Boston Globe | The cold comfort of a reprieve

On Friday night, the US Supreme Court decided a commonly used abortion medication can remain widely available, for now. Yay?

By Yvonne Abraham
Column Originally Appeared in the Boston Globe

It’s a reprieve, but it’s not much comfort.

On Friday night, the US Supreme Court decided that the commonly used abortion medication mifepristone could remain widely available while a Texas case challenging its 23-year-old FDA approval makes its way through the court system.

Yay?

It’s good news that a drug used — in combination with another medication, called misoprostol — in half of all abortions will continue to be available in most states, for now. But the fact that this challenge is before the nation’s highest court at all is shocking.

“We should not pretend that ultimately the courts will vindicate our rights,” said Rebecca Hart Holder, head of Reproductive Equity Now. “The Texas case shows what anti-abortion advocates are trying to do is ban abortion in all 50 states, and they will not stop until they achieve that goal.”

The wrong-headed, error-filled April 7 decision by Texas judge and anti-choice zealot Matthew Kacsmaryk declaring the FDA approval invalid has implications beyond further restricting abortion access. If a judge can substitute his opinion for that of scientists at the nation’s authority on drug safety, no approved medication is safe.

Conservatives have a two-fer here. If it is allowed to stand, the Texas decision would further restrict abortion access in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision last year overturning Roe v. Wade, and complicate it even in pro-choice states. It would also undermine another pillar of the government oversight conservatives abhor. This Supreme Court, its majority captured by the radical right, has proven itself all too willing to gut federal oversight of voting rights and carbon emissions. It would be naïve to assume they won’t do the same thing with drug safety, which would threaten approvals for other drugs right-wingers find objectionable, like medications used for gender-affirming care, or vaccines.

Meantime, we have uncertainty — and exhaustion.

“Creating confusion and chaos and fear for people who need and provide abortions has always been the point,” said Luu Ireland, an OB/GYN and abortion provider at Planned Parenthood in Worcester. Providers in states with abortion restrictions are already fearful or uncertain about what care they can provide pregnant patients, and some of those patients are more reluctant to seek care. The dispute over mifepristone only exacerbates that.

“The law inserting itself in the sacred space that usually exists between a patient and a provider really is eroding the trust that is necessary for good reproductive health care,” Ireland said.

We are in this sorry position even though polls show large majorities of Americans support at least some abortion rights, and a growing majority describe themselves as pro-choice. Since the reversal of Roe, choice has become an animating issue, even in red states where voters have pushed, and sometimes won, ballot questions to hold back the efforts of anti-choice judges and legislators. Younger voters in particular are outraged, and formidable.

The recent landslide victory in Wisconsin of a Democratic supreme court candidate, who ran on her support for abortion rights, should have forced an existential crisis on Republicans pushing to outlaw abortion everywhere. Instead, they are doubling down, enacting ever tighter restrictions.

If most voters are no longer with them, those who control the Republican party will simply make those voters matter less.

And so you have courts across the land unfairly stacked with judges who will carry conservatives’ water, facts and precedent be damned. And GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, telling party donors that conservatives must restrict voting on college campuses, same day registration, and mail-in ballots to produce “a level playing field,” according to a slideshow obtained by The Washington Post. And Republican legislatures across the country, spooked by successful pro-choice referenda, raising new barriers to ballot initiatives, some requiring supermajorities of 60 percent or higher to pass.

If the rules the rest of us follow are inconvenient for them, these Republicans will simply make new rules. We’re playing chess, and they’ve swept the board off the table, set it alight, and are dancing on its charred remains.

The Supreme Court won’t help us. The only way to get back in the game is to keep voting — in numbers too huge to deny.