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Earlier this week, a federal appeals court ruled that mifepristone can stay on the market, at least until the Supremes have a good look at it, instead of banning it entirely as Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk had hoped. Although the conservative Fifth Circuit panel did agree with Kacsmaryk that the FDA’s new rules post-2016 were illegal — allowing midwives and nurse practitioners to prescribe the medication and that it can be prescribed remotely and delivered through the mail — everything will stay the same for now because the Supreme Court actually barred any restrictions from going into effect until they get to have a look at it.
That being said, if they choose not to overturn it, the Fifth Circuit’s bad ruling that makes no scientific sense whatsoever will stand. Say what you want about the FDA, they’re not exactly going around approving things willy nilly — it takes, on average, 12 years for a new drug to be approved. We’re still using largely ineffective sunscreen ingredients last approved in the 1990s, while the rest of the world has moved on to better and less bright (in terms of a white cast, anyway) things. Mifepristone had already been in use in Europe for 12 years before the FDA got around to approving it and it has proven, for decades, to be entirely safe.
Anti-choicers are specifically doing this because they want fewer abortions and they want to be able to say they give a damn about those who have abortions despite wanting to put them in prison for having abortions.
But since we already covered that this week, let’s move on to one of our favorite subjects …
Kyrsten Sinema cares deeply about abortion rights, except when it comes to doing literally anything to preserve them.
This time, she is asking the Biden administration to stop being so mean to Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville just because he is putting thousands of military families in a financial bind by holding up military promotions in protest of the Pentagon’s policy to reimburse service members when they have to travel out-of-state for a medical procedure — including abortions.
Sinema, naturally, is arguing that it is very important for Tuberville, whom she lovingly calls “Coach,” to be able to use Senate rules to hold up these promotions, for reasons, and is asking the Biden administration to maybe just cut back a little on service members’ reproductive rights, to make him happy.
Via USAToday:
“I’m encouraging both coach and the administration … to be flexible in finding a solution,” she said. “There is always a solution to the problem. It may not be everything the coach wants, and it may not be everything that the United States military and the administration wants. But there is a solution to be found.
“What I have offered to both coach and to the administration is to help in any way that I can to help find that solution, because it does exist. It always exists.”
She did not specify to the audience her recommended solution to the impasse.
“What we’re in is a position of pain. We’re in a pinch point right now. Coach wants something the military and the administration is not willing to give him. But it would be a mistake to take away that tool from a United States senator because it is an important tool to address unmet needs,” she said.
“What we need is folks to step away from their positions and find that middle ground to solve the challenge that we’re facing.”
What, precisely, would that middle ground even be? Like, let Tommy Tuberville pick a certain amount of service members a year to force to give birth? Close down all military outposts in states that bar abortion? That could maybe work, though I imagine there might be some people unhappy with that. Like in Texas, where military installations bring in billions to the state’s economy.
It’s almost as if Kyrsten Sinema does not know what a good solution would be and then just touts some mysterious “middle ground” as the obvious answer in order to seem wiser than she actually is.
Abortion rights advocates have been saying, at least since I was born, that banning abortion only bans abortion for the poor — because the rich can always travel to get one if they want. That’s true, and it’s becoming even more true, as it is turning out to be that the states that are protecting reproductive rights are also the states where it is most expensive to live.
A survey published this week by Redfin found that 40 percent of people who live in Florida or Texas would love to live someplace where they had abortion rights — while only 20 percent of responders said they specifically wanted to live someplace where the state controlled their reproductive futures. The primary reason why they don’t? They can’t afford to.
The survey also found that far more people from those states wished to live in a state that protected the rights of LGBTQ kids than those that don’t — but many stay because it is just too expensive to live in those states.
This is a problem.
There is something terribly dystopian about people having to live in states in which they are forced to give birth and then forced to send the kid they gave birth to a horrible bigot school where they will learn that LGBTQ+ people don’t exist and slavery was a swell time for all involved. There are a lot of reasons for why we need to be pushing for more affordable housing in our own areas, but this? This is a big one.
The trial of Lauren Hardy, Heather Idoni, Herb Geraghty, William Goodman, and John Hinshaw, all accused of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) with their 2020 invasion of Surgi-clinic, a reproductive healthcare clinic in Washington DC, began this week, and it’s already as horrifying as you would expect. And not just because Lauren Hardy was found to be hoarding dead fetuses in her home, for reasons.
At trial, one witness testified that, after she was dropped off at the clinic by her mother, protesters surrounded her, grabbed at her and tried to block her from getting inside — and that she eventually had to climb through a window in order to get in. Video of the event saw the woman screaming to police at the scene, “Why are you allowing them to do this? Please stop. Leave me alone!”
Another witness, a woman who had traveled from Ohio to have an abortion after she found out that her fetus had a fatal abnormality and would not survive out of the womb, testified to having collapsed in pain on the ground as the protesters surrounded her, screaming at her and trying to keep her from entering the clinic.
Prosecutors also pointed out that Handy had made a fake appointment in order to gain access to the inside of the clinic, depriving someone else who needed an appointment from getting one.
Handy and the rest of the defendants have been barred by US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly from arguing defense of others or “the lesser of two evils” at trial, and so their lawyers are arguing that they are just activists trying to do good by aggressively harassing women trying to see a doctor and simply should have faced DC trespassing charges, rather than federal charges, for their actions. Because that’s really all they have left.
