The legal challenges to medication abortion continue and
we've got some pretty significant updates on them.
There was a big hearing on Wednesday, and the most important fact you need to know
so that you can sort of try to figure out how this is gonna go.
Is that the venue for
that hearing was the ultra-conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
It's considered one of the most conservative in the country.
It's consistently ruled against the DOJ under the Biden administration.
All three judges are Republican appointees but I don't know why that matters.
Why are we mentioning that?
Because judges are not like regular political actors like you and I.
They're legal angels flapping above all of the muck of politics and
just casting down divine judgments.
No, they're political actors and some of them are pretty obvious about it.
So the case that they're considering right now involves an argument that
the FDA was wrong to have approved the abortion drug mifepristone back in
the year 2000 under the regulatory pathwork that it did.
Because as they argue,
it was classified pregnancy as an illness and it's not an illness.
And so because of that word choice thing, this drug that has been proven over
the course of decades in this country and in nearly 200 countries around
the world to be incredibly safe and reliable, should just be banned.
That's their argument.
It's a word choice thing.
It's not a convincing word choice thing because one of the lawyers for
the manufacturers of the pill says that the FDA uses the words illness, condition,
and disease interchangeably.
So it's wrong to say that the agency was calling pregnancy an illness.
It would under this definition be a condition which I think we can all
agree it is.
And at the end of the day, what does it matter which word you use?
I think the FDA knew what pregnancy was at that point but they believe that this
is all that should be required to get these conservative judges to overturn it.
And considering who the judges are and what they've said in the past,
they might actually be on to something.
Judge James Ho, who we broke down earlier in the week, said,
is pregnancy a serious illness?
When we celebrated Mother's Day, were we celebrating illness?
Which is a thing, like I said, that Judge Ho said.
It could have also been something from the monologue of Jesse Waters about
this story.
It's exactly the same sort of thing from the exact same sort of political actor.
But this is just to prep you for what is likely to be a really harsh reception for
those who want this pill to continue to be allowed.
We have more details.
We'll get to those.
But Miranda, what do you think about this?
>> I think that it's not surprising but it is disappointing to see someone
try to use semantics as a way to further take away any of women's rights.
And the fact that illness, condition, and disease are used interchangeably.
But we have to ignore that and
then bring up celebrating the illness of Mother's Day is as laughable as
it is a despicable argument that I feel like does not belong in a court.
>> Yeah, well, one would hope and probably wouldn't get you far in many courts.
But they of course as this is common, not just on the right, they have very
selectively chosen the path that they think is going to be best for them.
And by the way, we're gonna give you more bad news I guess,
it doesn't mean that they're gonna win.
Here they're almost certainly gonna win.
But the Supreme Court, they made a little move I think two weeks ago that seemed to
imply that they might not be ready to outright ban this because that's bananas.
So we might in the end see reason win out.
But we have a tough road for the next couple of steps at least.
Judge Jennifer Elrod decided to repeat the anti-abortion claim that
mifepristone affects the quote, nutrition of the embryo or fetus.
Saying that it's a synthetic steroid that blocks the hormone progesterone,
halts nutrition, and ultimately starves the unborn human until death.
The fact that she and
the other conservative judges in the court are constantly using terms like person or
unborn human and all that, they're anti-abortion activists.
That's all they are.
They happen to wear black robes.
But other than that, they have bought into all of the arguments so
that's what you could expect.
They did indicate at one point and
I guess this is the good news that we have for you.
That they are considering the DOJ's arguments that the challengers are time
barred from challenging the drug,
the approval by the FDA because it happened 23 years ago.
That seems reasonable.
I would say the fact that it was 23 years ago seems less important than
the fact that it has been demonstrated to be one of the safest,
most reliable drugs on the market.
Far more safe, and by that I mean less likely to cause serious side effects than
the sort of drugs that are probably in your medicine cabinet right now.
And that is not just our experience.
It is available basically everywhere where reason reigns in the world.
But we'll see if that's actually convincing to them.
Any more thoughts, Miranda, before we move on?
>> Yeah, it goes to show that it's never about what they say.
It's about, you know what I mean?
It's about pro life and they have to use words like unborn human and fetus.
But I just did a video the other day about the lies that they spread about abortion
and the use of the word infanticide.
It is a fetus and even when there are complications,
they're arguing for reasons to not help the mother,
even when if it could be a possible miscarriage, if there are complications.
So it's not about what they say, it's about ever.
And like you said, they're just activists in black robes.
>> Yeah, so Trump recently said that it's become very common on the right
to claim that the Democrats want abortion up to the ninth month and
maybe even later which obviously is ridiculous.
No prominent politician, no prominent anything is calling for that.
And that matters that they would tell a lie so ridiculous as that.
Because if they genuinely believed that what is
actually being discussed is horrendous and radical,
why would they go to the trouble of making up something that isn't true?
They don't actually think that they've got a winner of an argument thus they
have to lie.
They know how radical they seem.
They've seen the electoral consequences of all of that already and
they're incredibly worried about the electoral consequences to come in 2024.
And so their only strategy is to try to invent a Democratic party and
a reproductive rights movement that is seen as radical as they are.
That's gonna be difficult because it's not true.
But hey, with AI voice replacement and all that, maybe they can come up with some
quotes that sound as bad as the stuff that routinely comes out of their own mouth.
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