USA – The Current Attack on Abortion Pills Will Fail. The Next One Will Be So Much Worse.

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK AND MARK JOSEPH STERN
MARCH 26, 2024

There are always a couple of tells when the most conservative Supreme Court in more than a century finds itself adjudicating a truly mortifying and meritless case. One is that it’s coming up by way of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, a court that so consistently shovels its worst constitutional garbage upward that the high court conservatives are often forced to reluctantly lob it back. Another tell is when the facts of the case are so laugh-out-loud insane that even conservative justices can’t bring themselves to adopt them or the underpinning legal reasoning with a straight face. There’s yet a third tell: when the conservative justices start injecting a bunch of nonsense and randomized pet peeves into oral argument to distract from how embarrassing it would be to discuss the merits of the actual case.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/mifepristone-supreme-court-alito-national-abortion-ban.html


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 – The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Biggest Fear

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK
MARCH 25, 2024

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a case that could determine national access to mifepristone, one of two pills used as part of medication abortion. In this week’s episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick spoke with Carrie N. Baker, whose book, History and Politics of Abortion Pills in the United States, is being published by Amherst College Press this year.

Lithwick and Baker discussed the anti-abortion movement’s decadeslong efforts to target the abortion pill, how those efforts hampered FDA approval of the medication in the first place, and how having easier access to reproductive care through a pill that can be sent in the mail and taken at home fundamentally threatens the strategy of those seeking to dismantle abortion rights in this country. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/abortion-pill-supreme-court-preview-mifepristone-history.html


USA – How the abortion pill case at the supreme court could undo the FDA

The medical industry watches with trepidation as mifepristone case could have huge consequences for drug regulation

Jessica Glenza in New York
Mon 25 Mar 2024

A supreme court case about one little pill – mifepristone – has the medical and pharmaceutical world on edge. … Despite a more than 20-year track record of safe real-world use, backed up by more than 100 peer-reviewed studies, a group of anti-abortion doctors is seeking to roll back US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decisions that changed and relaxed some prescribing rules.

If the doctors succeed, despite contested and in some cases now-retracted evidence of harm, the case could reshape abortion access in the US and have enormous and unpredictable consequences for how drugs are prescribed, regulated and developed.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/25/abortion-pill-case-fda


USA – A ‘dangerous precedent’: Doctors and patient advocates fear restricted access to abortion pill

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in a case that could limit access to mifepristone.

March 25, 2024
By Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

About two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the court on Tuesday will revisit the issue of reproductive rights, this time contemplating whether to limit access to mifepristone, the first of two pills used in medication abortion.

Ahead of oral arguments and eventual ruling, doctors and patient advocates are expressing alarm about what might happen if the high court decides to tighten access to the drug.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/doctors-fear-restricted-access-abortion-pill-mifepristone-rcna144955


Siege days are over: how Northern Ireland came to lead the UK on abortion

The chilling atmosphere of pickets and protests at clinics has given way to a new ‘gold standard’ of care

Rory Carroll,  Ireland correspondent
Thu 21 Mar 2024

The family planning advisers at Shaftesbury Square still remember the days of siege when anti-abortion protesters staked out the front and rear entrance of their office in central Belfast.

Some pickets would splash holy water on the doors and daub salt crosses on the pavement while others would thrust leaflets with pictures of babies and foetuses at woman entering or leaving the building, and sometimes follow them.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/21/how-northern-ireland-came-to-lead-the-uk-on-abortion


Trial date set for pair accused of poison-induced abortion

[Editors' note: Abortion pills are life-saving, not poison]

March 20, 2024
By Chloe Harcombe, BBC News, West of England

A trial date has been set for two people accused of obtaining drugs to illegally abort a baby.

Elliott Benham, 24, of Wingfield, Swindon, and Sophie Harvey, 24, of St Mary's Road, Cirencester, are alleged to have used "poison" to cause a miscarriage, before concealing the dead infant.

The prosecution's case is that the defendants bought the drugs from India.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-68617538


UK – Rishi Sunak declines to back MP’s Down’s syndrome abortion law change

March 20, 2024
By Chas Geiger

A call for the government to back a move to outlaw the abortion after 24 weeks of foetuses diagnosed with Down's syndrome has been rejected. Currently, pregnancies involving foetuses with Down's syndrome can be terminated up to the point of birth.

Conservative MP Sir Liam Fox is leading a cross-party campaign to bring the time limit into line with foetuses without serious disabilities. Rishi Sunak said votes on abortion had always been a "matter of conscience".

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-68617513


The Terrifying Global Reach of the American Anti-Abortion Movement

Conservatives have not limited their attack on reproductive rights to the United States. They’ve been busy imposing their will on other countries, too—with disastrous consequences for millions of poor women.

Jodi Enda
March 18, 2024

Because Editar Ochieng knew the three young men, she didn’t think twice when they beckoned her into a house in an isolated area near the Nairobi River. One was like a brother; the other two were her neighbors in the sprawling Kenyan slum of Kibera.

Ochieng did not know the woman who performed her abortion. She and a friend scoured Nairobi until they found her, an untrained practitioner who worked in the secrecy of her home and charged a fraction of what a medical professional would. Mostly, what Ochieng remembers is the agony when this stranger inserted something into her vagina and “pierced” her womb. “It was really very painful. Really, really, really painful,” she told me. Afterward, Ochieng said, she cut up her mattress to use in place of sanitary pads, which she could not afford. She was 16 years old.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/179485/american-anti-abortion-movement-terrifying-global-reach


‘The stigma has returned’: abortion access in turmoil in Javier Milei’s Argentina

Health workers fear the return of unsafe abortions as recent statements lead to a spike in doctors refusing to provide care

Harriet Barber in Buenos Aires, The Guardian
Mon 18 Mar 2024

Javier Milei’s anti-abortion rhetoric has prompted growing numbers of doctors in Argentina to refuse to carry out terminations, according to medical professionals across the country.

Since taking office in December, the self-described libertarian has used speeches to both global leaders and schoolchildren to condemn abortion as a “tragedy” and “aggravated murder”.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/mar/18/argentina-abortion-javier-milei