As predicted, the abortion rights debate has now become everyone’s crisis.
Millions of Americans sympathize with the plight of women turned into second-class citizens by the so-called Supreme Court Dobbs decision. The radical 2022 high-court ruling ended the decades-old Roe-vs-Wade protection of women’s medical privacy and equality.
What’s happened since was ensuing chaos widely predicted as states ruled by far-right conservative legislatures began invoking women’s healthcare restrictions with all the zeal and consideration of the Taliban.
In states like Texas, Florida and Idaho, it’s been a race to the bottom to turn back the clock to a time when American women were treated like livestock, and not people. It continues to become worse almost daily in Republican-held legislatures across the country. That, despite the unwavering opinion of Americans insisting that abortion is health care, and an issue to be decided by women and their health care providers — not politicians and government officials.
Since the Dobbs decision, the nation has seen a marked increase in the growing majority of Americans who consider themselves pro-choice, currently 55% — up 7 points in two years. The number of Americans who consider themselves pro-life has dropped dramatically, from 47% to 39% during that same time, according to recent Gallup polling results.
While pundits make it clear that abortion rights has driven many voters in the past year, across the country, to choose candidates seeking to protect women’s rights to healthcare, anti-abortion rights legislators and governors persist in decimating women’s liberty.
In states like Texas, women face critical illness and death suffering from ectopic pregnancies, unable to receive proper medical care.
And now, an activist Trump-appointed judge in Amarillo, Texas has taken the abortion-rights fight to a level that endangers the rights and health of not just millions of American women facing pregnancy, but every one of us.
Anti-abortion zealots have shopped a lawsuit to lone Federal District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo.
“Why Amarillo?” the Associated Press writes in explaining the importance of the case. “Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, is the sole district court judge there, ensuring that all cases filed in the west Texas city land in front of him. Since taking the bench, he has ruled against the Biden administration on several other issues, including immigration and LGBTQ protections.”
The very definition of an activist judge, Kacsmaryk ruled that the FDA more than 20 years ago mistakenly approved mifepristone, a drug used in medical abortions.
Courts don’t approve drugs, the FDA does.
What anti-abortion zealots are trying to do is allow the courts to usurp the role of the government in regulating medications. Either accidentally or by design, the case would set a perilous precedent in allowing politics to dictate American healthcare instead of science.
If successful in pursuing this activist role promoting both legal and medical quackery, every pharmaceutical decision made by the FDA would be subject to the whims of every other madcap federal judge in the country.
Immediately, the ruling could end women’s access to the provenly safe drug even in states outside of Texas, increasing the reach of Texas anti-abortion zealots into Colorado and across the nation.
It’s almost certain the case will land in the Supreme Court, where a bench purposely filled with anti-abortion activist justices could likely rule as illogically and dangerously here as they did in overturning Roe vs Wade last year.
This is a job for Congress. Lawmakers must make clear that women’s healthcare is no more a matter for the whims of misogynist lawmakers than that of men.
Personal attitudes about abortion should not defeat the right to medical privacy any more than medical care for the elderly fighting cancer or children seeking corrective surgery.
Regardless of how the Supreme Court and this Amarillo judge have ruled, women have a right to medical privacy just like everyone else, and Congress has a duty to ensure it.
No mistaking the inflammatory rhetoric here!
Perhaps the ‘editorial board’ missed the fact that the medical community brought this suit, citing that the procedure for approving this drug was skipped in the politic of approving this drug? And that the medical community saw harm to patients?
And this is not the only oral abortifacient available
Of course not! It goes against the official leftist narrative.
This drug was approved in 2000. There was a six-year statute of limitations in which to challenge it. It expired in 2006. The court had no authority to even hear this case. It did so anyway.
To bring a lawsuit, the plaintiff must have standing, meaning that harm is being done to that plaintiff. None of the plaintiffs perform abortions, nor do they prescribe this drug, nor have they been personally or professionally harmed in any way. They have no standing. The court let them proceed anyway.
This is a lawless case, being time-barred and having no plaintiff with standing. This case was decided by a judge who had no lawful authority to do so.
Maybe you should stick to subjects you know something about.
Read the ruling if you want to see real rhetoric!
AND, this drug has been in use for 20 years – it’s proven very safe and effective.
AND, this judge, well, google him.
AND, the plaintiff incorporated in this judge’s jurisdiction just after the Roe decision.
Rhetoric. Yes, the plaintiff in this case is guilty. This editorial, not so much.
Spoken as a true “fact less” idiot!!
Perhaps a woman federal judge should issue an order banning
Viagra! I bet you and your cohorts would willingly accept that. As a matter of “fact”, Viagra is more harmful than the abortion pill, that this “Einstein, no medical doctor” judge in Texas decided.
A reading of the opinion in this case makes it clear that the judge who authored it doesn’t understand the law or Supreme Court precedent. It is so bad that one attorney said it’s not only hard to believe that a judge actually wrote it, it would be hard to believe that a lawyer wrote it.
The opinion shows the judge does not understand basic concepts like “standing to bring a lawsuit”, he doesn’t understand how even statutes of limitation work. The limitations period ran many years ago, and totally bar the lawsuit being brought now. The plaintiffs do meet the requirement of standing to even bring such a lawsuit. Time and again in the opinion this judge shows he will use any source, no matter how unreliable or downright false that source is, to justify this lawless opinion, including anonymous posts to an anti-abortion website. A first-year law student writing this opinion would be advised to find another, any other, line of work.
It would be laughable were it not so dangerous to innocent doctors and women, and to women’s health. It must be reversed, and as quickly as possible.
“A reading of the opinion in this case makes it clear that the judge who authored it doesn’t understand the law or Supreme Court precedent”
Translation: “This goes against my political ideology, therefore I’m going to indulge in pejoratives.”
My daughters should always have access to safe and effective abortion medicine. This is an insane ruling.
Jeff’s complaining about the supposed legalities of the decision, not whether it’s available or not.
This is the prevailing opinion among the majority of attorneys.
If you think they’re wrong, tell us why.
“This is the prevailing opinion among the majority of attorneys.”
Oh? Every single attorney in the country was polled on this? Regardless, this is nothing more than appeal to authority, not an actual argument.
“If you think they’re wrong, tell us why.”
If you’re making the argument, it’s automatically wrong.
Bottom line: Once again we have judges (and lawmakers, and governors, and presidents) practicing medicine without a clue, [de]prescribing for patients the’ve never even met, and backing this medical opinion with the force of law … yes, people carrying badges and guns!!! Does anyone out there CARE that Mifepristone is also used to treat diabetes?!?
“Anything goes, as long as it’s supported by the left” is hardly a prescription for a stable society, Bennett. Your side’s decades-long indulgence in repressive tolerance is the opposite of sane social practice.
‘repressive tolerance’? Sounds like an oxymoron – emphasis on moron. Definition please.
It was a whole essay by your political ally Herbert Marcuse, Gene. Maybe when you talk about morons, you should look in a mirror.
So, unable to define, eh?
So, unable to read a complex work, eh? That’s okay, I’ll quote the relevant passage, but invert it.
Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Left and toleration of movements from the Right. As to the scope of this tolerance and intolerance: … it would extend to the stage of action as well as of discussion and propaganda, of deed as well as of word.
“Repressive tolerance” is an oxymoron.
Ahh, the marxists once again exercising tactical ignorance–or maybe they just aren’t as well-read as they pretend to be.
How about this-
Any man involved in an unwanted or unsafe pregnancy must do the following:
-Ingest a drug every morning to cause vomiting.
-Drop out of school or quit work to handle every problem of a pregnancy, then take a low-paying job because you missed other opportunities.
-Wear a fifty-pound prosthetic belly, and have his breasts injected with saline until they feel like they will burst.
-Walk around in too-small shoes.
-Drink a gallon of water every two hours so his bladder feels like it will explode.
-Have leg veins injected so they become varicose.
SHALL I GO ON? These are normal conditions that women who WANT TO BE PREGNANT are willing to endure. How is any of this FAIR for an accidental or unsafe/unviable pregnancy? Men should have absolutely no say in anything about women’s reproductive systems. You guys are doing SUCH GOOD JOBS ABOUT WARS, it isn’t inspiring confidence.
Who speaks for he main victim, the child?