Roe v Wade has been overturned. How do you feel about that?

[N.E. Brigand]

Indeed:

[RoseMorninStar]

Certainly thought provoking. And on point.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Doctor Who Provided 10-Year-Old Ohio Rape Victim an Abortion After Supreme Court’s Dobbs Decision Sues Indiana AG

Good for her.

[Sunsilver]

Women with sickle cell disease are being placed at greatly increased risk by Roe v. Wade being overturned. Since sickle cell occurs almost exclusively in black women, this is increasing the risk for women who are ALREADY at a higher risk of dying or suffering serious health issues during pregnancy than white women.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/98 ... ID=4825130

[N.E. Brigand]

"A Michigan judge tried to block an abortion rights measure. His ex-wife says he helped her get an abortion in college." (NBC)

The hypocritical state supreme court judge, Brian Zahra, dissented from that court's decision to allow a pro-choice state constitutional amendment onto the ballot.

He himself is up for reelection this year. His campaign is supported by anti-abortion groups. May he and they get the thorough rejection that they deserve.

[N.E. Brigand]

NPR reports on Louisiana doctors refusing to treat women for possible miscarriage because of the risk of being investigated for violating state abortion laws. One woman who was having "symptoms she hadn't dealt with in her first pregnancy: mild cramping and spotting" called a physician at eight weeks and was told, "We now no longer see women until they're at least 12 weeks" into pregnancy. At eleven weeks, the symptoms had gotten much worse, so she went to an emergency room and was told her fetus had stopped growing at least three weeks earlier, i.e., "she was miscarrying. But hospital staff wouldn't definitively confirm it and didn't explain what treatment options she'd have if she was having a miscarriage." She went to a different ER, where she was told that if it was a miscarriage, they couldn't treat her, because the same methods used to treat miscarriage are also used to cause abortions. Fortunately, she later passed the fetus at home and survived. She subsequently obtained her charts from teh second hopsital, on which she found medical staff had indeed written that "it appears that she is having a miscarriage. She and her husband had wanted to have more kids, but after this experience, they've decided against it.

This is the world Republicans want, in which couple are afraid to have kids.

[RoseMorninStar]

Additionally, not all miscarriages (ie: spontaneous abortions) are complete and can cause all kinds of medical havoc, infections, etc.. if not attended to.

[Frelga]

I said after the elections that Republicans shot themselves in the dick with Dobbs.

Up until then, conservative women opposed abortion with the understanding that it will still be available to them if they need it. Now it's starting to sink in that it isn't.

And conservative men were unaware of what women know but rarely discuss - that potentially life-threatening complications of pregnancy are a rule rather than an exception. Many of these are relatively minor but require a therapeutic abortion to stay that way.

[N.E. Brigand]

The FDA approved the use of the medical abortion drug mifepristone (RU-486) in 2000. Today a federal judge in Texas ruled that the FDA was wrong and that the drug therefore cannot be used. Later today a federal judge in Washington state ruled in a different case basically the opposite, but only in certain states.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Both decisions are ridiculous, for different reasons.

[N.E. Brigand]

Both decisions are ridiculous, for different reasons.

I noticed Jonathan Adler said something similar. The timing of the second one sure was curious!

[N.E. Brigand]

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, issued a statement about the ruling from Texas, in which he says "There is no way this decision has a basis in law ... I believe the Food and Drug Administration has the authority to ignore this ruling."

More than 25 Democratic Senators have issued statements criticizing the ruling. Thus far just one Republican Senator has issued a statement supporting it.

(Edited to add: in general, and even in this case -- because I think there are other steps the Biden administration can still take to protect women's right in this matter -- I don't think it's a good idea to encourage people to just ignore judges. But I wouldn't say that such comments would always be out of line. It is possible for a judge to go too far.)

[N.E. Brigand]

"A Texas woman was forced to give birth to a baby missing part of its brain and skull. Then -- because the state that forced her to give birth doesn't have public funds for infant funerals -- she had to raise money to lay her daughter to rest."

[N.E. Brigand]

Elie Mystal points out in the Nation that "mifepristone has been shown to be safer than Viagra, a drug that can be used by men to cause unwanted pregnancies."

[Jude]

Glancing at the article, it looks like the drug can be used to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

[elengil]

Glancing at the article, it looks like the drug can be used to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

I believe they meant that Viagra is the drug that can cause unwanted pregnancies.

[N.E. Brigand]

Update from last night:

In a late-night order on April 12, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit partially granted, and partially denied, the FDA’s motion to stay the district court’s order overturning the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. The two-judge majority, composed of Judges Kurt Engelhardt and Andrew Oldham, stayed the district court’s decision with respect to the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in 2000. However, it declined to stay the district court’s decision with respect to more recent actions by the FDA. Most notably, in 2016, the FDA relaxed certain restrictions on mifepristone: it increased the gestational age limit from 49 to 70 days, reduced the number of required in-person clinic visits to one, and allowed healthcare providers other than doctors to prescribe it. The district court overturned that decision by the FDA, and the Fifth Circuit denied the FDA’s motion to stay that aspect of the district court’s decision. (The third judge, Judge Catharina Haynes, would have temporarily stayed the district court’s entire order until a merits panel could consider the case more thoroughly.)

The linked source, which to be sure is an opinion piece, analyzes the new ruling. Here's a portion:

The Fifth Circuit began by addressing associational standing. At a high level of generality, the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning goes like this:

Lots of women use mifepristone (p. 12).

Statistically speaking, some fraction of those women will go to the emergency room (p. 13).

Statistically speaking, some fraction of the women who go to the emergency room will see the plaintiff-doctors (p. 13).

The plaintiff-doctors are harmed by seeing these women, because they have to devote “significant time and resources to caring” for them (p. 14), face “enormous stress and pressure” (p. 14), and face an “irreconcilable choice between performing their jobs and abiding by their consciences” (p. 16).

“Given how many women those doctors have seen in emergency departments in the past, these doctors quite reasonably know with statistical certainty … that women will continue needing plaintiffs’ ‘emergency care.’” (p. 17). The panel characterizes this as a “crisis” that is “concededly ongoing.” (p. 18).

“Even if one of the named doctors never sees another patient, it’s inevitable that one of the thousands of doctors in plaintiff associations will.” (p. 18).

The U.S. Department of Justice is appealing the new ruling to the Supreme Court.

[N.E. Brigand]

Meanwhile the federal judge in Washington state who issued a contrary ruling last week -- but one which only applies to 17 states -- has issued a new ruling that states flatly that his previous ruling is not affected by the national injunction issued by another federal judge in Texas that was partly upheld by the Fifth Circuit last night.

[N.E. Brigand]

And in Florida, the state legislature today passed a six-week abortion ban. Will Gov. Ron DeSantis sign it into law?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

To be more pedantically correct, the DOJ is seeking emergency relief from the SCOTUS.



Meanwhile, the judge in the Washington state case has made it clear that for the 17 states that his order applies to the status quo for mifepristone must be maintained irrespective of the 5th Circuit opinion.



____________

Meanwhile,



ETA - crossposted with NEB who beat me to the latter news.