There is a majority view in this country that supports a women’s right to choose. Despite this compelling fact, last year the U.S. Supreme Court did the unthinkable. It struck down Roe v. Wade, a landmark decision made by a SCOTUS of a wholly different character in 1973. The latest ruling on abortion rights is unprecedented in that it’s the first time a judge has unilaterally taken a drug off the market in the face of the Federal Food and Drug Administration’s objections. It’s not just an attack on the right to choice, it is another flagrant abuse of power by the courts.
The Texas case was originally filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom which is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The conservative right is heading in the wrong direction on most issues but its attack on a woman’s right to make choices about her body is openly playing out like a horror movie where you know the ending but it’s hard to watch how you get there.
The extremist right has taken over the Republican Party and pushed it even more to the right. Extremists have run any vestige of moderates out at the points of their racist, sexist and homophobic ideologies. They have united around a strategy that consolidates power by any means necessary. One means includes gerrymandering to take over the courts, the legislatures and the governorships to maintain their power.
The Texas case was originally filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom which is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The judge who ruled on their case is a trump appointee. The actions of the ADF and Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk are part of a tightly coordinated strategy that pledges allegiance to white supremacy and male dominance.
That the Republicans are concerned about unborn babies and women’s health is a joke that’s not funny. If the GOP were genuinely concerned about children, its budget and laws to defund programs that support child well-being would cease. Planned Parenthood and other agencies who provide reproductive services—beyond abortions—would not be the target of shutdowns and violence.
At the center of the latest skirmish is the drug mifepristone. It is one part of the drug duo known as the abortion pill. It is taken in tandem with the drug misoprostol. First popularized as RU-486, women have used Misoprex as a safe and effective way to end an early pregnancy for twenty years. Before its distribution in the U.S., the drug was safely and widely used in Europe.
The Biden Administration appealed the lower court’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court which initially intervened to halt the restrictions until it could review the case thoroughly. Since then, it has dialed back on that decision and temporarily extended the use of mifepristone until its next ruling.
The volleying in one week of an issue impacting millions of women is a constant source of outrage. The issue gets bounced from one court to another, always becoming the business of (mainly) men in courts of law. That’s precisely why abortion rights advocates have hit the streets in protest of the latest legal shenanigans.
The GOP-driven mandate to end all forms of abortion is now beyond the clinic walls, it seeks to end any other methods women have at their disposal. The court decision could affect mail orders for the medication, even for states with existing abortion access. Further restrictions could force abortion services to go underground. We should expect that any attempt to get around or over the law will come with harsh criminal penalties.
Abortion rights proponents will be keeping a sharp eye on SCOTUS to see what its next move will be. This is the same court which overturned Roe, so I have no faith in their deliberations. We who believe in democracy and the power of the majority must step up our organizing on the local and state levels. United and organized, we can create a different ending to this horror movie.