Despite the will of the majority of people, there are those who continue to try to deprive women of our rights to safe healthcare and to make decisions over our own bodies. Joe Cadillic sends along these two items:
The first is a press release from Accountable.us begins:
WASHINGTON, DC – In case you missed it, an Accountable.US report released yesterday, and first reported by Huff Post, revealed that two of President Donald Trump’s initial judicial nominees, Joshua Divine and Maria Lanahan, are at the forefront of the push to revive a court case banning medication abortion. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled against an extreme far-right effort to strip the FDA of its science-based, decades-long approval of mifepristone.
Now, Trump nominees Divine and Lanahan are pushing to resurrect the case with an amended complaint, which absurdly argues states are being harmed by fewer teen pregnancies because loss of potential population caused “diminishment of political representation” and “loss of federal funds.” The lawsuit also peddles false claims that mifepristone is unsafe for patients, despite over 100 scientific studies confirming the safety of the pills. Divine and Lanahan’s efforts have also been called out as a “nakedly political and judge-shopping ploy” as the case was refiled out of state in Amarillo, Texas, to ensure it’s heard by a favorable judge.
The second is an article in Mother Jones: “Missouri Supreme Court Defies Voters, Halts Abortions in the State.” It begins:
One might have though that last November, when Missourians voted to enshrine “reproductive freedom,” including abortion, in the state constitution, that would be the end of the conversation. In overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, the US Supreme Court professed that the question of whether abortion should be legal was now up to states. And the people of Missouri made it very clear: They wanted abortion rights (at least until fetal viability).
Alas, the Missouri Supreme Court doesn’t seem to be inclined to listen.
Thanks to the passage of Amendment 3, Missouri’s criminal abortion ban is gone. But local Planned Parenthood affiliates are still fighting in court to overturn the web of restrictions, known as TRAP laws, that made providing abortions virtually impossible in the state even when Roe was the law of the land.