[Columnist piece, Title: The right is stealthily working to remove Americans’ access to abortion medication]

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This week a Republican-appointed federal judge weighed whether to grant an injunction that could remove mifepristone, the drug used in most American abortions, from the market nationwide. And the hearing almost happened in secret.

US district court judge Matthew Kacsmaryk had initially planned to keep Wednesday’s hearing in the case – in which a group of rightwing anti-abortion groups are suing the FDA to reverse its 20-year-old approval of mifepristone – quiet. In a conference call with lawyers for the anti-choice groups and the Department of Justice, Kacsmaryk asked attorneys not to disclose the existence of the hearing (“This is not a gag order,” he said repeatedly), and said that the event would only be made public late on Tuesday to minimize popular awareness.
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[...] the federal judicial district has become a popular venue for rightwing litigation in part because Kacsmaryk, an exceptionally conservative jurist willing to publish poorly reasoned, policy-driven opinions, is the only federal judge there.
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Lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom, the rightwing legal outfit that is representing the plaintiffs and which is designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, pursued this idea on Wednesday in court. “How many more women have to die?” attorney Erik Baptist asked.
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