Pressure on Trump to ban abortion grows
For close court watchers, it wasn’t surprising that the Supreme Court rejected an effort by Christian right forces to take away access to the abortion pill. The case was too ridiculous, even for the current iteration of the court, which is dominated by six Republican appointees fighting varying levels of corruption allegations. The lawsuit was brought by a group of doctors — and dentists — who do not prescribe the medication in question, mifepristone. It was based on a total lie, which is that the drug is dangerous. (All evidence shows it’s safer than Tylenol. The risk of death from Viagra is 10 times higher.) And the argument was eye-rollingly silly: The plaintiffs claimed to be worried they’d be asked to treat abortion patients in an emergency, an instance that rarely comes up, due to the drug’s safety. When it does, emergency room providers have a right to ask a pro-choice doctor to step in to handle it.
If anything, we can now expect Republicans to redouble their efforts to ban abortion nationwide.
What was more surprising was how decisive the court was in dismissing the anti-abortion arguments. The decision was unanimous, for one thing, with even the effusively misogynist justices like Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas going along with it. In his opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh used forceful language that likely precludes all future efforts by Christian right groups to rework the complaint and try again. „[A] plaintiff ’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue“, he wrote, making it clear that even this Supreme Court cannot see the „personal stake“ that these plaintiffs had in what other doctors are prescribing to patients.
This decision may not be the end of efforts by anti-abortion groups to force a nationwide ban through the courts, but it is undeniably a huge setback. It will be tempting to many pundits and politicians, therefore, to treat this as the end of the efforts to strip all Americans of abortion access. More than 60% of abortions in the U.S. are done with pills, in no small part because they can be sent through the mail, making it easier for patients to get access despite the patchwork of abortion bans that have sprung up across the nation since the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health in 2022.
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Democrats, on the other hand, snapped into motion to warn Americans that the abortion issue is very much alive and that their vote in November could determine the fate of reproductive health care.
