Criminalizing Drugs—Including Misoprostol and Mifepristone—Is a Bad Idea

Even before Louisiana’s decision to label abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances, the parallels and connections between the war on drugs and the war on abortion have been clear.

June 7, 2024
by LYNN M. PALTROW

Louisiana recently added misoprostol and mifepristone (“M&M”) to the state’s list of criminalized controlled substances. M&M are medications that, among other things, can safely and effectively end a pregnancy. As a result of this law, possession of these medications without a prescription can result in fines of up to $5,000 or “imprisonment of no more than five years with or without hard labor.”

Much of the outcry against this state action has focused on the fact that M&M are neither dangerous nor addictive and thus should not be categorized or criminalized as a controlled substance. While it is true that M&M, two exceptionally well-studied and approved medications, are extremely safe and lack any potential for addiction, this critique reinforces dangerous myths about the war on drugs already deeply intertwined with the war on abortion.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/06/07/war-on-drugs-misoprostol-mifepristone-abortion/

After Alabama

Making IVF available won’t stop criminalization

MAR 1, 2024
Lynn M. Paltrow

Shock and outrage have met the recent Alabama Supreme Court IVF decision that frozen embryos are children who “cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.” This decision, based on Christian theology, has put all in-vitro fertilization procedures in the state at risk. It should not, however, have come as a surprise given the many Alabama laws and earlier decisions holding that fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses are separate legal persons.

New legislation to ensure that Alabama families have access to this expensive fertility treatment will do nothing to address the other punitive and dehumanizing ways Alabama’s legal personification of the unborn is used to arrest hundreds of mostly poor, rural women. Nor will it do anything to stop the likely, if not inevitable, use of Alabama’s criminal laws to lock up anyone who has an abortion.

Continued: https://jessica.substack.com/p/after-alabama

Why I Refuse to Feel Hopeless About the Texas Abortion Case

We may finally have the opportunity to “build back better” and ensure not just a right to abortion but a guarantee of the personhood of pregnant people at every stage of pregnancy.

9/8/2021
by LYNN M. PALTROW

I started my career nearly 40 years ago defending the right to choose abortion and then founded National Advocates for Pregnant Women, an organization devoted to ensuring that no person loses their civil or human rights because of pregnancy or abortion. I refuse to feel hopeless about the fact that Texas has, for now, successfully banned abortion in that state. There are many reasons why I will not despair.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2021/09/08/texas-abortion-rights-ban-feminists-roe-v-wade-pregnancy/

Criminal convictions for abortion, miscarriage? Texas abortion ban previews life without Roe v. Wade

Defense attorneys say there’s a history of criminal convictions over abortion, miscarriage and stillbirth that will only be exacerbated if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Barbara Rodriguez
September 2, 2021

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this week not to block a Texas law that bans most abortions raises questions about the future of Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling guaranteeing the right to an abortion. And it worries criminal defense attorneys, who have been sounding the alarm on the legal ramifications of restricting reproductive rights.

Their warning: If the 1973 ruling is overturned, far more people will face criminal charges, including pregnant people seeking abortions and those who help them access them — even people who inadvertently end a pregnancy.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2021/09/criminal-convictions-abortion-miscarriage-texas-abortion-ban/

USA – Constitutional Rights for the “Unborn” Would Force Women to Forfeit Theirs

If the unborn have 14th Amendment rights, any loss of pregnancy, whether intentional or not, will become the basis for arrest and prosecution.

4/15/2021
by LYNN M. PALTROW
Ms. Magazine

Ross Douthat’s recent op-ed “What Has the Pro-Life Movement Won?” in the New York Times addresses the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court, now dominated by justices who oppose abortion, may, in the next abortion case, not merely impose further limits on that right, but more radically outlaw abortion altogether by recognizing that “unborn human beings deserve protections under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” He then suggests “pro-life” advocates will have to support expansion of government programs for the children poor women would be forced to have.

More than minimizing the harm done by outlawing abortions and forced childbearing, the op-ed reinforces the very big lie that the only thing that would be impacted by recognizing constitutional rights for the “unborn” is abortion. The fact is, it would fundamentally change the legal rights and status of all pregnant women.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2021/04/15/abortion-constitutional-rights-unborn-fetus-14th-amendment-womens-rights-pregnant/