The Next Attack on Medication Abortion Just Has to Be a Little Less Stupid

[Nevilledog]

https://ballsandstrikes.org/newsletter/medication-abortion-case-a-little-less-stupid/

The good news out of oral argument in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the conservative legal movement’s latest effort to force people to carry pregnancies to term against their will, is that the Supreme Court probably will not ban medication abortion between now and the Fourth of July. The bad news is that in a judiciary dominated by conservative activists, the Supreme Court might ban medication abortion in the not-so-distant future, if their Republican counterparts in elected office don’t beat the justices to the punch.

The case is a challenge to the FDA’s two-decades-old approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in a common medication abortion regimen. The plaintiff is the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, an organization incorporated weeks after the Court overturned Roe v. Wade to serve as a sock puppet for whatever misogynistic moonshot the freaks at Alliance Defending Freedom felt like taking next. Its member doctors do not actually prescribe mifepristone to their patients, but instead claim that if women experience complications from mifepristone and require in-person medical treatment, they—the AHM doctors—might be forced to help facilitate abortion. In addition to offending their deeply held moral and religious beliefs, the doctors claim that this diverts their time and attention from other patients, and causes them to suffer “substantial mental and emotional distress.”

Perhaps it will shock you to learn that AHM’s insinuations about the dangers of mifepristone are wildly overstated. A New York Times review of 101 studies found that in “a vast majority” of them, more than 99 percent of patients did not experience serious complications, and all of them—all 101 studies, conducted in 26 countries over more than 30 years—concluded that abortion pills are safe. The complication rate for childbirth is more than four times the complication rate for medication abortion, which sort of belies the notion that what these doctors really care about is the “safety of their patients” in any meaningful sense. According to CNN, for all the caterwauling AHM does about the possibility of one day treating a patient experiencing complications from mifepristone, thus involuntarily rendering them complicit in what they believe to be unforgivable sin, none of the doctors who submitted declarations in this case have actually had to do so.

Even setting aside AHM’s shitty math, this theory of standing is wild: that a doctor’s obligation to provide care is legally actionable because the genesis of a potentially life-threatening emergency—something which, as far as I understand the practice of medicine, doctors might reasonably expect to encounter on occasion—makes them upset. As is the case in many lines of work, being a medical professional sometimes involves interacting with people whose choices one might not personally condone. Just by way of example, I might hate looking at Sam Alito’s dumb face and never wish to see or think about it again, but alas, I cannot drag him into court every time a Getty photographer snaps his picture.

*snip*

[flying_wahini]

1. I will be the first to admit that they won't dare overturn the FDA & .Mifepristone.

What I don’t understand is why the OTHER USES of Mifepristone aren’t being talked about?
It is used to start labor in overdue pregnancies. It’s also to strengthen labor contractions as well.
Mifepristone has also been used to help dilate (open) the cervix, treat miscarriage, induce (start) labor, treat endometriosis, treat some forms of cancer, and other uses
Labor and Delivery use it multiple times all day long. Are we supposed to labor without any fucking meds too? What a shit show it is.