Mifepristone ruling means a huge fight ahead
On May 14, the U.S. Supreme Court “kicked the can down the road” on medical abortion, saving some votes for Trump cronies in the mid-term elections but signaling to the rest of us that tele-health prescribing of mifepristone remains in danger. The Court decided that a lower-court decision from Louisiana that required patients, including those living in states with complete abortion bans, to visit a doctor’s office to get a mifepristone prescription would remain “paused.” In the meantime, the issue would continue to be litigated in the lower courts and the part of the Republican base that remains pro-abortion would not be stirred up before voting. This maneuver has allowed the high court to expediently delay, but be ready use its powers to further erode the availability of reproductive health care when it is more politically convenient.
Simultaneously, on another front, the MAGA-run Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, is slow-walking an unnecessary and highly suspect review of mifepristone’s safety that is expected to provide the right-wing opponents of reproductive justice more ammunition. Mifepristone is one-half of a first trimester medical abortion regimen that also includes the drug misoprotol, and has been proven safe after wide use. On March 25, 2024, The New York Times reviewed more than 100 scientific studies “spanning continents and decades” that found this practice safe.
MAGA action has not yet been successful in reducing the total number of people who have been able to access abortion. Twenty-two states and Washington, D.C., where abortion remains legal, have enacted shield laws that offer some kind of protection to providers and patients in their jurisdiction from out-of-state law enforcement. States, providers, and abortion funds have been stocking up on supplies to prepare for a total ban. Because mifepristone is part of the preferred medical practice, but not absolutely essential for medical abortion, providers are preparing protocols for medical abortions using only misoprotol, a drug whose use is not currently under siege.
Yet, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine has found that women in states with five or more abortion restrictions have had higher rates of maternal death than those states with fewer restrictions. Maternal death is strongly correlated with bans on Medicaid funding for abortion, ACA insurance coverage bans, mandated waiting periods, ultrasound requirements, biased counseling laws, and second trimester abortion bans. The Gender Policy Institute reports that mothers living in states that banned abortion were nearly two times as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after giving birth. Black women in banned states are three times as likely to die in these circumstances. In Texas, maternal mortality rose 56% in the first full year of that state’s abortion ban.
With unintended irony, on May 10, 2024, the day designated “Mother’s Day” in the U.S., the Department of Health and Human Services launched a website called “Moms.gov.” This new government service directs women “who are navigating difficult or unexpected pregnancies” to crisis pregnancy centers, or what feminists call “fake clinics.” These centers try to scare or shame women out of seeking abortions under the guise of support.
The handwriting is on the wall. MAGA forces hope to use their new authoritarian powers to gut reproductive health care and control of their bodies by people who can get pregnant. When fully unleashed, these forces intend to end not only abortion access but hormonal birth control and in vitro fertilization. According to journalist Emily Amick, the conservative women’s media outlet Evie Magazine, backed by far-right tech billionaire Peter Thiel, averages one anti-birth-control article per month. The new Heritage Foundation report called “Saving America by Saving the Family” argues for replacing science-backed infertility treatments like IVF with the ideologically-loaded practice of “restorative reproductive medicine“ (RRM). To ensure population growth, the “Saving the Family“ report even advocates taking student loans away from women so that they do not delay childbirth by trying to get an undergraduate college degree or establish a career.
The sheer scale and completeness of the MAGA vision for ending individual control over reproduction must be absorbed. The far right, flush with new political power, is beginning the fight for a national natal policy. They are proposing to fund measures that stimulate the growth of a regressive patriarchal family birthing and raising children who will thrive in an authoritarian society.
Only a truly mass movement, in the streets, and daily organizing new millions to struggle for a reproductive justice can effectively defeat this reactionary drive. Women’s organizations that subordinate our struggle to a Democratic Party electoral strategy oppose this mass action strategy, but they must be overcome, first by local organizing and then by local grassroots groups connecting to build an independent national movement. Let’s begin.
First published here by Workers’ Voice
Photo: AFP / Getty Images
