Abortion Pill Ruling Nothing to Celebrate When GOP Attack on Women Is Only Just Beginning
There’s way too much celebrating going on around the unanimous Supreme Court decision Thursday that The New York Times characterized with the headline, “Supreme Court Maintains Broad Access to Abortion Pill” and The Washington Post headlined, “Supreme Court upholds broad access to key abortion pill mifepristone.”
In fact, the Supreme Court took no such stand with regard to mifepristone, abortion, Plan B, or even contraception. They merely said that the doctors who brought the case had not yet suffered any actual harm themselves, and therefore had no basis to sue in the first place.
Turning the case down was also a quick-and-easy way for the Republican justices on the Court to get out from under the spotlight glaring on personal corruption, bribe-taking, and their other anti-woman decisions, causing people to think that maybe they can be reasonable, Sam Alito arguing otherwise notwithstanding.
As Justice Kavanaugh wrote in the unanimous opinion:
The case syllabus identifies the wacky, anti-abortion doctors group that had sued, noting:
Notice that there’s not a word in there about the Court ruling on any aspect of this case. That’s because they didn’t — media headlines notwithstanding — “uphold” or “maintain broad access” to mifepristone. They just said that because these doctors don’t use the drug, have never experienced a bad side effect from it, and have never had a patient harmed by it, that they don’t have a right to sue.
Therefore, the Supreme Court rejected this group’s argument that mifepristone should be criminalized not because they believe it should be available but because — and only because — it was the wrong group suing.
As Kavanaugh wrote in the decision, providing a clear and easily followed roadmap for the next group to bring a similar case before the Court but with standing:
So, what’s next?
The anti-abortion freaks will now be scouring the country to find a person who was actually harmed by mifepristone, be it by a side-effect, an incomplete abortion, or maybe a husband who — like the man in Texas currently suing his ex-wife’s girlfriends who helped her get an abortion — they claim they’ve been “deprived of a child” they wanted that their wife took away with mifepristone. Or a doctor who prescribed it and now has regrets.
Once they have a case that will pass the standing test, then it’ll be full-tilt-boogie going forward. I’d be surprised if such a case isn’t successfully litigated at the district court level by the end of this year, perhaps getting it to the Supreme Court next spring so they can finally put an end to medication abortions (that are now nearly 60 percent of all abortions) all across the nation.
How will they do this?
Once standing is established, they’ll continue to argue that the Comstock Act — even though it hasn’t been enforced in decades — is still on the books and still outlaws sending anything having to do with abortion or birth control through the mail (including educational material).
Multiple Republican legislators have already made this argument, as did District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk when he first ruled on the mifepristone case that the Court just threw out for lack of standing.
Twenty-six Republican senators filed an amicus brief with the Court in yesterday’s case specifically referring to the Comstock Act. It said:
Nor has Congress repealed other aspects of the Comstock Act that are even more onerous. This will come back again, unless Congress eliminates the Comstock Act (Representative Cori Bush proposed such........© Common Dreams
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