Will you sign the petition to stop anti-abortion extremists from pushing a nationwide medication abortion ban?

 "R" VOTERS ARE CONSPICUOUSLY UNINFORMED, REFUSE TO RESEARCH 
ISSUE AND SIMPLY EMBRACE DISINFORMATION. 

"R" VOTERS IGNORE THE REST OF THE WORLD!

"R" VOTERS IGNORANCE = FAILURE!

EUROPE DOESN'T HAVE A SIMILAR PROBLEM WITH ABORTION BECAUSE 
THEY PROVIDE EASY ACCESS AND FREE BIRTH CONTROL. 

RED STATES THAT RUSHED TO BAN ABORTION HAVE HIGH MATERNAL 
& INFANT MORTALITY, FAILED TO PROVIDE FAMILY LEAVE OR PRE-NATAL 
CARE, FAIL TO PROVIDE SCREENING FOR CONGENITAL SYPHILIS and MUCH ELSE.

IT'S TIME FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE!

Once again, our rights and bodily autonomy are in the hands of the right-wing-packed Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has recently heard oral arguments on access to mifepristone–the FDA-approved, safe, and effective abortion pill.¹ And two of the court's most conservative, anti-abortion judges referenced the Comstock Act, a 150-year-old, sexist, invasive, and dormant law—that is, tragically, still on the books—in their questions, a sign that they are looking for opportunities to turn back the clock a century and a half.²

This law could be the way MAGA bans abortion. Will you sign the petition to demand that the Comstock Act be repealed NOW?

This is the same Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade just two years ago. And although there have been reports of justices seeming skeptical about restricting access to mifepristone, we should be alarmed: Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas referenced the Comstock Act of 1873 during the oral arguments.³

The Comstock Act—if enforced—is a law that prohibits the mailing of contraceptives through the mail.⁴ If the Republican Party wins the presidency this November, Donald Trump could enforce this law, which is still on the books—and therefore restrict access to medication abortion as well as other contraceptives. That's right: It's a back door to an abortion ban—as well as an attack on birth control, which the right wing has its targets set on—and the Supreme Court is handing Donald Trump the key. We need to act now, while we can, to make sure we aren't subject to the whims of an ancient, sexist law, a maniacal president, and a regressive Supreme Court.

Will you sign the petition demanding that the Comstock Act be repealed NOW?

Sign the Petition

Anti-abortion extremists are willing to go to any length to strip away our rights and access to reproductive health. From Roe v. Wade to IVF to mifepristone, the right wing will stop at nothing to implement a nationwide abortion ban.

The Comstock Act states that "every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion" is "nonmailable." Medication abortion accounted for 63% of all abortion care in 2023.⁵

The act was also an obstacle to birth control for many years—something that many conservatives want to attack next. Enforcing the Comstock Act would restrict millions of people from getting the crucial health care they need. Add your name to demand that the Comstock Act be repealed now!

Supreme Court justices' and anti-abortion extremists' referencing of this law is dangerous on various levels. It has been reported that these extremists and Trump allies are planning to enforce this law if Donald Trump becomes president again. One of the leaders behind the Texas abortion ban said, "We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books" and that Trump should keep his mouth shut about Comstock until after the election.⁶

Anti-abortion extremists are working behind the scenes and with the right-wing-backed court on their side. We have to come together to spread the word about these dangerous threats to our reproductive rights and demand that those in power take action NOW to stop these extremists from using the Comstock Act, before it's too late.

Sign the petition now to demand that the Comstock Act be repealed, and share it with three friends!

Thanks for all you do.

–MoveOn

P.S. It’s going to take all of us to come together and defeat MAGA to win the House, Senate, and White House in 2024. Sign up today to join millions of MoveOn members organizing to turn out voters in key battleground states and districts.

Sources:

1. "The Abortion Pill Case: What's at Stake and What's Next," The New York Times, March 25, 2024
   https://www.nytimes.com/article/supreme-court-abortion-pill-ruling.html
2. "Why a 19th-century law matters in the Supreme Court abortion pill fight," Axios, March 26, 2024
   https://www.axios.com/2024/03/26/supreme-court-abortion-pill-case-comstock-act
3. "Most Supreme Court Justices Seem Skeptical of Effort to Curtail Abortion Pill Access," The New York Times, March 28, 2024
   https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/26/us/abortion-pill-supreme-court
4. "Why a 19th-century law matters in the Supreme Court abortion pill fight," Axios, March 26, 2024
   https://www.axios.com/2024/03/26/supreme-court-abortion-pill-case-comstock-act
5. "Medication Abortion Accounted for 63% of All US Abortions in 2023—An Increase from 53% in 2020," Guttmacher Institute, March 19, 2024
   https://www.guttmacher.org/2024/03/medication-abortion-accounted-63-all-us-abortions-2023-increase-53-2020
6. "Trump Allies Plan New Sweeping Abortion Restrictions," The New York Times, February 17, 2024
   https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/us/politics/trump-allies-abortion-restrictions.html

---

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Email us: team@leftnet.org

Rates of congenital syphilis are skyrocketing in the US. Here's why
CONGENITAL SYPHILIS

Congenital syphilis
CONGENITAL SYPHILIS

Congenital Syphilis – CDC Fact Sheet
CDC CONGENITAL SYPHILIS

FOCUS: Here's What Happens If Trump Judge Ends Access to Critical Abortion Drug Nationwide

 

 

16 March 23

Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News

DECLINING FUNDING IS CAUSING BIG PROBLEMS — Six straight months of declining donations have really stressed out our process. Yes at this point we are making a major effort to reverse that trend. We must. Stop. Donate. Please.
Marc Ash • Founder, Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

 

FOCUS: Here's What Happens If Trump Judge Ends Access to Critical Abortion Drug Nationwide
Tessa Stuart, Rolling Stone
Stuart writes: "Lawyers, reporters and members of public queued up outside a courthouse in Amarillo, Texas before dawn on Wednesday for a chance to be inside the room as a single federal judge contemplated — in proceedings he’d sought to shield from public scrutiny — whether to end access to the most widely-used abortion medication in America." 

Trump appointee Matthew Kacsmaryk said Wednesday he would issue a ruling in case challenging FDA approval of mifepristone as soon as possible

Lawyers, reporters and members of public queued up outside a courthouse in Amarillo, Texas before dawn on Wednesday for a chance to be inside the room as a single federal judge contemplated — in proceedings he’d sought to shield from public scrutiny — whether to end access to the most widely-used abortion medication in America.

Lawyers for the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a coalition of anti-abortion medical groups, are hoping to convince Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk to order the FDA to withdraw its 22-year approval of mifepristone, the first drug taken in the two-drug abortion pill regimen. Convincing the judge is not expected to be difficult: before he was appointed to the federal bench, Kacsmaryk was the deputy general counsel of a religious rights legal group much like the one representing the plaintiffs, and he has written openly about his anti-abortion beliefs.

At Wednesday’s hearing, the judge said he planned to issue a ruling as soon as possible. If Kacsmaryk orders the FDA to withdraw approval for mifepristone, it will unleash immediate chaos and confusion across the country, touching off a race to appeal the ruling, intensifying an existing debate about whether the Biden administration should defy the court, forcing providers to turn to less effective methods, and sending women scrambling to find alternative means to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

In spite of the enormous stakes of the case, Kacsmaryk has sought to keep the proceedings hidden from public view. Wednesday’s hearing was scheduled during a conference call held in secret on Friday, and only added to the public docket after reporters learned of it. In a transcript of the call that was later made available, Kacsmaryk asked the lawyers directly to “avoid further publicizing the date of the hearing,” adding, “I think less advertisement of this hearing is better.”

Some of those who scrambled to reach Amarillo by Wednesday morning were turned away by the court. Elisabeth Smith, director of state advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents clinics that provide abortion care across the U.S., says she was outside the courtroom at 6 a.m., but was nonetheless among those shut out of the proceedings.

“The outcome of this case could impact the entire country. The court should be making every effort possible to ensure the public has visibility into what is happening, but instead the opposite has happened,” Smith said in an emailed statement. “We are alarmed by this attempt to conceal what should be public information, especially in such a consequential case.”

The case, ACLU senior staff attorney Lorie Chaiten told Rolling Stone in January, should never have made it this far: “It is baseless… It’s time-barred. It has enormous jurisdictional defects. In the normal world, this case gets dismissed.” According to the FDA, more than 3.7 million Americans have used mifepristone, which is taken together with another drug, misoprostol, to terminate unwanted pregnancies since the agency approved the abortion pill in 2000. Mifepristone, it is often noted, has a better safety record than either Tylenol or Viagra.

Under federal law, anyone can challenge FDA approval of a drug within the first six years — a window has long since closed for mifepristone, which the FDA approved in 2000. According to the Washington Post, when asked on Wednesday if there was precedent for a court intervening in an approval so many years after a drug had been on the market, a lawyer arguing on behalf of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine admitted there was none.

But Kacsmaryk nonetheless appeared poised to rule in the anti-abortion groups’ favor on Wednesday. If that happens, lawyers for the Biden Administration will seek a stay from the Fifth Circuit — one of the most conservative courts in the country — and if they can’t find relief there, they will appeal to the Supreme Court. It’s unclear how long that might take and whether mifepristone would be available in the meantime.

If Kacsmaryk orders the FDA to withdraw approval of the drug, Sen. Ron Wyden has called on the Biden Administration to ignore the order and maintain public access to the medication. (It’s not an idea without precedent, according to a Harvard Law Review article that examined federal agency compliance with court orders, and judges like Kacsmaryk have relatively few options to force an agency, like FDA, to comply with their orders if an agency chooses not to.)

Wyden’s position is simple: “The power of the judiciary begins and ends with its legitimacy in the eyes of the public,” he said last month. “A judge’s rulings stand because elected leaders and citizens have agreed that abiding by them is right and necessary to uphold the rule of law… But the judiciary must uphold its end of the social contract too. It must follow the rule of law and earn the confidence of the American people continually, every day, every month, every year.”

By “hot-wiring the system in order to produce an anti-abortion ruling,” Wyden says, Kacsmaryk is violating that contract and delegitimizing the court itself. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Wyden’s suggestion.)

Health care providers, meanwhile, are making plans to continue offering abortions using misoprostol, the second pill in abortion pill regimen, alone. (Misoprostol, which is also used to treat ulcers, is available without the restrictions to which mifepristone is subject.)

Melissa Grant is the chief operations officer at Carafem, an organization that offers reproductive health care, including abortion care, online and in-person. “Carafem has provided thousands of doses of misoprostol-only as an option to our clients since the year 2020,” she tells Rolling Stone. “We did so because we recognized that the Trump administration was poised to remove the ability to mail mifepristone in 2021.”

What Carafem has found in the data it has collected over that period is that misoprostol-only abortions are extremely effective — 95 percent, compared to 99 percent effectiveness when taken together with mifepristone. Doses can be administered orally, sublingually (i.e. absorbed under the tongue) or vaginally, largely as a matter of personal preference, Grant says. (Swallowing the medication is slightly less effective, she says, but individuals in areas where abortion is illegal may choose that route out of abundance of caution since “fragments of tablets may be maybe seen on a pelvic exam in your vagina.”)

Elisa Wells, co-founder and co-director of Plan C, an organization that helps individuals obtain abortion pills, says regardless of Kacsmaryk’s decision, women will still have options. “There is a robust alternate supply system of pills in this country,” she says, listing organizations like Aid Access, a physician-moderated service that operates out of Amsterdam and sources generic pills from an Indian pharmacy, as well as feminist networks like Red State Access and Las Libres.

“We have long believed that we can’t rely on our courts and our legislatures to protect our access to what should be basic health care: abortion,” Wells says. “We expect these attacks, and we know that they will not be successful in stopping access.”

READ MORE

 

Contribute to RSN

Follow us on facebook and twitter!

Update My Monthly Donation

PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611