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Why the Supreme Court’s Abortion Pill Ruling Might Not End Legal Fight

The Washington Post, June 4, 2024

When the Supreme Court debated this spring whether to limit access to a widely used abortion medication, a majority of justices seemed inclined to rule against the lawsuit by finding that the antiabortion doctors behind it had no legal basis to bring the case. That was the position of the Biden administration, whose lawyer pressed the justices to get rid of the challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of mifepristone, first approved by the agency more than 20 years ago. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said the antiabortion doctors are not directly harmed by regulations that have made it possible to ship the drug to patients’ homes and use them later in pregnancy. She urged the justices to “say so and put an end to this case.” But a Supreme Court ruling along those lines, which could come as soon as Thursday and must land by the end of the court term in late June or early July, is unlikely to end the legal fight over access to the drug that is used in more than six in 10 of all U.S. abortions. That’s because the justices could leave an opening for three states – Missouri, Kansas and Idaho, each of which has a Republican attorney general – to try to quickly revive the challenge to abortion pills, which have moved to the forefront of the battle over reproductive rights in the two years since the high court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade. The anticipated push by the states to take over where the antiabortion doctors left off would open a new round of litigation, keeping the controversial issue before the courts for another year or more and creating fresh uncertainty about access to the drug in a presidential election year where abortion is a central topic. Democrats are eager to draw attention to conservative attacks on mifepristone and other matters relative to reproductive health, hoping the subject will galvanize abortion-rights voters in November.

G.O.P. Blocks Contraception Bill in Senate as Democrats Seek Political Edge

The New York Times, June 5, 2024

Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked action on legislation to codify the right to contraception access nationwide, a bill Democrats brought to the floor to spotlight an issue on which the G.O.P. is at odds with a vast majority of voters. All but two Republicans present – Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine – voted against advancing the legislation. Democrats, who unanimously supported it, were left nine votes short of the 60 they would need to take up the bill, which would protect a reproductive health option that many voters worry is actively at risk of being stripped away. “This should be an easy vote,” Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote. “It almost shouldn’t be necessary.” But Ms. Murray said that Republican lawmakers have made it so by seeking to advance anti-abortion legislation that could limit access to contraceptives like Plan B and IUDs. Democrats have been clamoring to codify the right to contraception for two years, since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion that the court “should reconsider” other precedents beyond Roe, including those protecting same-sex marriage and the right to contraception. Congress succeeded in passing landmark, bipartisan legislation to mandate federal recognition for same-sex marriages. But contraception has over and over again proved to be too closely linked to the issue of abortion to muster enough Republican support. Ahead of the vote on Wednesday, Republicans dismissed the bill as a political stunt and laid out a range of reasons that they were opposed to it – all while claiming that they fully supported access to contraception.

Texas’ New Plan for Responding to the Horror of its Abortion Ban: Blame Doctor

Slate, June 3, 2024

Last week, in a widely watched case, the Texas Supreme Court rejected the claims of Amanda Zurawski and her fellow plaintiffs that they had suffered injuries after being denied emergency access to abortion due to lack of clarity in the state’s abortion ban. Zurawski v. State of Texas has offered an important model for lawyers seeking to chip away at sweeping state bans and even eventually undermine Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the 2022 decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Now the state Supreme Court’s decision offers a preview of conservatives’ response to the medical tragedies that have been all too common after Dobbs: to blame physicians and hint that the life of the fetus ultimately counts as much as or more than that of the pregnant patient. From the beginning, Zurawski had significance for patients outside Texas. Republicans have been increasingly hostile to abortion exceptions since 2022, demanding that sexual assault victims report to law enforcement when such exemptions do exist, dropping rape and incest exemptions altogether in many other states, and going so far as to require physicians to prove their innocence rather than necessitating that prosecutors prove their guilt. Nevertheless, exceptions are critical to the post-Dobbs regime: They are popular with voters and offer the hope – in reality the illusion – that abortion bans do not operate as harshly as we may expect. The Zurawski litigation illuminated how exceptions fail patients in the real world. Physicians, afraid of harsh sentences up to life in prison, turn away even those they feel confident will qualify under exceptions. The exemptions, by their own terms, do not apply to any number of serious medical complications or fetal conditions incompatible with life. The Zurawski plaintiffs argued that Texas’ law should cover these circumstances and that if the opposite was true, it was unconstitutional.

House Republicans Pass New Abortion Restrictions in Veterans Affairs Bill

NBC News, June 5, 2024

House Republicans approved a veterans’ funding bill on Wednesday that would limit abortion access for troops and veterans, setting up another partisan clash with Democrats in the Senate and the White House ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government. A controversial provision in the spending bill would prohibit the Department of Veterans Affairs from offering abortion counseling and, in some cases, abortion procedures to veterans and their beneficiaries. It overturns a Biden administration rule that allows the VA to provide abortion care when the life or health of the mother is in danger or in cases of rape or incest. Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., who chairs the Women Veterans Task Force in the House, called the VA rule that House Republicans are targeting “really important” for veterans, noting that “even two years ago VA physicians weren’t even allowed to counsel on abortion.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, called the GOP abortion provisions and other conservative policy measures in the military spending bill “unacceptable.” Just four Democrats voted in favor of the bill that would fund military construction, housing and veterans affairs for the next fiscal year, highlighting the party-line split over the issue. In recent weeks, Democrats in both chambers have pushed for votes on other reproductive rights issues, including access to contraception and IVF, to put Republicans on record ahead of November’s elections. Earlier this week the White House issued a veto threat over the GOP military spending bill that will go nowhere in the Democratic-led Senate. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., accused President Joe Biden of “changing the focus of our military, undermining our readiness, and rejecting the promises made to our veterans” in vowing to reject the legislation. It’s a repeat of last year when Republicans sought to curtail the Pentagon’s expanded support for service members and veterans seeking reproductive care.

Male Birth Control Gel is Safe and Effective, New Trial Findings Show

NBC News, June 2, 2024

Every morning for a year and a half, Logan Whitehead, 24, rubbed a clear gel on his shoulders, waited for it to dry, then went about his day as usual. “It was basically like a hand sanitizer solution,” said Whitehead, who lives in Torrance, California. “Smelled like hand sanitizer, looked like hand sanitizer.” The gel wasn’t hand sanitizer, though. It was a hormonal solution meant to block Whitehead’s sperm production. The gel was male birth control. Until this past winter when his participation concluded, Whitehead was a volunteer in a phase 2 trial for the gel. The product – which contains testosterone and a synthetic hormone called Nestorone that reduces sperm production – is the most advanced among a crop of novel birth control options for men. If the Food and Drug Administration approves the gel, Whitehead said he would definitely keep using it, especially after watching his partner struggle with available female birth control options. “The gel was such an easy process,” he said. “It was basically like taking the pill for the day.” Whitehead said he didn’t notice side effects using the gel beyond some upper back acne and possibly a bit of weight gain, although that could have been linked to a new sedentary job. On Sunday, at the Endocrine Society’s conference in Boston, researchers with the National Institutes of Health’s Contraceptive Development Program presented encouraging phase 2 trial results on the hormonal gel. The trial involved 222 men, ages 18 to 50, who applied 5 milliliters of the gel (about a teaspoon) to each of their shoulder blades once per day. The second part of the two-part trial is still underway. Initial findings showed that the contraceptive worked faster than expected, according to Diana Blithe, chief of NIH’s Contraceptive Development Program. After 12 weeks of applying the gel every day, 86% of trial participants achieved sperm suppression, meaning they had only up to 1 million sperm per milliliter of semen, the amount the researchers deemed effective for contraception.

ICYMI: In Case You Missed It

States which make it harder to vote are also more likely to have restricted abortion. It's past time for us to see that voter suppression and abortion bans are 2 prongs of right-wing strategy to undermine democracy. Democracy as we know it is under threat. https://t.co/G4ZgGZCtGm

— National Partnership (@NPWF) May 30, 2024

 

 

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Note: The information contained in this publication reflects media coverage of women’s health issues and does not necessarily reflect the views of the National Partnership for Women & Families.