The Week in Abortion

12.9.24 - 12.13.24

It’s always a busy week in abortion rights news, but between the Texas lawsuit against a New York abortion provider, a bill to make abortion punishable by the death penalty in South Carolina, and EMTALA back in front of a federal court—last week was especially packed. So before we hop into this week, let’s get our bearings by taking a brief look back:

Attacks on Abortion Medication

Abortion medication makes conservatives furious. They hate that the pills allow women to self-manage the end of their pregnancies safely and at home—far from clinic protesters screaming about murdering babies. They’re also irate that abortion medication and telehealth has meant that the end of Roe didn’t mean the end of abortion. Thanks to doctors willing to ship the pills from pro-choice states, many women who live in states with abortion bans have still been able to end their pregnancies.

That’s why so much recent anti-abortion strategy has been focused on abortion medication. In Tennessee this week, for example, Republicans proposed a bill that would mandate a person who “mails or delivers” abortion medication into the state be civilly liable for $5 million. As I wrote, this is about targeting the helpers—namely, abortion funds and blue state providers who are shipping pills into the state.

That’s the same reason that Texas lawmakers have proposed legislation to make abortion medication a controlled substance. In addition to allowing Republicans to paint the medication as dangerous and track patients and providers in a state database, the idea is to increase punishment for those who have or dispense the pills.

Perhaps the biggest attack on abortion medication this week, however, was an attack on a person: the Texas’ lawsuit against New York abortion provider Maggie Carpenter. Make sure to read Abortion, Every Day’s rundown of the suit, where I lay out the many lies of Republican attorney general Ken Paxton. AED’s sources in the state believe the suit will be the first of many, and that Paxton may even pursue RICO charges against providers and funds.

It makes me grateful for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, who said in response to the suit, “We will always protect our providers from unjust attempts to punish them for doing their job and we will never cower in the face of intimidation or threats.”

The absolute obsession conservatives have with these pills is why I don’t believe for a minute this week’s headlines declaring that Trump won’t restrict abortion medication. Leaving aside how insane it is to take Donald Trump at his word, we all know how much work these assholes have put into rolling back (or eradicating) access to the medication. I can’t imagine they’ll stop now.

As I’ve been warning, Republicans don’t need to outright ban the medication in order to make it impossible to get. In addition to using the Comstock Act to ban the shipping of the pills, the FDA could bring back pre-2016 rules on mifepristone or legislators could add restrictions framed as ‘protections.’ After all, that’s exactly what they’re doing around the idea of ‘coerced’ abortions—a strategy I pointed out this week is being exported to the UK.

To protect yourself and your community, order advance provision abortion medication: Aid Access, Plan C Pills, Abortion Finder, I Need An A.

In the Courts

The other bit of abortion medication news we saw this week was from the FDA, which filed a motion to dismiss the Republican lawsuit targeting mifepristone. The federal agency argued that the Attorneys General of Idaho, Missouri and Kansas have “no plausible connection” to the Texas court where they filed the challenges. (Remember, the Republican AGs filed in Amarillo in order to get in front of the radical anti-abortion Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk.)

If you need a refresher on this case—which is an incredibly important one—read AED’s explainer below:

The GOP's Attack on Abortion Pills is Here

The other case I had my eye on this week was the EMTALA fight, which is back in front of a federal court. Idaho is fighting for the right to deny women life-saving abortions in hospital emergency rooms (seriously), and we were treated to a truly dystopian exchange about whether a woman would be allowed an abortion if she was in danger of losing a limb. The answer from an Alliance Defending Freedom attorney? Nope, sorry!

There’s nothing quite like listening to judges and lawyers calmly discuss destroying women’s bodies piece by piece, body part by body part. (Listen to that exchange and others here.)