U.S. Supreme Court Challenge to Abortion Pills Could Boost Illegal Imports

Safeguarding access to pills from online foreign distributors may become a flashpoint in the reproductive care battle

by Chloe Searchinger
April 5, 2024

After hearing oral arguments last week, the Supreme Court appeared dubious of the plaintiff's legal challenge to the abortion pill in Food and Drug Administration (FDA) v. Hippocratic Alliance of Medicine, the latest major abortion case since Dobbs v. Jackson overturned the constitutional guarantee to an abortion. Even though this outlook could lead pro-choice activists to breathe a minor sigh of relief and temporarily quell Big Pharma's fear over other challenges to FDA approvals, one indirect consequence regardless of the case outcome is the growing American reliance on imported abortion pills from overseas.

This manner of accessing abortion has been increasing in popularity since Dobbs, and safeguarding the provision of these pills from unapproved foreign distributors could soon become a flashpoint in the American battle over reproductive care, given that these imports are illegal because they operate outside the formal U.S. health-care system and beyond FDA oversight.

Continued: https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/us-supreme-court-challenge-abortion-pills-could-boost-illegal-imports

How Hobby Lobby Could Be Trump’s Reproductive Rights Wrecking Ball

The 2014 Supreme Court ruling is even more consequential as we stare down the possibility of Trump’s reelection—and a revival of the Comstock Act.

Susan Rinkunas
March 25, 2024

When Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell 10 years ago, he provided answers to questions that no one had asked—at least, officially. The plaintiffs, two businesses owned by Christians, objected to a mandate in the Affordable Care Act requiring health insurance providers to cover types of birth control known as emergency contraception, or E.C. Colloquially known as the “morning-after pill,” E.C. works after sex to prevent pregnancy by blocking sperm from fertilizing an egg or by preventing the release of an egg in the first place. But anti-abortion activists believe that morning-after pills and IUDs prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus, which they say is tantamount to an abortion.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/179622/hobby-lobby-comstock-alito-contraception

USA – Why the rift between anti-abortion activists and Republican lawmakers is growing

Alabama supreme court’s decision causing a temporary halt in IVF care shines spotlight on problem between two groups

Ava Sasani
Sun 17 Mar 2024

There is a growing rift in the decades-old marriage between anti-abortion activists and Republican lawmakers.

The problem came into view last month, after a bombshell decision from the Alabama supreme court temporarily halted in vitro fertilization (IVF). The ruling, which described frozen embryos as “extrauterine children”, unraveled when the Republican-controlled legislature passed short-term protections for IVF providers.

Continued; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/17/anti-abortion-activists-republican-lawmakers-ivf-alabama

18.03.2024

News

fetal personhood

Heritage Foundation

in vitro fertilization

IVF

Kay Ivey

Life at Conception Act

Trump Allies Plan New Sweeping Abortion Restrictions

His supporters are seeking to attack abortion rights and abortion access from a variety of angles should he regain the White House, including using a long-dormant law from 1873.

By Lisa Lerer and Elizabeth Dias
Feb. 17, 2024

Allies of former President Donald J. Trump and officials who served in his administration are planning ways to restrict abortion rights if he returns to power that would go far beyond proposals for a national ban or the laws enacted in conservative states across the country.

Behind the scenes, specific anti-abortion plans being proposed by Mr. Trump’s allies are sweeping and legally sophisticated. Some of their proposals would rely on enforcing the Comstock Act, a long-dormant law from 1873, to criminalize the shipping of any materials used in an abortion — including abortion pills, which account for the majority of abortions in America.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/us/politics/trump-allies-abortion-restrictions.html

USA – ‘Very clear’ or ‘narrow and confusing’? Abortion lawsuits highlight confusion over emergency exceptions

N'dea Yancey-Bragg, USA TODAY
Jan 27, 2024

A North Dakota judge's recent decision to deny a request blocking part of the state's restrictive abortion law highlights an issue abortion-rights advocates say is impacting doctors nationwide: The exceptions in strict abortion laws can be vague, causing medical providers to question when they can perform an abortion in a medical emergency.

A lawsuit in North Dakota is one of several recently filed by advocates seeking to clarify and expand the circumstances under which doctors can provide abortions during medical emergencies in states with strict abortion bans. Mary Ziegler, a professor of law at University of California, Davis, said the emergency exceptions written into these laws can be confusing for physicians and, given their high penalties, can lead doctors to "err on the side of protecting themselves and not providing care to patients."

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/01/27/abortion-lawsuits-emergency-medical-exceptions/72339103007/

With Roe Gone, Some House Republicans Back Away From National Abortion Ban

Nearly three dozen House Republicans who supported a federal abortion ban in the last Congress have yet to sign on this year, reflecting a shifting political calculus after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

By Annie Karni
Jan. 12, 2024

In 2021, Representative Michelle Steel, a California Republican whose district President Biden won in 2020, cosponsored the Life at Conception Act, a bill to recognize a fertilized egg as a person with equal protections under the 14th Amendment.

It was a year before the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade. Ms. Steel was one of 166 House Republicans — then roughly three-quarters of the conference — who would ultimately sign on to the legislation, which amounted to a nationwide abortion ban. She did so just weeks after it was introduced.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/us/politics/house-republicans-abortion-ban.html

‘Jane Roe’ is anonymous no more. The very public fight against abortion bans in 2023

By Selena Simmons-Duffin, Sarah McCammon, NPR
December 26, 2023

As 2023 comes to a close, so too does the first full year of the post-Roe era in America. Some of the year's developments were expected, like more conservative states enacting abortion restrictions. Others were surprising, like the fact that there were more abortions nationally in the year after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health decision than the previous one.

In the final weeks of the year, the country followed the story of Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two in Texas, as she sought to end a tragic pregnancy to ensure she could have a future one.
Here is the state of play when it comes to abortion heading into 2024.

Continued: https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/npr-news/2023-12-26/jane-roe-is-anonymous-no-more-the-very-public-fight-against-abortion-bans-in-2023

26.12.2023

#WeCount

Center for Reproductive Rights

Society of Family Planning

Ushma Upadhyay

WeCount

Prosecuted for a miscarriage: Ohio demonstrates the ghoulishness of post-Roe America

Post-Roe politics are turning every pregnancy into a potential crime scene

Dec. 21, 2023
By Andrea Grimes

Give birth, die trying, or go to jail.

To the anti-abortion politicians and lobbyists who got their wish when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, these have always been the only acceptable pregnancy outcomes. Ideally, they’d like a country full of meek, compliant (and mostly white) women whose sole mission in life is to have children. But since pregnancy is dangerous, it’s unavoidable that a number of those women will die in the process — especially in the United States, where our maternal mortality rates (particularly for Black and brown people) are already exceptionally high, and rising. That’s too bad, of course, but for anti-abortion forces it’s better than the alternative: Women who think we have the right to make our own decisions about when, where and whether to carry a pregnancy to term.

Continued: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ohio-woman-miscarriage-case-brittany-watts-rcna130511

Anti-abortion attorneys ascend federal government ranks with Christian right legal training

The conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom’s expansive ties include federal judges and most recently Speaker of the House

BY: SOFIA RESNICK
DECEMBER 10, 2023

When Mississippi Solicitor General Scott G. Stewart presented Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to the U.S. Supreme Court in December 2021, he argued that state lawmakers should be able to ban abortion at any time in pregnancy, not just after so-called “viability,” the point where a fetus could survive outside of a uterus. The U.S. Constitution, he said, does not specifically protect the “purposeful termination of a human life.”

“The viability line discounts and disregards state interests,” Stewart said, according to the transcript of the oral arguments, contending that state lawmakers should be able to draw an earlier line on when they believe human life officially begins.

Continued: https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2023/12/10/anti-abortion-attorneys-ascend-federal-government-ranks-with-christian-right-legal-training/

10.12.2023

Commentary

Alliance Defending Freedom

Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State

Amy Coney Barrett

Andrew Seidel

anti-choice lies

anti-choice misinformation

anti-choice misogyny

Blackstone Legal Fellowship

Center for Judicial Renewal

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act

Food and Drug Administration

Movement Advancement Project

Young Lawyers Academy

‘I feel conned into keeping this baby’

An anti-abortion millennial couple promised women thousands of dollars to cancel their abortions. The women had their babies, but the couple didn't always hold up their end of the deal. BI investigated, and now they say they'll pay out $10,000 the women never got.

Bethany Dawson, Louise Ridley, and Sarah Posner
Dec 8, 2023

Tara couldn't afford to keep the baby.
It was fall 2021, and she and her husband were "totally broke and really struggling," she said.

They were staying at Tara's mother-in-law's home in Texas, sleeping with their kids in a converted garage with no air conditioning or heat. They could barely buy formula for their 3-month-old or food for their toddler. Her husband, an electrician, hadn't had work since the pandemic started, and Tara had incapacitating postpartum depression. "It was hard for me to get out of bed every day," she said.

Continued: https://www.businessinsider.com/pro-life-let-them-live-promised-women-money-cancel-abortion-2023-12