Tag Archives: abortion

How abortion rights advocates won every ballot measure this year

Originally published in Vox on November 11, 2022.
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Americans voiced their preference for abortion rights on Tuesday, casting votes in support of reproductive freedom everywhere they appeared on the ballot: Kentucky, Michigan, Vermont, Montana, and California.

Counting a pivotal ballot measure Kansas voters weighed in on in August, reproductive rights have been on the ballot in six states since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. Each time, abortion rights supporters have won.

While Democratic candidates running on abortion access also did extremely well in their contests this week, the vote tallies indicate that the ballot initiatives were often able to draw even more support than the Democratic candidates, garnering votes from individuals who otherwise cast ballots for Republicans, libertarians, or no candidate at all.

“Organizers communicated in a nonpartisan way and that was key,” said Ashley All, who served as communications director for the pro-choice coalition in Kansas. “Their messaging around personal liberty and reproductive freedom and protecting the constitutional rights of women to make the decisions for themselves resonated because it’s shared American values.”

The organizers also succeeded in winning over voters who may personally oppose abortion or have reservations about it. While a majority of Americans say they believe Roe v. Wade should be upheld, roughly one-third of those backing legal abortion do not personally support it. And many who support abortion rights believe it should only be legal in cases of rape or a threat to a woman’s life.

Ethan Winter, the research and strategy director for Families United for Freedom, an abortion rights political action committee, emphasized that the ballot measure campaigns all leaned heavily on persuasion tactics.

“Montana is a heavily Republican state, Kentucky is a heavily Republican state,” he told Vox. “All of these victories depend on Republicans voting for you, on people who self-identify as ‘pro-life’ voting for you.” In Kansas, where Trump won handily in 2020 and registered Republicans outnumber Democrats almost two to one, the pro-choice side won by a nearly 20-point margin. Even California’s measure codifying abortion rights in the state constitution passed this week with roughly 6 percent more support than other Democrats currently have on the statewide ballot.

Abortion rights organizers say they hope their successes this year across diverse states inspires other leaders to follow suit. How to get issues on the ballot varies from state to state; in some cases citizens can collect signatures, while in others lawmakers have to approve turning issues over to voters. In Michigan, activists collected more than 750,000 signatures to get their abortion rights measure on the November ballot. In Montana, Kentucky, and Kansas, by contrast, Republican lawmakers had voted to place their anti-abortion measures on the ballot.

“Our resounding victory now provides a model for the future of coalition-based reproductive ballot initiatives all across the country,” declared Nicole Wells Stallworth, the executive director for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan, in a press conference on Wednesday.

“I’m hoping other states are looking at the outcomes of last night,” Jodi Hicks, the head of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, told Vox. “And looking at what they too can do and really start polling, message-testing, and laying the groundwork.”

Voters don’t like big status quo disruptions, and overturning Roe was just that

This past summer when Kansas voters went to cast their ballots, advocates for abortion rights were cautiously optimistic they’d have one advantage on their side: status quo bias.

Americans tend not to like big, disruptive changes, which is why political science researchers believe they observe a “status quo bias” when people weigh in on ballot initiatives. Voters often reject measures they perceive as introducing major change.

Anti-abortion politicians in Kansas had proposed an amendment to the Kansas constitution that would have overruled a Kansas Supreme Court decision affirming Kansans’ right to end a pregnancy. Passing the amendment would have given state lawmakers the power to ignore this ruling and legislate a total abortion ban in the wake of the Dobbs decision.

Activists in Kansas, in other words, could frame the amendment as an effort to take away rights Kansans currently enjoyed under their state constitution, something they called extremist, radical, and disruptive. This general electoral instinct to avoid major shifts to the status quo, organizers believe, helped them defeat the amendment in August.

While the abortion ballot choices on Tuesday weren’t quite as straightforward as asking voters whether they want to remove an existing state constitutional protection, organizers did lean on “status quo bias” messaging in their respective campaigns. In Michigan, for example, though Proposition 3 was an affirmative amendment to codify reproductive freedom in Michigan’s constitution, activists framed their language around the idea of restoring the rights of Roe v. Wade, of bringing back the reality Americans had known for five decades.

In Kentucky activists similarly emphasized a theme of restoration. “We focused our messaging on restoring access and making sure things do not go any further in the extremist direction,” explained Rachel Sweet, who led the Kentucky coalition organizing to defeat the anti-abortion amendment.

Abortion rights organizers used state-specific messaging to win

Activists and researchers experimented with different messages and messengers to win their ballot initiative campaigns, deploying themes that were specific to the histories and values of each state.

In Montana, for example, organizers looked to capture the deep sense of pride voters have in their state’s right to privacy. “Montanans of every ideology here are deeply proud of our constitution which enshrines the right to privacy,” said Hillary-Anne Crosby, a spokesperson for the coalition organizing to defeat Montana’s anti-abortion ballot measure. “This amendment really came down to private medical decisions.”

Montana’s referendum — known as LR 131 — was spurred by a bill Republican lawmakers passed last year asking voters to affirm that an embryo or fetus is a legal person with the right to medical care if it survives an abortion or delivery. Under the law, health care providers could face up to 20 years in prison and a $50,000 fine if they failed to provide such care.

While Republican lawmakers framed the measure as a moral choice for anyone opposed to abortion, reproductive rights advocates argued that the proposal itself had little to do with abortion and everything to do with palliative care and compassion for bereft parents.

That’s because infanticide is already illegal in Montana, and the idea that infants were being killed after an abortion is intentionally misleading, part of a longstanding effort by anti-abortion leaders to depict “botched abortions” that they say can result in live births.

Under current Montana law, if an infant has a fatal prognosis parents can spend those final and few moments holding their dying child and saying goodbye. Under LR 131, a doctor would have been obligated to take the infant away to attempt medical treatment, even if they knew nothing would work.

In mobilizing support against the referendum, advocates chose to de-emphasize abortion, often not mentioning the word at all. They ran ads featuring neonatologists, obstetricians and pediatricians, and grieving parents who said elected officials wanted to politicize their tragedies. Leaning in on status quo bias, doctors gave media interviews explaining how the proposed amendment would threaten the existing rights of parents and criminalize “the current practice of medicine.”

“We’re not trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes, we’ve been clear that one of the values of Compassion for Montana Families is uplifting and empowering reproductive and sexual health care,” Crosby told Vox. “But we felt abortion language was a misleading, deceptive thing to be talking about, and we wanted to accurately reflect what the bill in question would mean.”

This doesn’t mean Montana advocates aren’t celebrating the outcome as a victory for reproductive rights. “Conservatives tried to make abortion a boogeyman and people didn’t buy it,” Crosby added.

Vermont organizers also emphasized, in their campaign messaging, doing things “the Vermont way” — referring to the state’s independent and nonpartisan ethos.

“Vermont is sometimes seen as this very liberal place because of Bernie Sanders or whatever, but historically Vermont has held a Republican majority as well as the governor’s seat, and Vermonters regularly split their tickets,” said Lucy Leriche, a spokesperson for the abortion rights coalition in Vermont.

Vermont, unlike most other states, also enjoyed 50 years of unlimited and unrestricted reproductive freedom. While states were permitted under Roe v. Wade to restrict pregnancies after viability (typically around 24 weeks in a pregnancy) Vermont lawmakers never did.

“The [anti-abortion] side is very quick to talk about all the bad things that would happen if you don’t restrict abortion rights, but in Vermont we never had any restrictions, so those arguments really do fall flat,” Leriche told Vox. “They don’t stick because we know better.” The measure to codify reproductive rights in Vermont’s constitution passed on Tuesday with 77 percent of the vote.

Abortion rights activists haven’t historically focused on state ballot measures

Shoring up abortion rights on the state level was not something reproductive health advocates prioritized when Roe v. Wade provided a nationwide constitutional protection. Anti-abortion activists would occasionally push state ballot measures, often in deep red states, but fighting them at the polls seemed less critical than challenging them in court for violating Roe.

“Ballot measures are a space where there hasn’t been a ton of money on the pro-choice side and I think Families United for Freedom is indicative of more money moving in, and what I hope to be a larger trend,” said Winter. Families United for Freedom raised about $2 million this cycle, contributing $600,000 in Kansas, $275,000 in Kentucky, $500,000 in Michigan and $275,000 in Montana. Rachael Bedard, the PAC’s executive director, told Vox that they partnered with and supported local grassroots organizations, providing them with polling and media support, and avoided “a super-imposed national strategy.”

Sweet, who managed the campaigns in both Kentucky and Kansas, told Vox that their success was driven by the expertise of these local grassroots leaders. “We also had a lot of volunteers who have never knocked doors for a candidate, and they don’t consider themselves super politically active,” Sweet said. “But they are concerned and motivated by this one issue.”

One key research point Families United for Freedom found is that even among voters who supported the overturn of Roe v. Wade, a majority of them want abortion to be legal to save the life of the mother and in the case of rape and incest. Even in a hypothetical scenario in which abortion was illegal, the group found, 16 percent of those who said they approve of the Dobbs decision wouldn’t want the woman who had an abortion to face penalties.

“In other words,” Bedard said, “they disapprove of abortion but less than they disapprove of criminalization.” Winning on these abortion ballot measures, Bedard said, means creating the space for someone to continue living their life as a “pro-life” person, while emphasizing that doesn’t extend to making their neighbor’s choice for them.

“We need to let voters have their own personal feelings about abortion, but invite them to join us in the fundamental belief that women should make the decisions for themselves,” added Ashley All, who joined Families United for Freedom after defeating the Kansas ballot measure. “That is pro-choice and that is a way to really bridge the gap.”

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What a lawsuit in Mississippi tells us about the future of abortion pills

Originally published in Vox on June 29, 2022.
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As some states have moved to fully ban abortion in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, new questions emerged about abortion pills: Do states have the legal authority to outright ban drugs that have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration?

An ongoing federal lawsuit in Mississippi could provide a glimpse at the answer. GenBioPro, the manufacturer of generic abortion pills, is fighting to overturn state restrictions that impede access to the abortion pill mifepristone. Their lawsuit, filed in 2020, hinges on an argument that many legal experts expect other states and advocates to make in the coming months: that Mississippi’s restrictions on medication abortion are unduly excessive, illegally pre-empting the FDA’s authority on drug safety.

The FDA approved mifepristone for use in 2000. Over the next 18 years, more than 3.7 million women in the United States used the medication — sold under the brand Mifeprex — to end an early pregnancy. In 2016 the FDA reported mifepristone’s “efficacy and safety have become well-established by both research and experience, and serious complications have proven to be extremely rare.” Three years later the agency approved GenBioPro’s generic version.

Today medication abortion — a combination of both mifepristone and misoprostol — account for more than half of all abortions in the US, and fights over accessing the pills are expected to be among the most fiercely contested in the post-Roe era.

Just hours after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe, President Joe Biden gave a speech promising to protect a woman’s access to drugs approved by the FDA, including mifepristone. Biden announced he was directing the federal Department of Health and Human Services “to ensure that these critical medications are available to the fullest extent possible” and Attorney General Merrick Garland pledged to use the powers of the Justice Department to crack down on states trying to ban medication abortion.

But the Biden administration has stayed quiet on the Mississippi lawsuit. The White House declined to comment on the case, as did the FDA and DOJ. HHS did not return requests for comment.

Mississippi has urged for a dismissal of the case. Judge Henry Wingate, a Reagan appointee on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, requested that both parties provide written submission on the impact, if any, of the Dobbs decision on the lawsuit, and on Mississippi’s “trigger law” banning abortions, which is set to take effect next week. Submissions are due on Thursday.

A ruling in favor of Mississippi could have implications for other jurisdictions seeking to ban abortion pills in a post-Roe landscape.

If upheld, it “would also open the floodgates for states to substitute their judgment for FDA’s in other controversial areas of medicine — some of which we may be aware of — some of which we may not be,” said Delia Deschaine, a DC-based attorney who specializes in FDA regulation. “For example, if there were a group of individuals opposed to palliative care, a state could conceivably limit access to medications that are approved for use in that context. This then becomes a situation where the practice of medicine using pharmaceuticals unpredictably varies between states — which creates its own host of public health issues.”

What it means to “pre-empt” the FDA

Through the passage of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in 1938, Congress empowered the FDA as the sole agency to approve drugs in the US. It’s responsible for reviewing a drug’s safety, weighing its risks and benefits, and regulating appropriate conditions for safe and effective use.

Even though many reproductive health experts — including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists — actually say the FDA has too many restrictions on mifepristone (for example, only certified pharmacies or providers can dispense the drug) everyone must abide by the agency’s determinations.

But many red states, including Mississippi, have passed laws that go even further than FDA’s rules around mifepristone. For example, Mississippi requires a doctor to physically examine a patient prior to offering the drug, and for patients to ingest the medication “in the same room and in the physical presence of” the physician who gave it to them, rather than taking the medication at home.

Experts say there is a “strong, though legally uncertain” argument that the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution gives the federal government authority over these conflicting state rules. Indeed, GenBioPro has argued Mississippi’s law is “an impermissible effort by Mississippi to establish its own drug approval policy and directly regulate the availability of drugs within the state.”

This idea — that federal regulation of drugs would take precedence, and a state cannot ban a drug that has been given federal approval — is known as the preemption argument.

For now, legal scholars say it’s unclear how preemption arguments will play out in court. Courts often grant deference to the FDA, though there are relatively few examples involving drugs. The main precedent is a 2014 case where a federal judge struck down a Massachusetts effort to restrict the opioid Zohydro, since the FDA had approved the painkiller.

“The fact that this case relates to a medication that is used in abortion is one reason we might see the district court take a different stance than other courts on this issue,” said Deschaine.

Anti-abortion advocates maintain that states have the authority to restrict or ban mifepristone, because states can regulate medical practice, and the FDA lacks the authority to regulate abortion. Legal scholars also note that Congress has never explicitly said that FDA drug approval supersedes state law, though it has expressed that for medical devices.

While the DOJ declined to comment on the GenBioPro case, Attorney General Garland’s recent public statements suggest the agency is thinking about the preemption argument. “The FDA has approved the use of the medication Mifepristone,” Garland said Friday, adding that, “states may not ban Mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy.”

What’s next for the GenBioPro lawsuit

Gwyn Williams, an attorney representing GenBioPro, told Vox that in response to the judge’s request, their team submitted a statement reiterating their previous position that the legal issues decided by the US Supreme Court in Dobbs “do not affect GenBioPro’s claims, which are based on federal preemption and not on constitutional rights to privacy or abortion.” Williams says they expect the judge to issue his decision on dismissing the case soon.

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Paul Barnes, a Mississippi Assistant Attorney General representing the state, declined to comment.

Greer Donley, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who specializes in reproductive law, told Vox that one reason why the court has been “pretty delayed” in issuing any rulings could be because the judge “might be trying to look for an opportunity to kick the case.”

If Mississippi fully bans abortion statewide — which it’s set to do next week, though that trigger law is now being challenged in court — then the state’s mifepristone restrictions might become moot. “If there’s a statewide ban, then I can imagine the defendant saying the lawsuit is moot now because all these laws that regulate abortion providers are subsumed by the bigger abortion ban generally,” said Donley.

But Donley says the preemption argument would still have broad merit, since the FDA still acts as a gatekeeper.

“To earn the right to sell a drug product, manufacturers must produce years, if not decades, of expensive, high-quality research proving that the drug is safe and effective,” she wrote, along with law professors David Cohen and Rachel Rebouché in a legal article cited in the Dobbs dissent. “If they are successful, they can sell their product in every state; if unsuccessful, they cannot sell their product anywhere. If a state were to ban abortion, it would in effect ban the sale of an FDA-approved drug.”

In other words, if it is impossible to comply with both state and federal law at the same time, there remains a plausible preemption argument.

Deschaine, the attorney who specializes in FDA regulation, thinks upholding state restrictions on abortion pills could certainly affect whether other drug companies seek to go through the FDA approval process in the future.

“The incentives for developing FDA-approved drug products are strong, but those start to erode the more fractured the regulatory scheme for these products becomes,” she said. “If a company does not believe that it will be able to market its product in all US states/jurisdictions, then it may not be willing to assume the risk of pursuing the drug approval pathway. Indeed, even absent those restrictions, that pathway is very costly and uncertain.”

The coming legal battles of post-Roe America

Originally published in Vox on June 27, 2022.
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When the Supreme Court issued its 6-3 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, declaring that there is no longer a constitutional right to end a pregnancy, it ushered in a series of new and fiercely contested legal questions about who can be punished for doing so, and where, under newly restrictive state laws.

Can a state punish a resident for getting an out-of-state abortion? Can it punish the provider in another state who facilitated it? Or as Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan wrote in their dissent: “Can a State prohibit advertising out-of-state abortions or helping women get to out-of-state providers? Can a State interfere with the mailing of drugs used for medication abortions?”

Many anti-abortion activists and conservative legal scholars have long insisted that overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision would lead to a simpler legal landscape — freeing the Supreme Court from the “abortion-umpiring business,” former Justice Antonin Scalia​​ wrote in 1992, and allowing the matters to be decided “state by state.”

But while conservatives fantasized about the supposedly tidier legal landscape of a post-Roe America, other legal scholars warned overturning Roe could make the legal complexities of the last five decades seem quaint.

In his concurring Dobbs opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh dismissed concerns that overturning Roe will raise new vexing legal questions. “As I see it, some of the other abortion-related legal questions raised by today’s decision are not especially difficult as a constitutional matter,” Kavanaugh wrote. His arguments: The right to travel between states, as people seeking abortion in states with bans will now need to do, is constitutionally protected. Legal precedent would also prevent states from holding anyone liable for abortions that occurred before Friday’s decision.

With the rise of the internet, telehealth appointments, mail-order pharmacies, and drugs like mifepristone and misoprostol that people can acquire in advance of being pregnant, the questions around what it means to both provide and obtain an abortion have evolved considerably since the pre-Roe days, as have questions about what it means to “cross state lines” to get one. The liabilities involved in all these scenarios are likely to be tested in the years to come.

Ultimately, the end goal for the anti-abortion movement is not a patchwork of abortion-friendly and abortion-restricting states. It’s a country where abortion is illegal and inaccessible and ideally where fetuses are viewed as people, entitled to the same protections as any other individual under the Fourteenth Amendment.

“Until that argument is accepted, the antiabortion movement will use state powers to stop as many abortions as possible, including outside state borders,” wrote three Pennsylvania law professors, Greer Donley of University of Pittsburgh, David Cohen of Drexel University, and Rachel Rebouché of Temple University, in a working paper posted online in February that laid out the legal dilemmas, and was cited directly in the Dobbs dissent. This doesn’t necessarily mean that those attempts will succeed, but it underscores just how uncertain the legal landscape now is.

Though someone is unlikely to be physically barred from crossing a state border to end a pregnancy, the potential for criminal penalties when they return is very real in a post-Roe landscape. Up until now, states have primarily targeted abortion providers and clinics, as people seeking abortions were exercising their constitutionally protected right to end a pregnancy. But if new laws are upheld that extend greater legal protection to fetuses, the pressure on pregnant people around violating those new fetal rights will also increase. As more people opt for self-managing their abortions at home outside the formal health care system, experts say laws aimed at criminalizing these sorts of abortions are more likely.

With poorly regulated data privacy laws, aggressive prosecutors could amass a lot of evidence if they suspect a person obtained an illegal abortion, or an abortion that would not be legal in their home state. Missouri lawmakers introduced a bill last year that would have claimed legal jurisdiction for any pregnancy that was conceived within Missouri borders or in which the parents were Missouri residents at conception. It never received a vote, but lawmakers took another swing this year, introducing a bill that would target anyone in or outside of Missouri’s borders who “aids or abets” a Missouri resident’s abortion. Liberal states, in turn, are now trying to pass new protections for providers and allies who help end pregnancies for out-of-state residents.

“There are a whole host of unanswered questions that will now dominate,” Rebouché said. “Particularly as states start to enact their own abortion bans and do so on various timelines, I think what to expect in the immediate future is confusion.”

There is little legal precedent for these questions

Only two cases since Roe have really addressed questions about out-of-state legal liability, and it’s not clear how they would apply in a post-Roe America.

In its 1975 Bigelow v. Virginia decision, the US Supreme Court affirmed that a Virginia newspaper could print an ad for an abortion clinic in New York, where the procedure was legal, even though in 1971, when the ad originally ran, it was illegal in Virginia. The Court upheld the advertising on First Amendment grounds, and also noted that Virginia could not prevent its residents from traveling to New York for an abortion or prosecute them for doing so.

“A State does not acquire power or supervision over the internal affairs of another State merely because the welfare and health of its own citizens may be affected when they travel to that State,” the justices then wrote.

Then in 2007, the Missouri Supreme Court issued a decision in another abortion-related case, this one pertaining to a state law that prohibited individuals from “aid[ing], or assist[ing]” a minor’s abortion without parental consent. Planned Parenthood challenged the statute on First Amendment grounds, since the organization provided information to minors about out-of-state options, and alleged the law violated the commerce clause of the Constitution, since it would “requir[e] non-Missouri health care providers and others” to comply with the parental consent law. The court, citing Bigelow, dismissed the commerce clause claim, and said it was beyond the state’s authority. “Missouri simply does not have the authority to make lawful out-of-state conduct actionable here, for its laws do not have extraterritorial effect,” the court wrote.

Still, Donley, Cohen, and Rebouché caution from reading too much into these examples. “Though these two precedents contain strong statements against the application of extraterritorial abortion law, there is no reason to count on them being the final say on the matter,” they write in their preprint paper on post-Roe possibilities. “The first is dated and concentrated on the First Amendment, and the second is applicable in Missouri only.” The scholars note the Supreme Court could easily revisit Bigelow’s anti-extraterritoriality principle, and that it will indeed be “ripe for reassessment” once interjurisdictional abortion prosecutions begin.

But until these questions wind their way back up to the Supreme Court, aggressive prosecutors can and likely will experiment with testing the limits of the law.

For example, the law professors note, Georgia passed a law in 2019 which declared “unborn children are a class of living, distinct person” who deserve “full legal protection.” This law effectively banned abortions after just six weeks, as soon as fetal cardiac activity could be detected. It was later struck down by a district judge as a violation of Roe, but has since been stayed at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, pending a decision in Dobbs. The appellate court is now expected to lift that stay in the coming days or weeks, and Georgia’s Republican Attorney General Chris Carr already sent a letter on Friday urging the 11th Circuit to reverse the district court’s decision.

If the law goes into effect, an emboldened prosecutor could seek criminal penalties for a Georgian who crossed state lines to obtain a legal abortion, or even against anyone who helped them travel across state lines, under the rationale that their unborn child deserves full legal protection. States may struggle to enforce extraterritorial prosecutions, though, just as they’ve struggled to crack down on Aid Access, which dispenses medication abortion to US residents from overseas.

There is no legal consensus yet on these questions, and politics will likely play a role in shaping what plays out. While there are not many activists urging prosecutors to go after teenagers who import marijuana from other states, pressure to enforce state abortion bans to the fullest extent possible is a safer bet. Already, Texas Republicans are discussing new legislation that would allow district attorneys to criminally punish anyone who helps a person end a pregnancy outside Texas. And if an anti-abortion activist in a red state sees an opportunity to shut down or cause headaches for an abortion provider working in a blue state, it’s fair to expect they will try.

Some scholars, including University of Pennsylvania law professor Seth Kreimer and Yale law professor Lea Brilmayer, have argued that extraterritorial prosecution of abortion would likely be illegal under the Constitution. Others, like Chicago-Kent School Law professor Mark Rosen and University of Michigan law professor Donald Regan, have argued that states would likely be able to regulate out-of-state abortion activity of their residents.

Donley, Cohen, and Rebouché identify with a third category of scholars, including Harvard law professor Richard Fallon and Washington University in Saint Louis law professor Susan Appleton, who think it will be murky, variable, and highly contested for years to come.

Blue states are trying to shield providers from red-state prosecutions

With Roe in place, a provider in New York or California had little to fear from a prosecutor in Texas or Louisiana. Abortion was a constitutionally protected right for all citizens. But with Roe overturned, that legal calculus changes, and providers may find themselves vulnerable to states that have fully banned the procedure, or that want to punish anyone who helps their citizens get it.

To try to protect providers who offer abortion services to patients who might visit them from a state where it’s illegal, Democrat-controlled states have started to craft and pass so-called shield laws. These laws offer additional protections, like barring state agencies from helping another state’s criminal investigation, and ensuring that an abortion provider could not lose their professional license or face malpractice insurance penalties as a result of an out-of-state complaint.

While these shield laws are unlikely to face constitutional challenge, it’s unclear if they will really be effective, and Donley, Cohen, and Rebouché note they may also create new legal battles between red and blue states. “After all, if Illinois refuses to extradite an abortion provider to Georgia, will Georgia retaliate and refuse to extradite a gun dealer to Illinois?” they asked in their February paper.

Medication abortion also creates particularly complex legal challenges for states. Laws around telemedicine generally defer to the location of the patient, but could a provider in New Jersey, where abortion is legal, face penalty for mailing pills to a patient who lives in a state where abortion is illegal, if the patient traveled to New Jersey for the actual appointment? Or what if the pills were sent to an address in a Democrat-controlled state, and then forwarded through the mail to a state where it’s illegal, either by a mail forwarding service or by a friend?

“There will be efforts to crack down on PO boxes, but the person who just gives [a telehealth provider] their friend’s address and the friend then personally forwards the mail — that will be impossible to police,” Donley told Vox.

Heightened conflict between the federal government and Republican states has already started

In addition to new battles between red and blue states, legal scholars predict new and unprecedented tensions between states and the federal government in a post-Roe environment.

A preview of those fights came on Friday, when President Joe Biden gave a speech calling out “extremist governors and state legislators” who want to try to limit access to FDA-approved medication like mifepristone. Biden announced he was directing the federal Department of Health and Human Services “to ensure that these critical medications are available to the fullest extent possible and that politicians cannot interfere in the decisions that should be made between a woman and her doctor.” The same day, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced he would use the powers of the Justice Department to crack down on states trying to ban medication abortion.

A majority of states have imposed some sort of restriction on medication abortion, though many are looking to enact even more aggressive regulation going forward. It’s not clear yet whether states can outright ban drugs that have been approved by the FDA, since that agency has the sole authority to approve drugs in the US. “It’s an open question,” Patti Zettler, an associate professor of law at Ohio State University and former associate chief counsel for the FDA, told the Washington Post last month.

There’s some legal precedent for courts striking down state restrictions that conflict with FDA approval. In 2014 a federal judge struck down a Massachusetts effort to ban the opioid Zohydro, since the FDA had approved the painkiller.

Still, it might be harder for a court to strike down laws that in practice restrict access to the drugs, like Texas’s ban on obtaining pills after just seven weeks of pregnancy, but that do not technically ban its use.

For now, no one really knows, but the evidence suggests we’re entering a new legal era, not simply reverting to the pre-1973 status quo. As Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan write in their dissent, the Dobbs decision “puts the Court at the center of the coming ‘interjurisdictional abortion wars.’”

Should you keep abortion pills at home, just in case?

Originally published in Vox on June 22, 2022
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Medication abortion, or taking a combination of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, is an increasingly common method for ending pregnancies in the United States. Reasons vary and overlap: Some women lack access to in-person abortion clinics; others prefer to end pregnancies in the comfort of their own home. Others seek out the pills because they cost far less than surgical abortion.

With more in-person clinics shuttering and a Supreme Court that’s threatening to overturn Roe v. Wade, a small but growing number of reproductive experts have been encouraging discussion of an idea called “advance provision” — or, more colloquially, stocking up on abortion pills in case one needs them later.

It’s an idea that has merit: Mifepristone has a shelf life of about five years, misoprostol about two, and both drugs work better the earlier in a pregnancy you take them. In states that are ramping up abortion restrictions, there’s often a race against the clock to access care. In Texas, for example, if you don’t realize until eight weeks in that you’re pregnant — which could be only a couple of weeks after a missed period — you would have already passed the state’s new legal deadline for obtaining abortion pills. But if you had already stored them in your home, or your friend or neighbor had, then you’d be able to take them.

In a 2018 nationally representative survey of women ages 18 to 49, 44 percent expressed support for advance provision, and 22 percent said they were personally interested in it. Those who had previously had a medication abortion and those who reported facing greater barriers to reproductive health care were more likely to support the idea.

Data on these kinds of abortions — often called “self-managed” or “self-administered” — are harder to track. Research published in 2020 estimated that 7 percent of women will self-manage an abortion in their lifetime, though this was calculated with the assumption that Roe was still in place. New Guttmacher data published last week on US abortion incidence found there were 8 percent more abortions in 2020 than in 2017, but self-managed abortions are excluded from this count.

“We know there are thousands of self-managed abortions that we aren’t capturing,” Rachel Jones, a Guttmacher research scientist, told Vox. “If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, and abortion becomes illegal in 26 states and people can’t travel to another state, then self-managed is going to be the only other option they have for an abortion.”

Talking more frankly about self-managed abortion goes against longstanding American cultural norms. For years US reproductive rights groups stressed that the decision to end a pregnancy “was made between a woman and her doctor.” Internationally, where abortion has been more heavily criminalized, there is less pressure to involve medical professionals. It was in the legally restrictive context of Brazil in the late 1980s that women first pioneered the use of misoprostol to self-manage their abortions.

Rebecca Gomperts, the Dutch physician who in 2018 founded Aid Access to deliver abortion pills to US patients, has been one of the most vocal advocates for advance provision, and began offering it as an option to people in all 50 states last fall. Costs for the pills range from $110 to $150, with a sliding scale for those who lack funds. Recently, in Politico, Gomperts encouraged doctors to begin prescribing mifepristone and misoprostol to those who are not pregnant, so they have the medication available if they need it later.

“Abortion pills are something that, actually, you cannot die from,” she said. “There’s no way that you can overdose on it. And what we know from research is that you don’t need to do an ultrasound for a medical abortion.”

The idea of getting medication in advance of need is nothing new. Doctors also used to commonly prescribe emergency contraception to women before it became available over the counter.

Right now large mainstream abortion rights groups are mostly staying quiet on advance provision, leaving lesser-known organizations like Aid Access and Plan C to try to get out the word. (NARAL and Guttmacher declined to comment, and Planned Parenthood did not return requests for comment.)

Aid Access and Forward Midwifery are among the few groups currently offering US patients the option to order pills in advance, though Elisa Wells, co-director of Plan C, said she knows others are considering it. “I was just having a conversation with a provider in Montana,” she told me. “We believe it will become more common. Sometimes we call it the ‘just in case’ plan, because unplanned pregnancy is so common.”

It’s a safe option for most patients

When it comes to safely ending pregnancies, medication abortion is over 95 percent successful, according to Guttmacher. Less than 0.4 percent of patients require hospitalization. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has also affirmed medication abortion as a safe method to terminate pregnancy, one with very low risk of complications.

Research published earlier this year in the medical journal Lancet found self-managed abortions specifically to be very effective, and with high rates of patient satisfaction.

Gomperts also urges more attention on misoprostol-only abortions, which are common internationally. The drug can be easier for women to access since misoprostol is less tightly regulated; it’s used for other ailments including stomach ulcers and managing miscarriages, and is sold over the counter in many countries.

While medication abortion is a safe option for almost everyone with an early pregnancy, the pills are not recommended for people who take blood thinners, who have bleeding disorders, or who are at high risk of ectopic pregnancies. (Ultrasounds are recommended for those in this latter category.)

Still, one upside of advance provision — and medication abortion generally — is the greater number of people who could potentially provide the pills, including primary care doctors. Another upside is that it could be easier to share pills with those who need the medication quickly but lack access to it. Research suggests the drugs are best taken within the first 10 to 12 weeks of a pregnancy.

Paying attention to legal risks and criminalization

Outside of groups that exploit international law like Aid Access, advance provision is unlikely to be a legal option in every state. Some states, for example, require patients to get ultrasounds before a provider can give them abortion pills. Other states are cracking down on abortion pills themselves.

While few states currently ban self-managed abortion outright, many have existing laws that overzealous prosecutors could use to go after women, like fetal homicide statutes. “I am concerned that if people stockpile, without knowing the legal risks or how to cover their digital footprints, they could be subject to criminalization,” said Renee Bracey Sherman, founder of the abortion storytelling group We Testify.

The National Right to Life Foundation also released model legislation in mid-June that encourages states to criminalize those who “aid or abet” illegal abortions, including those who provide instructions over the phone or internet about self-managed methods.

Even in states with fewer legal concerns, advance provision won’t be the right option for everyone. “It’s a potentially high cost for a patient that is unlikely to be covered by insurance,” said Daniel Grossman, a physician and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California San Francisco. Not everyone can afford to spend $150 to have a backup method available, and some people will still need or prefer in-person clinic care.

It hasn’t gone mainstream, yet

In the days following the leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, telehealth abortion providers reported spikes in internet searches and pill orders. Still, most Americans lack familiarity with not only abortion medication but also the few groups that currently provide the pills in advance. Some activists say leaders and more well-resourced organizations should do more to promote self-managed abortion as an option.

In December 2021, three UCSF reproductive health researchers, including Grossman, published an article calling advance provision “an unexplored care model that we believe holds promise and merits further study.”

Grossman told Vox that he believes more people should ask their primary care and reproductive health providers if they’d be open to prescribing or giving them abortion pills to store for later use. “Even if the doctor doesn’t want to, I think it’s worth just sparking a conversation with them and get their provider thinking,” he said. Grossman previously told Jezebel he’s found it challenging to get other researchers and health care providers to give advance provision the attention it deserves.

“We have ibuprofen in case of a headache, cough syrup in case of a cold, and Plan B in case of a broken condom,” said Bracey Sherman of We Testify. “It’s already normal for other health care and we should normalize it for abortion.”

Wells, from Plan C, said the historical restrictions placed on abortion have likely made some groups and individuals more reticent to talk about advance provision. “I think there’s probably a lot of fear about not wanting to break any rules,” she said.

Another factor limiting discussion, Wells suggested, is the way abortion has been heavily medicalized in the US, to the point where people believe the drugs have to be or are best administered by a medical professional. Attitudes are different internationally, she said.

“We have become so invested in saying that we need to have safe abortions and that doctors and clinicians and the clinics can provide that,” Wells said. “Clinicians have done a wonderful job, and we have to have all these different types of care options available, but [self-managed abortions] can be a bit of a threatening message to that whole system.”

Arkansas Legislature Introduces Texas-Style Abortion Ban

Originally published in Rewire News on December 8, 2021.
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As Arkansas launched a special legislative session Tuesday nominally dedicated to passing income tax cuts, a leading anti-choice Republican in the state senate introduced a copycat version of Texas SB 8, legislation that effectively bans abortions after six weeks and allows any citizen to sue those who help a pregnant person get the procedure.

Reproductive rights advocates have been bracing for this moment for several months, ever since Republican Sen. Jason Rapert, who has sponsored some of the most aggressive bills to restrict abortion access over the last few years, came out in September to praise SB 8.

“What Texas has done is absolutely awesome,” he proclaimed when it first went into effect. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments against SB 8 on November 1.

ROE HAS COLLAPSED AND TEXAS IS IN CHAOS.

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Earlier this year, Rapert pushed through an abortion ban that only permitted abortions to save the life of the pregnant person, but did not provide any exceptions for those impregnated by rape or incest. A federal judge in July preliminarily blocked the law, but it was just one of 20 abortion restrictions Arkansas passed this year alone.

In early October, Rapert, who did not return requests for comment for this story, announced that he would be filing a version of Texas SB 8 as soon as Arkansas’ special session launches, which at the time lawmakers thought would be on October 25.

“I am filing the Arkansas Heartbeat Protection Act with a civil cause of action—just like Texas,” he tweeted then. “I invite [Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson] to put the bill on the call and legislators to co-sponsor.”

According to the state’s legislative rules, since Hutchinson did not include abortion on his “call,” Rapert had to rally two-thirds of his colleagues in order to have his bill considered in the special session. Rapert expressed confidence earlier in the fall that he could reach that support threshold. He also insisted that he must continue to be “creative” in his legislative pushes against abortion access, given that other bills he’s authored have been struck down in court. 

SB 13 was filed Tuesday afternoon with Rep. Mary Bentley as the bill’s other primary sponsor; 28 other Republicans co-sponsored it, clearing the two-thirds threshold.

Hutchinson had declined to say what he would do if the legislature passes copycat SB 8 legislation, but he said he thinks lawmakers should wait to see the decisions the Supreme Court hands down on SB 8 and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban that the Court heard a week ago. Rapert has said he’s frustrated with Hutchinson’s stance.

Holly Dickson, the executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, said trying to bring up a sensitive bill like this outside of the state’s regular legislative session is “unorthodox.” The ACLU has been monitoring the possibility of a Texas copycat law ever since Rapert issued his first threat.

“We’ll oppose any effort to do that and have been advising legislators against this blatantly unconstitutional move,” Dickson said.

Public opinion is somewhat mixed on the idea. In late September, a survey from Talk Business & Politics and Hendrix College, which polled 916 likely Arkansas voters on their opinions of Texas SB 8, found about 46.5 percent of voters would support a similar bill in Arkansas, and about 49.5 percent would oppose it. Only 4 percent of respondents said they didn’t have an opinion at the time. The pollsters found opposition was particularly strong among those under 30 years old, and among people of color.

In early November, the 23rd annual Arkansas Poll was released, which conducted 800 telephone interviews with randomly selected adults across the state, and found 41 percent of all very likely voters support laws that would make it harder to get an abortion. More than a quarter of very likely voters think abortion should be illegal under all circumstances, the highest percentage ever found in this poll, according to Charisse Dean of the Little Rock-based Family Council, a conservative research and advocacy group

Last month the national anti-abortion organization, Americans United for Life, ranked Arkansas as “the most pro-life state” in the country for the second year in a row. Arkansas already requires individuals seeking abortion to undergo a mandatory 72-hour waiting period, as well as to get two in-person visits at an abortion facility. Telemedicine for abortion is banned in Arkansas, and patients can access abortion only up to 20 weeks postfertilization, or 22 weeks’ gestation.

In mid-October, Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes announced it would be launching an “aggressive statewide campaign” in Arkansas to defeat the proposed Texas copycat abortion ban. Among other things the organization said it had hired additional organizing and communications staff dedicated to the effort, would be hosting in-person and virtual events across the state to educate voters, and would be contacting over 20,000 state residents to discuss the implications.

“We’ve also really been targeting the legislature to help them understand the human impact,” said Emily Wales, the interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains.

Following the passage of SB 8 in Texas, visits by abortion-seekers into Arkansas jumped significantly. In September, Texas patients comprised 19 percent of Little Rock Family Planning Services’ caseload, after being less than 2 percent in August.

Many people are also traveling from Texas to Oklahoma for abortion care, though Oklahoma has passed its own wave of new abortion restrictions. In September, Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit to block five of these new restrictions, which were set to take effect in November. The litigation has been successful; all five of the Oklahoma laws have been temporarily blocked so far.

More public-facing organizing against a Texas copycat law, Wales said, was delayed in Arkansas because the special session was pushed back from October. Advocates had said in mid-November that they expect in-person events against a copycat ban to pick up if and when Rapert’s bill is formally introduced.

“We will have in-person rallies outside the capitol,” Wales said. “If Texas has taught us anything it’s that you have to be really visible about what the outcomes are. We’re seeing patients in Texas who are shocked that their legislature passed [SB 8] and they weren’t paying attention before.”

In late September, a Republican state representative in Florida introduced the first copycat Texas bill, which almost identically mirrors SB 8. But reproductive rights advocates in Florida say they are less concerned that the bill will become law anytime soon, given the repeated failure of Florida lawmakers to pass a six-week abortion ban.

Karen Musick, the co-founder and vice president of the Arkansas Abortion Support Network, an all-volunteer nonprofit that helps Arkansans access abortion care, said they’ve definitely seen an uptick in donations since Texas SB 8 was passed but that their attention has largely been focused on organizing volunteers.

“People have really come out of the woodwork and said, ‘My home is available if someone needs a place to stay, if someone needs help getting to another place I will take them,’” Musick said. “We’re collecting all these people who have benefited from abortion care in the past and want to do as much as they can now to ensure the next generation has access too.”

Musick said that while there’s less they can do to stop the current legislature from passing new restrictions, they can at least focus on organizing people.

“Our job is to forge as many contacts as we can,” Musick said. “We need to build a base of transportation volunteers, escort volunteers, money and counseling volunteers.”

In The Fight for Reproductive Rights, Don’t Forget the Medicaid Gap

Originally published in The Intercept on October 1, 2021.
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IN ONE OF the grimmest periods ever for reproductive rights, advocates are scrambling to react to a spate of new restrictions on abortion. The Biden Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Texas in the wake of S.B. 8, the state’s new law that invites private citizens to enforce abortion bans through civil litigation. House Democrats passed the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that would protect abortion providers and remove barriers for patients. And some advocates see hope in medication abortion, a combination of two drugs — mifepristone and misoprostol — which people can take to safely end pregnancies.

But many states still restrict where providers can mail drugs, and most groups still only service states with relatively friendly abortion laws. Last week, a Republican state representative in Florida introduced a bill that mirrors S.B. 8, and lawmakers in other GOP-controlled states have signaled interest in following suit. The U.S. Supreme Court has refused thus far to block Texas’s notorious statute, and the Women’s Health Protection Act stands little chance of passage in the Senate.

As long as the Senate filibuster remains in place, and the U.S. Supreme Court maintains its anti-abortion majority, advocates in the South say there’s little that Washington can really do to aid their plight. There is one crucial method, though, which often falls off the radar: Medicaid expansion.

“What people have forgotten is [in] this entire swath of the southeast, from Texas and Georgia and Florida, we never got Medicaid expansion, so there’s a lot of people, especially people capable of becoming pregnant, unable to access any sort of insurance,” said Robin Marty, a journalist, activist, and head of operations for West Alabama Women’s Center, an independent abortion clinic in Tuscaloosa. “We need national organizations to remember that we’re still five steps behind. While they’re trying to get new medication abortion programs standing, we’d like to even use the [Affordable Care Act] birth control mandate.”

As Congress considers proposals to include in the upcoming reconciliation bill — a $3.5 trillion social spending package that Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., are threatening to derail — Democrats are weighing at least two measures that would expand Medicaid access in the 12 states that have refused. One pathway, led by Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, would create a program that’s like Medicaid but administered by the federal government rather than by individual states. Their proposal would require the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to offer coverage to those eligible in the 12 holdout states. Texas Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett also has a bill that would allow cities and counties to expand Medicaid in states that have refused. And some powerful lawmakers, including House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., have cited Medicaid expansion as a top priority for inclusion.

Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., speaks on Medicaid expansion and the reconciliation package during a press conference with fellow lawmakers at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 23, 2021.

The cost for expansion so far is estimated at potentially $250 to $300 billion, but the price could shrink if legislators put an expiration date on their plans. Clyburn suggested last week that he would back a few years of Medicaid expansion, which he said could be harder to strip away once it’s in place.

Lawmakers are under pressure to reduce the cost of the reconciliation package — despite the fact that the $3.5 trillion price tag would be spread over 10 years and partially covered by raising taxes on the wealthy — and several health care priorities are competing for space. These include expanding Medicare, bolstering Obamacare subsidies, and ensuring access to in-home care for the elderly. A Washington Post report on Thursday made the chances for a permanent Medicaid expansion look less likely: Some advocates and Democratic senators expressed concern that it might reward recalcitrant GOP lawmakers, or even incentivize states that have expanded Medicaid to reverse course, potentially forcing the federal government to pick up the tab for states that had previously expanded Medicaid.

THERE ARE MORE than 2 million poor, uninsured adults in the so-called Medicaid gap. Of those, roughly 800,000 are women of reproductive age. Most people who fall into the gap are unlikely to afford insurance on the individual marketplace because they’re ineligible for premium subsidies, which help offset high monthly costs. And while the Affordable Care Act applies to most private insurance plans, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 13 percent of workers in 2019 were enrolled in “grandfathered” plans exempt from the ACA’s protections — including the mandate for contraception coverage.

In Washington, D.C., and 38 states that have expanded Medicaid since 2014, public health researchers found an immediate and large increase in insurance coverage for low-income women of reproductive age. Health and economics researchers also found that low-income women in expansion states were more likely to use effective birth control methods during their postpartum period than their counterparts in holdout states, and were more likely to use long-acting reversible contraception, considered among the best methods for preventing unwanted pregnancies. The proposed Medicaid expansion plans would increase access to birth control and reproductive services in the remaining 12 states.

On Tuesday, Planned Parenthood Federation of America issued new fact sheets detailing what Medicaid expansion would mean for each state that has until now resisted broadening coverage. In Alabama, for example, Planned Parenthood says 51,000 women of reproductive age would gain access to affordable health insurance, including more than 20,000 Black women. In Texas, more than 324,000 women of reproductive age would gain affordable health insurance and access to services, including 48,000 Black women and 1930,000 Latina women.

“I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen who wanted birth control and were not able to get it,” said Marty. “The county health departments are booked two to three months in advance, so by the time they get there it’s too late; and then we have patients who do have private doctors, but the doctors are denying them the coverage.”

Jamila Taylor, the director of health care reform and a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, said expanding Medicaid could definitely help support women who fall into the coverage gap, who lack insurance or access to comprehensive maternal services. “We know this affects people not ready to be parents, and those who are ready to have children,” she said.

So if either the Ossoff-Warnock-Baldwin plan or the Doggett proposal passes, the changes could expand access to contraception for thousands of currently uninsured people. But would they allow Medicaid to cover solutions like medication abortion? Thanks to the Hyde Amendment — a prohibition on using federal funds to cover abortions outside of the exceptions of rape, incest, and endangerment to a woman’s life, which Congress has reauthorized every year since 1976 — the answer is still no.

There is legislation pending in the House and Senate, called the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance Act of 2021, or EACH Act, that would overturn the Hyde Amendment — but like the Women’s Health Protection Act, it stands little chance of passage with the filibuster in place. On Wednesday, Manchin told the conservative National Review that he was open to considering Medicaid expansion as part of reconciliation — but only if the package includes the Hyde Amendment. States can, however, still opt to use their own Medicaid funding to cover abortions, and 16 primarily blue states already do.

As long as the Hyde Amendment remains in place, those living in regions at odds with reproductive health access will have to rely on more difficult and sometimes risky measures to terminate their pregnancies. If the amendment were repealed, Medicaid funds could potentially be used to prescribe medication abortion, offering an alternative in places where clinics are closed. But many hostile states have broadened their anti-abortion measures to cover mifepristone and misoprostol. Since April, lawmakers in Republican-led states, working closely with anti-abortion groups like the Susan B. Anthony List, have moved to pass even more restrictions on medication abortion.

Marty, who authored “Handbook for a Post-Roe America” in 2019, said for now people should consider obtaining medication abortion pills before they are pregnant, a process known as advanced provision. Some are are already doing this in Texas through Aid Access, an organization based in Europe that a Dutch doctor started in April 2018.

“At this point [activists] do not believe that someone who takes this step is under threat of a lawsuit because pregnant people are explicitly excluded from [SB8], but it could be a potential lawsuit if that person who ordered it gave it to someone else,” said Marty.

But shipping pills from Europe can result in delays. “Hypothetically, there might be people who try get ahold of medication abortion from one of these online retailers despite living in a different city,” said Marty, referring to U.S.-based telehealth organizations like Abortion on Demand. In those cases, which could also present legal risk, women might ask contacts they know living in more abortion-friendly states to obtain the medication and then quietly mail them the pills.

“As an author and activist, I firmly believe that all people need to be [ready] for when abortion is completely illegal and inaccessible,” said Marty. “It’s become clear to me that abortion will mostly disappear in red states.”

Arkansas Could Give Amy Coney Barrett Her Big Abortion Moment

Originally published in Rewire on December 16, 2020.
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Amy Coney Barrett has been a Supreme Court justice for less than two months, yet Arkansas lawmakers wasted no time introducing an anti-abortion bill aimed squarely at the Court, whose new conservative supermajority puts the future of abortion rights in serious jeopardy.

Advocates have called the Unborn Child Protection Act, introduced in November ahead of Arkansas’ next legislative session, “so egregious”—particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic that continues to ravage the country with no federal relief bill in sight.

Arkansas already has a law banning abortion should the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade; 20 other states have similiar laws in place.

The same lawmaker who sponsored the state’s so-called trigger ban last year, Republican state Sen. Jason Rapert, introduced this latest bill that he said was meant to more directly challenge Roe. He did not return multiple requests for comment.

SB 6 would ban all abortion unless a woman’s life was in danger, and like the trigger ban, it has language unusually directed to the nation’s high court.

“The State of Arkansas urgently pleads with the United States Supreme Court to do the right thing, as they did in one of their greatest cases, Brown v. Board of Education, which overturned a fifty-eight year-old precedent of the United States, and reverse, cancel, overturn, and annul Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey,” the legislation reads.

ACLU of Arkansas Executive Director Holly Dickson issued a statement calling Rapert’s bill “cruel and blatantly unconstitutional.” She urged state lawmakers to shelve the bill and focus on COVID-19 relief.

“Let’s be clear: if passed, this brazenly unconstitutional abortion ban will be struck down in court, and legislators who passed it will have achieved nothing but having wasted taxpayer dollars on an unlawful measure and diverted scarce resources from the urgent needs our communities face in the midst of an ongoing and devastating pandemic,” Dickson said.

Gloria Pedro, Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes’ regional manager of public policy and organizing for Arkansas and Oklahoma, said the bill is the “equivalent of a demand letter to the Supreme Court, which is not how the Supreme Court works. And there’s already a trigger law passed, which is why this is so egregious.”

Patients can access abortion in Arkansas up to the 20th week postfertilization, or 22 weeks’ gestation. There are two clinics in the state, both in Little Rock, though only one provides procedural abortions.

Advocates for reproductive rights in Arkansas have had their hands full fighting back against anti-choice legislation over the last decade, with some bills landing in multiyear battles in federal court. Conservatives have long eagerly eyed the Eighth Circuit, a federal appellate court with jurisdiction over Arkansas, as a way to bring a challenge against Roe to the U.S Supreme Court. Back in 2015, Eighth Circuit appellate judges recommended the high court “reevaluate its jurisprudence” on abortion, and urged for more state discretion over reproductive decision-making.

One such challenge began in 2017, after Arkansas legislators passed new laws to criminalize doctors who perform dilation and evacuation (the most common second-trimester abortion procedure) and require a patient inform the person who got them pregnant before they could get an abortion. The ACLU of Arkansas and the Center for Reproductive Rights sued over those laws and additional state restrictions, like requiring doctors to notify local law enforcement when patients under 17 years old seek to terminate a pregnancy. The laws were temporarily enjoined.

This past August, a three-person Eighth Circuit panel ruled against the plaintiffs, citing Chief Justice John Roberts’ concurrence in the Supreme Court’s recent June Medical Services v. Russo decision. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that a Louisiana law placing hospital admission requirements on abortion clinic providers was unconstitutional, echoing its 2016 position in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.

But in his concurring opinion, Roberts argued that while he agreed with his four liberal colleagues that the Louisiana case was virtually identical to Whole Woman’s Health, he believed the “undue burden” standard used to decide that case was wrong, and should not involve weighing costs and benefits of an abortion restriction when judging its legality.

“We don’t agree that one justice’s opinion can change the precedent set by Whole Woman’s Health that clarified the undue burden standard requires this balancing standard,” said Hillary Schneller, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, who asked the Eighth Circuit to review the decision en banc. (That means the case will be heard before the entire bench of judges, rather than a three-person panel.)

Schneller said “there’s always a chance” a case like this could wind up at the Supreme Court, but for now they’re just waiting on the Eighth Circuit.

That wait came to an end Tuesday afternoon when the Eighth Circuit summarily rejected the en banc request in a one-page order. Without further court intervention Arkansas’ restrictions could take effect as soon as December 22.

Meanwhile, reproductive rights advocates have also been dealing with harassment related to the pandemic. Arkansas health officials earlier this year sent a cease-and-desist letter to Little Rock Family Planning Services, arguing their procedural abortions were “elective” and should wait until after the public health crisis ends. State officials also tried to force patients to get negative COVID-19 tests within 48 hours of getting an abortion, even though tests were in short supply.

While advocates have successfully fended off some of the worst restrictions, reproductive rights groups concede there are more anti-choice bills passed every legislative session than could possibly be challenged.

“We can’t challenge every single restriction and those restrictions are continuing to stack on the books,” Dickson said. “They join together to create substantial obstacles and burdens for patients.” There was a 30 percent decline in the Arkansas abortion rate between 2014 and 2017, and according to the state’s health department, 2,963 abortions took place in Arkansas in 2019.

Pedro of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes noted that Arkansas has the fourth highest maternal mortality rate in the nation and one of the highest infant mortality rates. In 2016, Arkansas had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country, and public schools in the state still do not provide comprehensive sex education and primarily endorse abstinence-only instruction.

“It’s not just that these bills take away reproductive rights, which is crucial, but they’re also having a real tangible impact in our state, and things are getting worse,” Pedro said.

Pedro and Dickson say the most helpful thing would be for residents to pressure their state representatives to avoid wasting energy and resources on more anti-choice bills.

“Arkansas does not need to fly the trial balloon and be the trendsetter on setting regressive law,” Dickson said. “We have so many other things that we need our state to focus on.”

Strategies for a Post-Roe America — and for Post-Roe American Women

Originally published in The American Prospect on March 11, 2019.
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Independent journalist Robin Marty, one of the nation’s top reporters covering reproductive rights, has published a new book—Handbook for a Post-Roe America—with practical advice for women who might actually need to terminate a pregnancy in the future and for people who support abortion rights. While reproductive choice is at risk regardless of what happens at the Supreme Court, there’s little question in Marty’s mind that the landscape will soon look different in a world where Roe is overturned. The faster people accept that, she argues, the faster people can start preparing. This conversation has been edited and condensed.

Rachel Cohen: So, to get started, do you think we are headed for a post-Roe America?

Robin Marty: I am so certain at this point that I will even tell you it will be overturned in 2021. Abortion opponents already have all the cases they need, I’m fairly certain at this point it will be a case on banning D&E [dilation and extraction, a surgical abortion procedure typically performed during the third trimester or the later part of the second trimester] and that will be the case they use to overturn Roe. We know the Fifth Circuit is looking at it right now, and we’re pretty sure that court is going to say it’s not unconstitutional for Texas to do a D&E ban. And that would leave a split circuit decision, which would let the Supreme Court weigh in.

The Supreme Court will pick a case where lawyers can be extraordinarily gruesome. Abortion opponents love D&E bans because they’re so grotesque and no one can defend them without saying you have to pull out a limb.

I expect 2021 because they won’t have a case before the next presidential election, they know that’s the only way they can get the same evangelical voters out to get Trump re-elected. Once the election is over, they will go ahead and move as quickly as possible.

You’ve notably said you think the end of Roe would be a good thing.

I’m quite excited. Roe being overturned is the best thing that could happen to our movement. We’ve been treading water since 2010, we’ve seen all these red states that have been chipping away at access, but it took until Trump was elected and Roe was in honest-to-God jeopardy for all the really privileged and white people to understand that abortion could be cut off for everyone, not just the people who have already lost access. Ending Roe will put everyone on the same level.

Does that mean you supported Gorsuch’s and Kavanaugh’s confirmations?

Oh God, no! They are such a disaster for civil rights and more, even beyond just abortion.

Don’t you think privileged women in states like Massachusetts, New York, and California will continue to feel like the rollback in access doesn’t mean much for them personally?

But they will still be able to see the impacts more directly. Just being able to see people put in jail for accessing their own care—I mean people will get abortion pills, people will get caught, and there will be stark consequences—I think that will be the turning point. It’s like [in 2012] in Ireland when Savita [Halappanavar] died from a septic miscarriage after having been denied an abortion. That was a turning point for the country.

When we go post-Roe, what we’re going to have to decide as a movement, and as activists in general, is what is our new standard? What is accessible? Why does it have to be at a clinic? Why does it have to cost $500 out of pocket at a minimum? We’ve been so busy trying to protect this right that honestly isn’t that great. Is it worth protecting anymore? I don’t know that it is.

Would you say this is a mainstream view among pro-choice leaders?

It’s not a mainstream view, per se, but it’s something that I’ve been talking to audiences about as I’ve done my book tour. Everyone’s first thought is: How could you say Roe coming to an end is a good thing?! And then we talk about it, how now everyone will be in the same position as these marginalized communities that have one clinic in their state and a 72-hour waiting period, and once people understand that abortion is already inaccessible, and maybe it’s time to just get rid of Roe and start fighting for the human right to decide, people get it.

National organizations don’t like any of this, it would be dismantling the power of national organizations and effectively redistributing those resources to local groups. A lot of my work is about why we need to take abortion outside of clinics.

You mean to do more abortions at home?

Yes. In some way, what we’re seeing is the same debate we saw around home births and midwives. This isn’t very different from that, but there’s a resistance to the idea that we don’t need to do this procedure at a clinic, that we don’t have to have formal medical intervention. A lot of this can be left up to us. If we’ve already proven it’s not dangerous—which we have at this point, over and over—then we should be more forceful in pushing for that.

Your book was very practical and concrete. Can you talk about some of the specific suggestions you laid out for emergency contraception?

Emergency contraception was actually how the book started. As soon as [Justice Anthony] Kennedy announced his retirement, I saw a ton of people saying online they were going to give money to Planned Parenthood and stock up on emergency contraception. And my first thought was, “Whoa, now.” That led to a Huffington Post piece where I tried to say how you can do things like that in a more responsible way, which turned into this book.

Sterilization came up in your book as one way women could prepare for a post-Roe America. I was a bit surprised to see that. In your research, are you finding that’s already happening?

Yes, I am finding that women who have already decided they would not be interested in having children, or more children, are looking at this. The problem is it’s quite difficult to get sterilized—doctors don’t like to do it. It’s kind of a paternalistic thing, like saying you surely haven’t met the right man, or you’ll regret not being a mother. There are also a lot of rules—like you have to give consent for the procedure two weeks before you get it done. I have kids and I’ve also been sterilized.

In a chapter focused on organizing, you urged readers to focus on city councilmembers. I feel like the conversations around abortion restrictions has been focused heavily on state legislators and the U.S. Supreme Court.

The reason this book exists is to help take our attention off the bigger picture—which we’ve been paying attention to for a really long time. But national solutions are just not the best place for us to use our resources right now. My book is about drilling down as local as you can get, investing in your state, in your city, and in your local clinics.

One thing we’ve noticed about how power works is the more directly you’re involved in the area in which you can have real power, the more exponentially powerful that is. So for city councils, we’ve seen they are often the last bastion of protecting or ending access to abortion. We saw that when Whole Woman’s Health was trying to open a medication abortion clinic in Indiana. At first it was the city council that tried to block it, then the mayor overrode it, and then the city council tried to block it again. It’s now still going through lawsuits.

City councilmembers have say over things like zoning and noise ordinances, ensuring that buffer zones can be upheld. If there is a city council that is friendly toward abortion rights, that often impacts how the police will deal with people who protest and attend clinics.

Can you talk about the Pregnant Women’s Dignity Act?

The one thing we really need to do is get abortion out of the criminal code. One way to do that is through this law, the Pregnant Women’s Dignity Act, which is promoted by the Public Leadership Institute. It says if a person has any kind of poor birth outcome—it’s not her fault, it’s not something that should be investigated, this is not something that has a place of blame. It doesn’t matter if she did it on purpose, if it was by accident—it’s just a personal medical thing that has occurred and it does not involve the police or the courts.

You explore the idea of creating a new kind of infrastructure of housing, transportation, safety, and financial support for women who need to travel to get abortions in a post-Roe America.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Say that Roe is overturned and in Kentucky the state makes abortion completely illegal, and there’s just one remaining clinic. What happens to that clinic? Would that be a good place that you can then set up a hostel for women who need to then travel out of state to get an abortion? If Roe is overturned there will be no abortion in the entire Gulf area, no abortion in most of the Rust Belt. We’re talking about humongous chunks of the country. People are talking about how to make states like New York and Colorado these safe havens where people can go, but what’s the best way we can get people together so they can actually do it efficiently?

Can we bring all the people in the state of Kentucky together so they can all take a bus to Chicago together? Then none of them will have to worry about needing to drive. We have to think about how to work with systems that will be left, and how best to use it especially for those who aren’t going to have the funds to do long-distance travel.

Do you think we’ll increase the number of clinics in the future?

I’ve heard some people say, “Okay, we should build abortion clinics next to airports, so people can get off, get the procedure, and go right back home,” and my first thought was: Have these people tried to open a clinic lately?!

Just last [month] there was a piece in The Austin Chronicle about Whole Woman’s Health losing their Austin office, and they had spent months trying to find a new place they could move into. And this is in liberal Austin! There’s just so much pressure, no one wants to sell or lease their property to an abortion clinic.

I think for the most part what we have for clinics is as much as we’re going to get. And I don’t think that matters—I don’t think we should need as many abortion clinics. If people could just do it at home, as they should be able to especially with telemedicine, then we just need to have enough clinics that people can do follow-ups for later abortion or for people who can’t do it.

But haven’t studies shown that women prefer surgical abortion if they have the choice?

I totally understand why people would choose surgical abortion—you don’t have to worry about the follow-up, you don’t have to see the procedure, but if you look at Iowa, they had an extraordinarily successful telemedicine abortion program until [legislators] took it down. And what they discovered in Iowa was it didn’t increase the number of people having abortions, they just were able to have them earlier.

Your book also looks at the question of civil disobedience and direct action in a post-Roe America.

Yes, I think we’re going to see a lot more civil disobedience. There was a Mother Jones article recently about a woman who sold medication abortion online for years, and that finally got shut down by federal agents. The only thing that made the police finally get involved was because a man used the medication he bought from her to commit a crime.

As I was reading it I thought, how many people would need to start online websites, offering medication abortion for sale, before the FDA threw up their hands and said I can’t keep up with them all? That’s the kind of thing I’m thinking about. What’s the critical mass where so many people are breaking the law that it’s no longer feasible for authorities to keep up? And who are the right people to do it and how do we organize en masse?

What are some other examples of civil disobedience that you can imagine?

There’s a bill that was just reintroduced in Congress, and it comes up every year, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, or CIANA, which would make it a crime to transport a minor across state lines to get an abortion without parental consent. One of the best things NARAL ever did was they dubbed this the “Jail Grandma law.” They brought to mind a picture of a young girl who goes to a different state to get an abortion, and for some reason her parents couldn’t take her so her grandma takes her across the border. Are we really going to throw grandma in jail? That ground everything to a halt, and that is a perfect example of why we need old white ladies to do civil disobedience.

So the last thing I wanted to ask you about was surveillance, and why being conscious of that will be important in a post-Roe America.

One of the reasons it’s really important to pay attention to what you’re saying over open phone lines, over what you’re searching on Google, over text messages, is that when Purvi Patel was arrested in Indiana for allegedly inducing her own abortion, the state went back and forth on is this murder? Is this feticide? A lot of what they used against Patel were texts in her own phone. We need to be aware that if we do decide that it’s time to organize outside the legal bounds, or if someone is going to try to do an abortion outside of a legal clinical setting, that person will need to be really careful about what they put down in writing.

I’m someone who generally hated being pregnant, I did not have comfortable pregnancies. I don’t know how many times I texted someone saying, “God, I wish I wasn’t pregnant.” If I had had a miscarriage, what would stop some suspicious doctor or some overzealous prosecutor to say, hm, she had a miscarriage, I wonder if she induced her own abortion, and then found that text?

 

Arkansas’ Medication Abortion Ban Was Hit With a Temporary Restraining Order. Here’s What’s Next.

Originally published in Rewire News on June 20th, 2018.
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A federal judge on Monday granted a brief reprieve from an Arkansas law that dramatically restricts abortion access in the state by effectively banning medication abortion.

The first-of-its-kind statute would limit abortion access at all but one Arkansas health center. The law had been in effect since May 29, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined Planned Parenthood’s request to hear the case. The plaintiffs filed for emergency relief following the high court’s dismissal, and U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker agreed to grant them a two-week restraining order, which will expire at 5 p.m. on July 2.

But the battle to stop the law is far from over.

This fight began in the spring of 2015, when the GOP-majority Arkansas legislature passed Act 577, requiring physicians who prescribe drugs for non-surgical abortions to secure contracts with a second doctor who has hospital-admitting privileges. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association have both said there is “no medical basis” for such requirements, and abortion providers, especially those in conservative states, typically struggle to find hospitals willing to partner with them.

The law was set to take effect at the start of 2016, but on December 28, 2015, Planned Parenthood sued to block it. A temporary restraining order was issued on December 31 of that year, and three months later, Judge Baker issued a preliminary injunction as Planned Parenthood Great Plains continued with their lawsuit against the state.

An Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals panel in July 2017 lifted Baker’s injunction, asserting she would need to more concretely show how Arkansas women would be harmed by the admitting privileges law. A year earlier the Supreme Court overturned a package of abortion restrictions that included requirements for admitting privileges. The justices determined the rules posed an unconstitutional burden on Texan women seeking to end their pregnancies.

Planned Parenthood says that if the law were to take effect, its two abortion facilities in Little Rock and Fayetteville would no longer be able to provide medication abortion. Neither of those facilities provide surgical abortions.

The health care provider requested the Eighth Circuit’s full bench of judges review the panel’s July ruling, but in late September, the appellate court declined the request. The Eighth Circuit is one of the most conservative appellate courts in the country; two years earlier its judges recommended that the U.S. Supreme Court “re-evaluate its jurisprudence” on abortion, urging for greater state power over reproductive health.

The next step for the plaintiffs was petitioning the Supreme Court to review the Eighth Circuit’s decision. The appellate court agreed to keep the preliminary injunction in place in the meantime, which meant the law has not been enforced all year. But at the end of May, the Supreme Court finally responded to Planned Parenthood’s petition and declined to intervene. This set the law into immediate effect.

Planned Parenthood quickly filed for a temporary restraining order, a request which was finally granted this week. In a press statement, Planned Parenthood said that beginning on May 29, “health center staff were forced to immediately call patients to inform them they would no longer be able to access their medication abortion.”

Some patients, according to Planned Parenthood, were already en route to their appointments, and others were “left scrambling to alter their work and child care schedules, and to secure additional funds required to undergo the state-mandated counseling process over again for a surgical abortion or to travel out of state, further delaying care.”

Emily Miller, director of communications for Planned Parenthood Great Plains, told Rewire.News that the next steps are not clear, though at least until July 2, when the temporary restraining order lifts, providers will again be able to provide medication abortion.

“We’re approaching it like we have a temporary restraining order that will run for fourteen days, and then we’ll focus on our next step which is the preliminary injunction,” Miller explained. “But we don’t know exactly what course the state will choose to take.” The state might try to skip the preliminary injunction step and go straight to a full hearing. Miller says if that does happen, the two-week restraining order could be extended.

Ever since the Eighth Circuit demanded the plaintiffs more clearly show how the admitting privileges law would affect patients, Planned Parenthood has worked to collect and document that information, Miller said.

Last month, research was released that sought to systematically evaluate the availability of abortion care and distance from all major U.S. cities. The study’s objective was to describe abortion facilities and services available in the country from the perspective of a potential patient searching online, and to find out which cities are farthest from available abortion care.

Alice Cartwright, project director at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health and co-author of the study, told Rewire.News that their research is exactly the kind of data plaintiffs could refer to if they returned to court.

“We found that abortion access is better in the northeast and western part of the country and one reason is they were more likely to have a higher proportion of clinics that were only providing medication abortion,” said Cartwright.

The organization’s research team worked to determine the number of cities with at least 50,000 people where patients would have to travel 100 miles or more to reach the closest abortion provider. As of spring 2017, they found 27 such cities in the US. Cartwright says if this Arkansas law were to take effect the number of cities could increase much more.

The rate of medication abortion has increased in popularity since the Food and Drug Administration first approved Mifeprex in 2000. The procedure typically involves using both Mifeprex—often referred to as “the abortion pill”—and a second drug, misoprostol. With access to surgical abortion diminishing at a rapid clip, medication abortion is recognized as a safe, much-needed health care alternative, especially for those living in rural and medically underserved parts of the US.

Arkansas and Hawaii Lawsuits Present Challenges and Opportunities For Medication Abortion

Originally published in The American Prospect on November 3, 2017.
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The U.S. abortion rate recently hit its lowest level since Roe v. Wade, but medication abortion—non-surgical abortions induced through drugs—has increased in popularity since the Food and Drug Administration first approved Mifeprex in 2000. (Medication abortions typically involve using both Mifeprex—colloquially known as “the abortion pill”—and another drug, misoprostol.)

Yet despite the proven efficacy of medication abortion for safely terminating early-stage pregnancies, a series of regulatory and statutory restrictions have prevented many women from being able to use this abortion option. Two different legal battles taking place right now—in Arkansas and Hawaii—illustrate why.

In 2015, Arkansas passed a law requiring physicians who prescribe drugs for non-surgical abortions to secure contracts with a second doctor who has hospital-admitting privileges. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association have both said that there is “no medical basis” for such mandates.

It can be difficult for abortion providers—especially ones in conservative states like Arkansas—to obtain admitting privileges, because hospitals tend to avoid partnerships that could produce a backlash from anti-choice groups. When Texas passed a law in 2013 requiring all abortion clinics to obtain hospital-admitting privileges and to meet ambulatory surgical center building standards, nearly half of the state’s clinics shut down soon afterward. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the package of restrictions in 2016, concluding they posed an unconstitutional burden on Texan women seeking to end their pregnancies.

In March 2016, U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker issued a preliminary injunctionblocking the Arkansas admitting-privileges law from taking effect while Planned Parenthood Great Plains sued the state. But this past July, an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals panel lifted Baker’s injunction, concluding that she would need to show more specifically how Arkansas women would be harmed by the law. Planned Parenthood maintains that its two abortion facilities in Little Rock and Fayetteville would no longer be able to provide medication abortion if this law were to take effect, and that neither of those centers provide surgical abortions.

Following the July decision, Planned Parenthood requested that the Eighth Circuit’s full bench of judges review the panel’s ruling. But in late September, the Eighth Circuit declined to do so. “The extremists who put this law into place will now be responsible for the lives they’ve put in harm’s way,” said Aaron Samuleck, the interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, after the September decision.

The Eighth Circuit is one of the most conservative appellate courts in the country. In 2015, its judges recommended that the U.S. Supreme Court “reevaluate its jurisprudence” on abortion, urging the high court to return greater reproductive decision-making power to the states.

Now Planned Parenthood Great Plains has notified the U.S Supreme Court that it intends to file what’s known as a petition for a writ of certiorari, which essentially means that the organization plans to ask the high court to review their case. When they do file their petition, Planned Parenthood also plans to also ask the Supreme Court to issue a preliminary injunction to block the admitting-privileges law from taking effect. Planned Parenthood has also gone back to the Eighth Circuit to ask that the appellate court refrain from enforcing the law while they petition the Supreme Court—a request the Eighth Circuit granted in mid-October. So for now, the law remains on hold.

Meanwhile, a very different sort of medication abortion challenge is under way in Hawaii. The FDA has Mifeprex (mifepristone) on its Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies list (REMS), a designation the government uses when it determines that increased restrictions are necessary for a drug’s benefit to outweigh its risks. Because the abortion pill is on the REMS list, the FDA can require that only certified medical professionals in hospitals, medical offices, or clinics administer it. In other words, women can’t fill a prescription for Mifeprex at their local pharmacy. But just as it can be difficult for abortion clinics to obtain hospital-admitting privileges because of political objections, many medical centers also encounter political resistance to stocking and distributing Mifeprex.

In early October, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the FDA, charging that the agency was both violating its own statutory authority, as well as the Constitution’s due process protections, by preventing commercial pharmacies from filling Mifeprex prescriptions. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a Hawaiian doctor on Kauai, who cannot stock Mifeprex in his office or direct women to nearby abortion clinics since there are none on the island. If patients come to him seeking early-stage abortions, he has to tell them to fly to another island for the procedure—something that can both increase a patient’s costs, as well as delay it for weeks, if not entirely.

Reproductive rights advocates say there’s no reason for the FDA to put Mifeprex on the agency’s list of particularly risky drugs. In 2016, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists stated that putting the abortion pill on the REMS list “is inconsistent with requirements for other drugs with similar or greater risks, especially in light of the significant benefit that mifepristone provides to patients.” In their new lawsuit, the ACLU argues that the restrictions are unscientific and onerous. They note that blood thinners, Viagra, and other drugs carry greater risks than Mifeprex, yet local pharmacies can fill prescriptions for these medications.

In an interview with The American Prospect, Julia Kaye, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, says the Arkansas and Hawaii cases target different issues, but ultimately revolve around the same core problems: “unconstitutional and unjustified” restrictions on reproductive health care.

Moreover, despite the FDA’s stated concern about possible risks, the agency does not even require patients to take Mifeprex at a designated health-care setting; they only must obtain it there. “There is simply no safety benefit to requiring that a patient be handed a pill at a clinic to then swallow it home, rather than [receiving it] at a pharmacy,” says Kaye. (Some health-care facilities prefer patients to take the medication on site, but the FDA doesn’t require it.) The FDA’s own research also concludes that medication abortion “has been increasingly used as its efficacy and safety have become well-established by both research and experience, and serious complications have proven to be extremely rare.”

“Often health-care providers are unable to stock the abortion pill because of bureaucratic hurdles, or because of opposition to abortion by co-workers,” explains Kaye, who adds that health-care providers must navigate multiple layers of institutional approval before they can administer the drug. “The process is not only complicated and time-consuming, but because there are so many individuals who need to sign off on procurement, even a single individual who objects to abortion can significantly delay or even derail stocking this medication,” she says.

While research suggests that women generally prefer surgical abortions (which tend to be faster procedures that involve less bleeding) over medication ones, many women are unable to access surgical abortions, due to the diminishing number of abortion clinics, as well as restrictions such as mandatory waiting periods. Medication abortion provides women with much-needed reproductive health-care alternatives—especially low-income women, and women living in conservative, rural, and medically underserved parts of the country.

An ACLU win in the Hawaii case would affect FDA restrictions on Mifeprex nationwide.