashion, they live longer," Reed outlined. "They have fewer cardiovascular problems and perhaps better brain aging."

Reed noted other studies have shown women in rural areas are struggling with higher mortality rates and other health issues like higher suicide rates and obesity. She added there is decreased access in rural places because of the long distances people often have to travel to receive care.

"People providing menopause health care in rural areas, many of them are really passionate and do a good job," Reed observed. "There just aren't enough of them."

Reed emphasized there are other factors contributing to poor menopausal care, not just for women in rural areas but urban and suburban areas too. She argued hormonal therapy is a safe and effective treatment and there should be a higher prevalence of its use.

"The challenges there are due to misinformation on the internet, fear of patients," Reed explained. "And then providers not being skilled enough to help people understand risks and benefits of menopausal hormone therapy."


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The gender gap in Ohio politics persists, and President Donald Trump's new executive order eliminating federal diversity programs is expected to create more challenges for women and other underrepresented groups in public service.

Ohio Women in Government is among the organizations working to bridge this gap by offering scholarships to students who take unpaid internships in state government. The group's vice president-elect, Andrea Harless, said the $1,500 awards are designed to alleviate financial burdens, especially for those from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.

"There are young women that just do not have the financial means to come to Columbus for a summer and pay to have an unpaid internship, and that does create barriers," she said. "It's very real for a lot of people."

Applications for the current round of scholarships will close today with another round planned for later in the year. More information on the scholarships is online at OhioWomenInGovernment.com.

The elimination of diversity programs has drawn criticism from organizations advocating for equitable representation. Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, argued that women continue to face systemic obstacles in entering and advancing in government, including disparities in campaign funding and policy influence.

"Diversity doesn't mean that we're not inviting people who are very qualified to the table," she said. "It means we're trying to have a diversity of opinions so that, in fact, we can create good public policy that we can address the needs for all the people in the country."

She added that eliminating these initiatives weakens government institutions by limiting diverse perspectives in policymaking.

Ohio Women in Government president-elect Julia Wynn encouraged young women to pursue public service.

"It starts with making sure that young women have faith in themselves to be the decisionmaker for their communities," she said.

Wynn said the more women who rise up and understand the legislative process, the more that can be accomplished.