Contraception is next on a list of rights national Republicans plan to eliminate, writes Chloe Cerutti of Murfreesboro.
tennesseelookout.com
Sadly, that is not to be. In Republican-dominated states, lawmakers are already searching for ways to prevent women from obtaining out-of-state abortions. The Thomas More Society, a conservative Catholic legal organization, is
drafting model legislation for state lawmakers that would allow a private citizen to sue anyone who helps a resident of a state which has banned abortion from terminating a pregnancy outside of that state.
Medication abortion, which constitutes more than half of all abortions, is under attack as is surgical abortion and Tennessee is among the states seeking to prevent patients from obtaining medications that cause abortions.
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Federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is about to preside over a case that could have devastating consequences for people who need abortions.
www.vanityfair.com
And despite the Food and Drug Administration
loosening restrictions on mail-order abortion pills—which remain
illegal in many states—a Trump-appointed judge is gearing up to effectively ban them nationwide.
Rolling Stone reports that a lawsuit filed by a group called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine will be heard by
Matthew Kacsmaryk, a judge nominated by
Donald Trump in 2019, and will be decided as early as February. The suit challenges the FDA’s approval—more than 22 years ago—of mifepristone, a medication taken in conjunction with misoprostol in order to terminate pregnancies. According to legal experts, the suit would have been immediately thrown out if it were being judged purely on the legal merits, given that its arguments are easily disproved and laughable to boot. According to
Rolling Stone, one of those arguments is that a 1873 vice law barring the delivery of “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” items through the mail somehow applies to birth control pills. (As
Rolling Stone notes, “before that law stopped being enforced decades ago, federal courts consistently ruled it doesn’t apply to lawful abortions.”) Another is that there was no evidence of safety and efficacy when the drug was originally approved in 2000—a claim that
Carrie Flaxman, senior director of public policy litigation and law at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told
Rolling Stone “is just junk science.” (In fact, medication abortion has been dubbed “
safer than Tylenol.”)
Lorie Chaiten, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU, told the outlet the suit “is baseless.”
