‘Rolling Thunder’: Inside Conservatives’ Strategy To Curb Abortion Pill Access
POLITICO, May 7, 2025
The nation’s most influential anti-abortion groups have a new plan to roll back access to the procedure for millions of Americans in what they’re calling the “biggest opportunity for the pro-life movement” since toppling Roe v. Wade. The effort, which the groups have privately named “Rolling Thunder,” is the movement’s first concerted attempt under the second Trump administration to target abortion pills, and aims to convince the FDA, Congress and courts to crack down on their use. While the Trump administration paid little attention to the medication in its first months in office, and even filed a court brief to preserve access, the activists are counting on a report from the conservative think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center to light a fire under those in power. The paper, published last week, purports to show significantly more patients have experienced serious side effects after taking mifepristone than previously known. Medical experts and abortion-right supporters say it exaggerates the danger of a medication that more than 100 scientific studies have found are safe and effective. The report’s release comes on the heels of top Trump officials – including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA chief Marty Makary – expressing openness to new data on the pills’ safety and efficacy.
Anti-Abortion Activists Are Using the Authoritarian Playbook To Push for Fetal Personhood
MSNBC, May 6, 2025
You might think the end of Roe v. Wade, which returned the issue of abortion to the states, marked a pretty conclusive victory for the anti-abortion movement’s 50-year legal fight. But you’d be wrong. As legal historian Mary Ziegler makes clear in her new book “Personhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction,” states’ rights was never the endgame. It was just a stepping stone toward something far more radical and far-reaching: A pseudo-legal doctrine known as fetal personhood. It might sound technical and obscure, but its implications are real – and incredibly serious. At its core, fetal personhood says a fetus, even a fertilized egg, is a full constitutional person under the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law to all citizens. Last year, the Republican Party approved a platform that supports states using the 14th Amendment to establish fetal personhood. If that’s written into law, it would effectively ban abortion at every stage of pregnancy. It could open the door to criminalizing in vitro fertilization (IVF) and further empower the prosecution of abortion under state criminal codes. That’s exactly what we’re already seeing play out across the country. Republican lawmakers in at least 10 states have introduced bills that define abortion as homicide. In some states, those laws have led to the prosecution of women who’ve miscarried.
Trump Administration Asks Judge To Toss Suit Restricting Access to Abortion Drug
Associated Press, May 6, 2025
The Trump administration on Monday asked a judge to toss out a lawsuit from three GOP-led states seeking to cut off telehealth access to abortion medication mifepristone. Justice Department attorneys stayed the legal course charted by Biden administration, though they didn’t directly weigh in on the underlying issue of access to the drug that’s part of the nation’s most common method of abortion. Rather, the government argued the states don’t have the legal right, or standing, to sue. The lawsuit from Idaho, Kansas and Missouri argues that Food and Drug Administration should roll back access to mifepristone. They filed their complaint after the Supreme Court preserved access to mifepristone last year. They want the FDA to prohibit telehealth prescriptions for mifepristone, require three in-office visits and restrict the point in a pregnancy when it can be used. The case is being considered by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas, a Trump nominee who once ruled in favor of halting approval for the drug. Kacsmaryk’s original ruling came in a lawsuit filed by anti-abortion groups. It was narrowed by an appeals court before being tossed out by the Supreme Court, which found the plaintiffs lacked the legal right to sue.
Missouri’s Voters Restored Abortion Rights. Their Leaders Are Trying To Overrule Them.
The 19th, May 5, 2025
Athon was one of the first dozen people to have received an abortion in Missouri since the November election, when voters backed a proposal to add abortion rights protections to the state constitution. Missouri, one of the quickest states to outlaw abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade, was the first where voters overturned a near-total ban. Almost all of those initial patients were seen in Columbia. But Missouri is now on the frontlines of the anti-abortion movement’s growing effort to reverse abortion rights state by state, trying to undo the ballot measures voters approved to enshrine those same protections. Those efforts brewing in the capitol, Jefferson City – not even 50 miles from Columbia – have added another layer to the challenges faced by abortion providers in the state, who are building infrastructure from scratch to provide care for people like Athon. Well before Roe’s fall, abortion here was difficult to access, the result of a years-long project by the state’s Republican-run legislature to regulate providers out of business. Most people seeking care traveled to Illinois or Kansas. Or they simply stayed pregnant. Last November’s election results could flip that dynamic, making experiences like Athon’s the norm rather than the exception. The past few months have been a scramble for Missouri’s reproductive health clinics: recruiting physicians, training employees in clinics and, critically, trying their best to spread the word to residents that they don’t need to leave their home state for abortions.
Abortion Providers Have Faced Hundreds of Death Threats Since Roe’s Fall
Truthout, May 6, 2025
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, abortion bans have spread widely across the South and Midwest. Abortion is totally or near-totally banned in 16 states, and these bans have forced the closure of 42 clinics in the U.S., according to The Guttmacher Institute. For the clinics that have remained open, it hasn’t been a smooth ride, either. In 2023 alone, more than 170,000 abortion seekers were forced to travel out of state to access care. That is a dramatic influx in patients for abortion clinics in states where abortion remains legal. But it’s not just an increase in patients that clinics are forced to deal with in post-Roe America – they must also contend with the ongoing, and in some places, increasing acts of anti-abortion violence. The National Abortion Federation (NAF) recently released statistics on abortion clinic disruption and violence for 2023 and 2024, and their findings are harrowing. In the two years since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court ruling, there were more than 750 cases of obstruction of a clinic, nearly 300 death threats or threats of harm, and more than 600 cases of trespassing. That’s a case of obstruction for most days since Roe was overturned. And that’s just the incidents accounted for in NAF’s report – the number of incidents of harassment and violence targeting abortion providers is likely higher due to unreported incidents. The findings on violence against abortion clinics reveals a steady increase that should alarm anyone who supports abortion access. The number of incidents of assault and battery increased by 137 percent from 2021-2022, obstructions increased by 134 percent, and picketing increased by nearly 72 percent. From 2010 to 2019, NAF documented 15 cases of arson against abortion clinics. From 2020 to 2024, there have been 14 arson attacks – nearly the same number in less than half the time.
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