Gilead is Real - The War on Women and Abortion Part 3

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

She is suffering physically and mentally. She will likely continue to suffer physically and mentally long after the pregnancy ends, whether it is by “natural” termination or a medical intervention because she is finally so close to death that the treatment providers are able to meet the requirements to act under the state’s narrow law allowances. The financial costs are not comparable to what she is facing in the mental and physical costs but with trips back and forth to the emergency room and probably at least one if not more admission to the hospital as well as a potential surgical intervention (that could have been performed at the beginning of the miscarriage) she is probably facing significant medical costs. 
 

All for a pregnancy that is apparently not viable. 
 

But if it was the daughter of one of the SCOTUS justices, the then POTUS, or the members of Congress who all collaborated and conspired to create this misogynistic and dangerous hellscape for women who was in danger or who just had an unwanted pregnancy, there would be no impediment to finding access to a safe abortion for her. Fuckers. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Currently, Virginia does not count an embryo or fetus as a person for the purposes of using the HOV lanes. RWNJ Freitas has introduced a bill to change that. And, as a bonus, the state would get a registry of pregnant women. We know the Rethugs would love that.

[GreyhoundFan]

Gee, Rethuglikans lied, I’m totally shocked. /s

 

[CTRLZero]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Currently, Virginia does not count an embryo or fetus as a person for the purposes of using the HOV lanes. RWNJ Freitas has introduced a bill to change that. And, as a bonus, the state would get a registry of pregnant women. We know the Rethugs would love that.

Curious to see how this is implemented.  In a pinch, I guess carry a pregnancy test pee stick in the vehicle.  Disturbing how there will be a registry for this.  Will there be an expiration (due) date?  So many questions. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Next up: they’ll start requiring a veil on women. 

 

[fraurosena]

9 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Next up: they’ll start requiring a veil on women. 

 

GOP: Diligently working towards Gilead.

[Coconut Flan]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Next up: they’ll start requiring a veil on women. 

More lost minds.  Although I'm delighted for them to keep it up so we can have open revolt.

[Audrey2]

So thuglikans where are you going after women are no longer allowed to show bare arms? Do you really mean that women must wear shirts or jackets in the legislature that go to their wrists? Are you then going to make a rule that women may not wear pants and may only wear skirts that do not show their ankles?

 

Edited January 13, 2023 by Audrey2

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Can medical abortions survive in the post-Roe era?"

 

Quote

The Supreme Court’s decision overruling the constitutional right to abortion didn’t remove courts from deciding abortion cases. It merely changed the terms of the debate. Right now, nothing is more front and center than competing efforts to eliminate or expand access to abortion medications.

Abortions conducted through a two-drug protocol now account for more than half of abortions in this country, a development that has transformed the abortion landscape, especially in the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

But a lawsuit filed in federal court in Texas seeks a nationwide ban on using mifepristone, one of the two drugs, although the Food and Drug Administration first approved the medication as safe and effective for that purpose in 2000. This could produce chaos, at least in the short term.

Meanwhile, two other federal lawsuits filed last week attempt to leverage the FDA’s approval of mifepristone to block states from imposing additional hurdles to obtaining the medication — or, more boldly, to require that mifepristone remain available even in states with abortion bans.

Under ordinary circumstances, the Texas lawsuit would be laughed out of court. Instead, it’s being greeted with anxiety among abortion rights advocates because the judge hearing the case — not by accident, but through careful selection of venue — is Trump appointee Matthew Kacsmaryk.

Previously deputy general counsel of the First Liberty Institute, a conservative religious rights group, Kacsmaryk called homosexuality “disordered,” described being transgender as a “delusion,” and criticized Roe v. Wade. On the bench, Kacsmaryk has overturned Biden administration efforts to protect transgender individuals (twice) and ruled that the federally funded family planning program violates a parent’s “fundamental right to control and direct the upbringing of his minor children.” And note: This is a judge who is not shy about imposing nationwide injunctions to enforce his conclusions.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative group that filed the Texas case, argues that “the FDA failed America’s women and girls when it chose politics over science and approved chemical abortion drugs for use in the United States” because the agency “disregarded the substantial evidence that chemical abortion drugs cause more complications than even surgical abortions.”

This is bunk — even if the antiabortion groups bringing the case have standing to challenge the FDA, and so long after the fact. In reality, as the Biden administration told Kacsmaryk in court papers filed earlier this month, the FDA found “no difference in major adverse events” between medical and surgical abortions and that “serious complications with mifepristone are rare.”

A court ruling banning mifepristone might not survive — and there are questions about whether the law governing the FDA’s authority would allow Kacsmaryk to impose such an action nationwide. But reversing Kacsmaryk would be up to the conservative-dominated U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

“We are very worried, and everyone in this room should be prepared for a reality where in a few weeks or months the whole country loses access to a regimen of medication abortion,” University of Pittsburgh law professor Greer Donley said at a conference on reproductive rights after Dobbs at Boston University’s law school last week.

The two lawsuits filed last week take the opposite approach, seeking to use the FDA’s approval to protect access to mifepristone. North Carolina still permits abortion, but it imposes more restrictions on access to mifepristone than the FDA requirement. Under the state’s rules, only a doctor can dispense the medication, it must be provided in person, and then only in a specially certified facility after mandatory counseling and a 72-hour waiting period.

The case, brought on behalf of a local physician, argues that “there is no room for North Carolina to impose additional restrictions and specific conditions for use that FDA … concluded are unwarranted and inappropriate.”

A much more far-reaching lawsuit was filed by GenBioPro, which manufactures a generic version of mifepristone, against West Virginia, which bans nearly all abortions. The suit, brought by Democracy Forward, a liberal public interest group, claims that the FDA’s approval of mifepristone preempts West Virginia from preventing its use, and that it violates the Supremacy Clause and the Commerce Clause for the state to prohibit mifepristone.

“The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs did not displace Congress’s and FDA’s roles in protecting the public health by deciding whether drugs are safe and effective, determining which precautions — if any — are necessary to ensure a drug’s safe use, and ensuring safe and effective drugs are available to the public,” the suit asserts.

The lawsuit’s backers point to a 2014 case in which Massachusetts tried to prevent a new FDA-approved opioid from being dispensed in the state, arguing that it was too susceptible to abuse. A federal judge ruled in favor of the FDA, saying that if the state “were able to countermand the FDA’s determinations and substitute its own requirements, it would undermine the FDA’s ability to make drugs available to promote and protect the public health.”

It seems like a reach to stretch that precedent to this circumstance. The FDA approved mifepristone as a safe and effective abortion method; it didn’t tell states whether to allow abortions, and they had no choice about whether to do so at the time.

A court that announced it was returning the abortion issue to states isn’t likely to discover that half the nation’s abortions have to be allowed after all. But a court — or a single judge — who yanks a drug from its long-approved use would be committing the truly radical act.

 

[OldFadedStar]

I am 7 weeks pregnant in Mississippi with a wanted pregnancy and quite honestly a little terrified even more so than I would usually be about a miscarriage. 
luckily if something happens and my doc can’t do anything because MS is MS, my family lives in Illinois and I can go visit them 

[GreyhoundFan]

"You Should Order Abortion Pills Right Now, Just in Case"

Quote

Gather ‘round, ladies and themtlemen, because I have a timely suggestion: If you can get pregnant, please consider buying abortion pills as soon as you can. It’s a good idea to have some pills on hand because a judge appointed by Donald Trump could effectively ban the abortion pill nationwide as soon as next Friday, February 10. Yes, blue states, this could affect you, too.

The Europe-based site Aid Access will mail pills to people in all 50 states before they’re pregnant—which is known as advance provision—and a U.S.-based service called Choix does this for people in six states (California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, New Mexico, and Virginia). Both have sliding scale payment options. If you’re currently pregnant and don’t want to be, this is also your heads up that your abortion options could soon be even more limited, so if you want a medication abortion, now is the time to get it.

Aid Access advises checking the expiration dates when you receive the medicines and note that most pills can be kept up to two years after receiving them as long as they’re unopened and kept at room temperature. People who get pregnant after they obtain pills should contact them immediately for guidance during the process.

Self-managed abortion carries legal risks, so if people are going to buy pills, they should first read this guide on minimizing your risks and digital footprint. It includes information about the Repro Legal Defense Fund and M+A Hotline, or Miscarriage+Abortion Hotline. Learn more on internet safety from If/When/How here:

How is this happening? We all know the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, but anti-abortion activists have not been content to leave abortion to the states: They want to ban it everywhere. Activists sued the Food and Drug Administration in November saying the FDA wrongly approved mifepristone more than 20 years ago and asked Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk to revoke its approval. (February 10 is the soonest the judge could issue the ruling.)

If Kacsmaryk sides with the plaintiffs, “The case could result in an injunction requiring the federal government to pull the drugs from the market immediately,” according to Stateline.

As I explained in December:

If Judge Kacsmaryk issues a nationwide ruling revoking the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, it would ban health care providers from prescribing it for abortion. (The drug is also sold as Korlym to treat Cushing’s syndrome.) Even people seeking care in states where abortion is still legal wouldn’t be able to get the pills from brick-and-mortar clinics or from telemedicine services. The only option would be Aid Access, based in Europe, or word-of-mouth networks.

The ruling won’t directly affect abortion procedures at clinics, but it could indirectly make it harder to get an appointment. In 2020, abortions with pills made up a staggering 54 percent of abortions done in medical settings. If U.S.-based telemedicine sites can’t operate, and pills are no longer an option for clinics, clinics will be slammed with requests for in-person appointments. The ripple effects could be devastating, as Greer Donley, associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School, told Jezebel in December.

“The waiting times that we see are going to balloon to the point where it’s really making abortion almost inaccessible throughout the country,” Donley said. “Not just for people in red states traveling, the people in New York wouldn’t feel safe…if the New York clinics are backed up, and you need an abortion, you’re not going to feel like you have access.”

It seems wrong that a single judge could declare that an FDA-approved medication can no longer be prescribed. But Joanna Grossman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, told the Dallas Morning News that, while it’s an “illegitimate use of law,” it wouldn’t be impossible given who’s making the call. Kacsmaryk used to work for the Christian First Liberty Institute and is the same judge who recently ruled that teenagers don’t have a right to birth control.

“Any sort of normal judge, I would say there’s no scenario in which they’re gonna cause a long standing approved drug to suddenly be unapproved, you know, disapproved basically on political grounds,” Grossman said. “But if any judge is gonna do it, this is the judge.”

Surely the FDA would appeal this potential ruling, you say. Yes—but the appeals court that would hear the case is the ultraconservative Fifth Circuit, the very same one that let the Texas bounty hunter abortion ban take effect in September 2021. The next level after that is, you guessed it, the Supreme Court.

If Kacsmaryk orders mifepristone pulled from the U.S. market, Aid Access could still operate—it has a pharmacy in India ship pills to the U.S.—but it’s unclear if the service would be slowed from demand. It can already take up to three weeks for people to get their pills.

It’s horrifying that this is the world we live in, but as the past few years have shown, it’s better to be prepared for the worst.

If you or someone you know needs assistance self-managing a miscarriage or abortion, you can call the Miscarriage + Abortion Hotline at (833) 246-2632 for confidential medical support, or the Repro Legal Helpline at (844) 868-2812 for confidential legal information and advice.

Update, 2/1/23: This post has been updated to include information about legal risks for people self-managing abortions.

 

[47of74]

Yeah, Iowa is getting even more fucking stupid

Quote

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird is joining 19 other Republican state attorneys in a push against two large pharmacy chains to refrain from mailing abortion pills within their states.

They co-signed letters to C-V-S and Walgreens executives, criticizing recent guidance from the Justice Department that says federal law does not prohibit the mailing of abortion pills.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Republicans aim to decimate abortion access in post-Roe haven states"

Quote

In the months after the fall of Roe v. Wade, North Carolina experienced the largest spike in abortions of any state — its numbers fueled by a relatively permissive law and a Democratic governor promising to block the Republican-led legislature from enacting antiabortion measures.

But in recent weeks hard-liners in Raleigh have launched a plan to override a future veto and ban abortions as soon as around six weeks of pregnancy.

At the center of the effort are a handful of Democratic legislators with a history of voting for antiabortion legislation and who could now provide the GOP with enough votes to override a veto by Gov. Roy Cooper (D). That group, which includes two pastors of predominantly-Black Baptist churches, is facing pressure from both sides.

“I lay down with it, I wake up with it,” said Democratic state Rep. Garland Pierce, who leads the congregation at Bright Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Laurinburg, N.C. “When you reach deep down you want to be sure you’re doing the right thing.”

The showdown in North Carolina reflects similar efforts underway in several conservative states that have become destinations for post-Roe abortion care. In Florida and Nebraska — where laws still allow the vast majority of abortions to continue — conservatives are also pushing for six-week bans, which, together with the same kind of ban in North Carolina, could dramatically reshape the national abortion landscape once again.

Legal abortions increased in all three states after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion in June, according to an October report from WeCount, a research project led by the pro-abortion rights Society of Family Planning.

North Carolina has emerged as a major abortion refuge, with a law that allows abortions up to 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The state legislature’s unusual dynamics were apparent this week after the full Democratic membership signed onto a bill that would codify Roe v. Wade into law. Democratic leaders had intended the legislation to be a show of unity on abortion, though nobody expects it to pass in the Republican-dominated legislature.

“The one thing that’s clear in North Carolina is that Democrats are united on protecting women’s rights and access to abortion,” said Morgan Jackson, an adviser to Cooper. “Republicans have been crowing for months that they have a path to abortion restrictions. The Democrats closed the door on that.”

But Pierce made clear that, despite the appearance of party unity, the door to an abortion ban remains open.

He told The Washington Post that he had been under enormous pressure and that he signed onto the bill with Democrats this week to “stop the bleeding.”

“Everybody changes their mind about things and we’ll see how it goes,” he said.

“The process has just started,” he added. “This is the first quarter.”

Democrats have little margin for error.

Republicans fell just one seat short during last year’s midterm elections of securing a veto-proof majority in the state House that conservatives had hoped would propel a new abortion law. If they can win over just one House Democrat, antiabortion leaders say they’ll likely have the votes to replace the state’s current 20-week limit.

Republicans already have enough votes in the Senate to override a veto. But the Senate leader, Phil Berger, has yet to endorse a six-week ban. Instead, he has publicly backed a less restrictive 12-week limit.

NC Values Coalition, one of the leading antiabortion groups in North Carolina, has drafted a six-week abortion ban that they are offering to legislators “as a starting point,” said Tami Fitzgerald, the group’s executive director. She said they are starting the process of contacting Democrats who have voted for previous antiabortion legislation.

While Fitzgerald declined to offer specific names, her group is likely targeting three Democrats who voted in 2021 to pass the “Human Life Nondiscrimination Act,” which would have banned abortions on the basis of the fetus’ race, sex, or a diagnosis of Down syndrome but was vetoed by the governor. That list includes Rep. Michael Wray, a small-business owner, as well as the two pastors — Pierce and Rep. Amos Quick, who leads the Calvary Baptist Church in Greensboro.

Wray and Quick did not respond to requests for an interview.

For Democrats who have voted with Republicans on abortion, the issue is often a deeply personal one, said James Gailliard, a former Democratic state representative who lost reelection in November.

“We don’t talk enough about this but some of your most conservative people are Black Christians,” said Gailliard, who counted himself among the Black pastors at the Capitol who fall to the right of their party on abortion. “It becomes a real struggle for those of us who are people of faith.”

Some Democratic leaders in the state say they understand that there’s still some question as to how the socially-conservative Democrats will vote on upcoming abortion legislation.

“Signing onto this I don’t think precludes anybody from doing anything in the future,” said House Minority Leader Robert Reives, a Democrat. But he added that he’d be “very, very surprised” if any Democrats decided to support a bill banning abortions after fetal cardiac activity is detected.

In Florida, the push for a six-week ban could pit Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who has thus far avoided publicly endorsing a specific proposal, against the Republican leader of the state Senate, who has advocated for her party to move more slowly on abortion.

Senate President Kathleen Passidomo said at a November news conference that her hands were tied until the Florida Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of the 15-week ban passed last year, which has been in effect since the summer, a decision that may not come until after the 2023 legislative session concludes. Passidomo later told the Tampa Bay Times that she would support a 12-week ban with exceptions for rape and incest, adding in a subsequent news conference in December that she had not spoken with DeSantis about the abortion issue.

In a vacuum, Passidomo would prefer not to further restrict abortion in Florida, said Florida Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book (D), who says she is close with Passidomo and says she speaks to her regularly about abortion.

“I know her heart on this issue. She has young girls,” Book said. While Passidomo ultimately voted for the 15-week ban, she pushed for the bill to include exceptions for rape and incest — and was angry, Book said, when it passed without them.

Passidomo’s office declined to make her available for an interview.

Despite her own preferences, Passidomo may struggle to stop a six-week ban if DeSantis throws his full support behind the measure. While some Republicans fear losing moderate voters if they embrace strict abortion limits, DeSantis faces a different calculation now that he has already won a reelection landslide and is said to be eyeing a White House run. Signing a six-week ban would likely help boost his standing with evangelical voters crucial in a GOP presidential primary.

“It appears that the governor and the House support a heartbeat bill,” said John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, the state’s largest antiabortion group. “The question is will that pass out with or without exceptions.”

In Nebraska, a roughly six-week ban with exceptions for rape and incest has already been introduced by Sen. Joni Albrecht, who identifies as a Republican in Nebraska’s unique legislature where lawmakers are technically nonpartisan.

By Albrecht’s informal whip count, she is one lawmaker shy of feeling confident she can lock up the votes needed to overcome a filibuster and pass legislation representing a significant departure from the state’s current prohibition on abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy.

“I can’t say that I’m confident, but I am very hopeful that this is what the floor of the legislature will come to know as being what is right for Nebraska,” she said.

 

[libgirl2]

I really have no words anymore. 

[Coconut Flan]

There is no bottom any more.  They keep finding a new sub-basement.

My daughter was right a few years ago when she saw some of this coming and said we can never leave California.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Coconut Flan

[47of74]

Alito is getting some blowback now. 

Quote

The Satanic Temple announced the launch of a telehealth abortion clinic that mocks a Catholic judge who serves on the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The facility, which is located in New Mexico, was named “The Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic.” 

In 1950, Samuel Alito’s mother did not have options, and look what happened,” Malcolm Jarry, who is the cofounder of the Satanic Temple, said in a news release on Wednesday. “Prior to 1973, doctors who performed abortions could lose their licenses and go to jail. The clinic’s name serves to remind people just how important it is to have the right to control one’s body and the potential ramifications of losing that right.”

The Satanic Temple's website includes a cartoon image of a woman — presumably Alito's mother — saying, "If only abortion was legal when I was pregnant." 

 

[ADoyle90815]

All of this makes me glad I was able to get a total hysterectomy in December, including both ovaries as I had a large cyst on my right ovary that really started growing fast over the summer. Best decision I made, and I wish I pushed for at least a bislap in 2017 when I originally got the IUD because I was tired of having to deal with the pharmacy every month for birth control pills. Even though I live in California, they really want to do a federal ban on abortion, and would even go as far as to have a federal ban on all forms of contraception. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Because of course: "Youngkin opposes effort to shield menstrual data from law enforcement"

Quote

RICHMOND — The administration of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) helped defeat a bill this week to put menstrual data stored on period-tracking apps beyond the reach of law enforcement, blocking what supporters pitched as a basic privacy measure.

Millions of women use mobile apps to track their cycles, a practice that has occasionally raised data-security worries because the apps are not bound by HIPAA, the federal health privacy law. New concerns arose after the Supreme Court gave states the right to ban abortion in June, with some abortion rights groups warning that the information could be used to prosecute women or doctors who violate a state’s restrictions on the procedure.

S.B. 852, proposed by Sen. Barbara A. Favola (D-Arlington), would have prohibited search warrants from being issued for menstrual data stored on computers or other electronic devices. The measure sailed out of the Democratic-led Senate last week on a 31-9 vote, with every Democrat and half of the chamber’s 18 Republicans in support.

But a Republican-led House subcommittee voted along party lines Monday to “table” the bill — essentially killing it — after Maggie Cleary, Youngkin’s deputy secretary of public safety and homeland security, detailed the administration’s concerns that the measure could restrict subpoena powers.

“While the administration understands the importance of individuals’ privacy, we do oppose this bill,” she began. “This bill would be the very first of its kind that I’m aware of — in Virginia or anywhere — that would set a limit on what search warrants can do. … Currently any health information or any app information is available via search warrant. And we believe that should continue be the case.”

If approved, Cleary said, the bill would “ultimately open the door to put further limits on search warrants down the road, and that would be incredibly problematic.”

Abortion rights advocates on Tuesday cast the administration’s response as a harbinger of plans to prosecute people who receive abortions — an accusation Republicans batted down.

“The Youngkin Administration’s opposition to this commonsense privacy protection measure shows his real intentions — to ban abortion and criminalize patients and medical providers,” Tarina D. Keene, executive director of the abortion rights group REPRO Rising Virginia, wrote in an email.

Virginia law allows prosecutors to charge doctors who violate the state’s abortion restrictions, but not their patients. Some prominent Virginia Republicans who support tighter abortion restrictions have ruled out adding penalties for patients, including Attorney General Jason S. ­Miyares (R), in a speech last month at a March for Life event in Richmond, and House Speaker Del. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah), in a statement issued Tuesday through spokesman Garren ­Shipley.

“Speaker Gilbert does not and will not support any legislation that prosecutes women for abortion,” Shipley said.

Youngkin, a potential 2024 presidential candidate who can be cagey on abortion and other issues, issued a similar statement through spokeswoman Macaulay Porter on Tuesday.

“The Governor will not support any measures that seek to prosecute women,” Porter wrote in an email to The Washington Post. “He’s focused on getting consensus for protecting life at 15 weeks, when a child can feel pain.”

The legislation Youngkin supported this year to ban abortion after 15 weeks, which did not advance in the House or Senate, did not include penalties for patients.

The House has yet to act on another Senate bill, brought by Sen. Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax), that would prohibit the sale or dissemination of menstrual data to third parties without the consumer’s consent. Surovell said that measure, S.B. 1243, would not prevent disclosure to law enforcement.

Surovell’s bill would prevent the governor from extraditing someone who obtains legal abortion services in Virginia to a state that seeks to prevent its citizens from going out of state for procedures banned at home.

Cleary made no mention of abortion as she addressed a subset of the House Courts of Justice Committee on Monday. Nor did Favola, who summed up her bill very simply: “It’s intended to keep very personal health data personal.”

In an interview Tuesday, Favola said it was “very disappointing” that after clearing the Senate with strong bipartisan support, the bill failed once Cleary “stands up and says, ‘Oh, we don’t want to limit search warrants.’”

“This is a search warrant for menstrual-health data that may be kept on an app,” Favola said. “I don’t think anybody has any business knowing that data other than the woman who is tracking it — period. That’s why I put my bill in. It should not be used to prosecute women. It should not be used for any reason. It should not be accessed.”

Del. Rob Bell (R-Albemarle), the chairman of the House Courts of Justice Committee and a former prosecutor, said Tuesday that the bill would have broken with long-standing legal practice in Virginia.

“We don’t have carve-outs for other things — search warrants can be for entire medical records, they can be for a person’s blood, they can be for an entire computer hard drive,” Bell said. “We don’t have carve-outs for specific search warrant exceptions.”

Bell said that while tabling the bill might theoretically leave the door open for reviving it, he did not anticipate that it would come back up. He declined to comment on accusations from Democrats that Republicans anticipate using menstrual information in eventual abortion-related prosecutions of women.

“I understand that people are saying that,” Bell said. “Everybody has their descriptions of the bill. But … putting specific restrictions on what a search warrant can do is not something we’ve done in any other context and we didn’t think it was appropriate to do it here.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Will a 150-year-old law put the abortion pill in peril?"

Quote

Anthony Comstock would be delighted.

In 1873, Comstock, who headed the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, persuaded Congress to pass “An Act for the Suppression of Trade In, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use.” Popularly known as the Comstock Act, a watered-down version of the law remains on the books today. Contraceptives are no longer deemed “articles of immoral use,” but it is still a felony to mail any “article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.”

You know where this is going. The latter-day vice suppressors are trying to use the Comstock Act to make abortion medications, and maybe even all abortions, unavailable — not just in states that prohibit the procedure, but nationwide. The two-drug regimen, mifepristone and misoprostol, has been approved for two decades and now accounts for more than half the abortions in the United States.

The deployment of this antiquated statute exposes the fallacy of the Supreme Court’s insistence that its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization would simply return the question of abortion to individual states. Antiabortion activists aren’t stopping there.

And it illustrates how the medical landscape has been transformed by the ability to access abortion by taking pills rather than undergoing a surgical procedure. That development makes abortion easier and less expensive to access — and also harder to stop, even in states that ban it.

Enter the Comstock Act. Jonathan F. Mitchell is the lawyer who brought you SB8, the Texas law that banned abortion after six weeks and deputized private citizens to sue over violations, even before the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade. Mark Lee Dickson is a pastor and director of Right to Life of East Texas. Recently, they have been promoting local ordinances creating “sanctuary cities for the unborn” in states that protect abortion rights.

These ordinances hinge in part on the argument that federal law supersedes state abortion policies, and that the 150-year old Comstock Act makes it illegal for abortion providers or individuals to receive abortion medications — or, indeed, any instruments or equipment used in performing abortions.

“The reality is we have a de facto abortion ban in these statutes [the Comstock Act] which have never been repealed by Congress,” Dickson told me in an interview. “I do believe that every single abortion facility in America is in violation of these statutes.” He didn’t just mean medication abortions — he meant all of them.

Meanwhile, 20 Republican attorneys general earlier this month sent letters to Walgreen’s and CVS warning them against making the abortion medications available by mail. The drugstore chains had said they planned to seek approval to dispense the abortion medications that way after the Biden administration dropped the requirement that they be dispensed in person, and only at medical offices.

“The text could not be clearer” that the law prohibits the mailing of abortion medications, the attorneys’ general letter said, adding, menacingly, “Obviously, a federal criminal law — especially one that is, as here, enforceable through a private right of action — deserves serious contemplation.”

Perhaps most ominously, the Comstock Act is also before a federal judge in Texas in a case challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone. The antiabortion group in that case argues, among other things, that the FDA’s approval contravenes the Comstock Act.

In a friend-of-the-court brief filed Monday, 22 states endorsed this argument. “The FDA’s actions defy federal criminal law,” the states said.

The Biden administration vigorously disputes this interpretation. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, in a memo dated Dec. 23, 2022, concluded that the law “does not prohibit the mailing, or the delivery or receipt by mail, of mifepristone or misoprostol where the sender lacks the intent that the recipient will use them unlawfully.” Despite the law’s broad language, the memo said, “Over the course of the last century, the Judiciary, Congress, and USPS [the Postal Service] have all settled upon an understanding … that is narrower than a literal reading might suggest.”

The Justice Department goes on to adopt an aggressive reading that would broadly protect the delivery of abortion medication — including in states where abortion is prohibited. Even then, it argued, some women might still be legally able to use the medication — for example, if their lives are in danger; those sending or delivering the medication won’t know whether they are intended for an unlawful use.

“Therefore,” the memo concluded, “even when a sender or deliverer of mifepristone or misoprostol ... knows that a package contains such drugs — or indeed that they will be used to facilitate an abortion — such knowledge alone is not a sufficient basis for concluding that section 1461 [the law] has been violated.”

I want to see abortion remain as available to women as it can be, post-Dobbs. The varied efforts to use the Comstock Act to prevent that strike me as a flimsy effort to revive an obsolete statute. But we are in a new world, of conservative courts and empowered states. And administrations change. What happens if a Republican Justice Department adopts a more muscular interpretation of the law and launches prosecutions under it?

Comstock biographer Amy Sohn called him “the man who did more to curtail women’s rights than anyone else in American history.” He may not be done with us yet.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Some good news:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Ozlsn]

Walgreens limits access to abortion pills after state pressure.

Walgreens will not distribute the abortion pill mifepristone in nearly two dozen conservative states after Republican attorneys general threatened the largest US pharmacy companies with legal consequences for sending abortion pills by mail.

...

Walgreens had previously announced plans to become a certified pharmacy to dispense the pill in jurisdictions where it was legal to do so after the US Food and Drug Administration opted to allow retail pharmacies to dispense mifepristone pills, including by mail.

But on Thursday the company confirmed to Politico that it would not dispense abortion pills by mail or within their stores in 20 states, including some states where abortion and medication abortion are legal.

 

[GreyhoundFan]