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The Litigants Trying to Ban the Abortion Pill Have Some Truly Wild Legal Claims
If you've been worrying about the Texas abortion pill case as I have, I think you may find this article very interesting.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/03/texas-medication-abortion-case-close-read.html
Right now, the country is waiting for District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk to rule on a baseless case that attempts to challenge the use of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortions. The case goes after the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug—which occurred more than two decades ago and was as rigorous as the process for many other drugs—and because of that, there is a fear that if this district judge rules on the side of the plaintiffs, it could affect mifepristone’s availability nationwide. (There are arguments that it might not have to, but the situation is already absurd enough to warrant plenty of attention.)
While we wait for the ruling, I decided to actually read the 113-page complaint filed by the anti-abortion group that calls itself, unscrupulously, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. You don’t need to understand federal jurisprudence to grasp how preposterous the case is; it is apparent in the arguments offered by the plaintiffs themselves. Below are just a few of the egregious distortions contained in AHM’s complaint, and I’ve specifically chosen some that haven’t been reported on as much in the existing coverage of this case. I think it’s worthwhile for everyone to familiarize themselves with the way these plaintiffs are attempting to argue their way into controlling health care access for the whole country, which in fact overwhelmingly supports access to abortion care.
*snip*
At this point, abortion should be legal if only because this is a democracy and the people want it to be legal. Even in very red states, most people want abortion to be legal; that extremist legislators continue to force through bills that restrict access to abortion is a clear sign they don’t actually care about what their constituents want. This challenge to mifepristone is an attempt at a backdoor nationwide ban on abortion, but it’s also, and more importantly, a flagrant challenge to the structure of our democracy.
But further, I must make the strong and righteous assertion of the reproductive justice and reproductive freedom movements, that we cannot and must not depend on government or the medical establishment to protect or enable our inherent human rights. Safe, self-managed abortion is the inalienable right of anyone who can become pregnant, regardless of what nation seeks to claim or control their body, and the ability to provide appropriate patient care is a requirement for any physician that must not be interfered with or politicized. Any attempt to use the law to constrain those rights must be diligently called out and forcefully resisted.
While we wait for the ruling, I decided to actually read the 113-page complaint filed by the anti-abortion group that calls itself, unscrupulously, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. You don’t need to understand federal jurisprudence to grasp how preposterous the case is; it is apparent in the arguments offered by the plaintiffs themselves. Below are just a few of the egregious distortions contained in AHM’s complaint, and I’ve specifically chosen some that haven’t been reported on as much in the existing coverage of this case. I think it’s worthwhile for everyone to familiarize themselves with the way these plaintiffs are attempting to argue their way into controlling health care access for the whole country, which in fact overwhelmingly supports access to abortion care.
*snip*
At this point, abortion should be legal if only because this is a democracy and the people want it to be legal. Even in very red states, most people want abortion to be legal; that extremist legislators continue to force through bills that restrict access to abortion is a clear sign they don’t actually care about what their constituents want. This challenge to mifepristone is an attempt at a backdoor nationwide ban on abortion, but it’s also, and more importantly, a flagrant challenge to the structure of our democracy.
But further, I must make the strong and righteous assertion of the reproductive justice and reproductive freedom movements, that we cannot and must not depend on government or the medical establishment to protect or enable our inherent human rights. Safe, self-managed abortion is the inalienable right of anyone who can become pregnant, regardless of what nation seeks to claim or control their body, and the ability to provide appropriate patient care is a requirement for any physician that must not be interfered with or politicized. Any attempt to use the law to constrain those rights must be diligently called out and forcefully resisted.
The part I snipped out in the middle consists of lengthy list of outrageous claims made in this lawsuit and the author's demolishment of them. I didn't even try to quote any of it, because I didn’t think I could possibly do it justice in the limited amount of text we're allowed to quote here. I highly recommend reading (or at least skimming) the whole thing, to see for yourself what kind of patently ridiculous claims these plaintiffs are making.
X-posted to GD.