Mifepristone after Friday's two federal court decisions
What we know. And a quick recap of Florida + Wisconsin.
It’s one of the most confusing and unprecedented moments for medication abortion in American history, following the release of two conflicting federal court decisions released last night in Texas and Washington state.
I have an explainer at Vox today on what we know, what the implications of the decision are, methods for obtaining an abortion, and other pending lawsuits around mifepristone still awaiting decisions. You can read it here, and if you have any other questions after finishing the article please let me know. We’ll be continuing to report on this and if you have any question I promise you many others have the same one.
Also this week: Wisconsin elected a new state supreme court judge who is committed to protecting abortion rights. The liberal candidate, Janet Protasiewicz, won her election in a competitive battleground state by 11 percentage points, and abortion rights and gerrymandering were at the heart of the election. Her opponent, Daniel Kelly, notably never mentioned abortion in his TV ads and campaigned very little on the issue, despite having long opposed abortion. He correctly recognized though that emphasizing his opposition would not be popular with voters. (Highly recommend journalist Rebecca Traister’s New York magazine cover story last month about the political salience of abortion in elections.)
On the flip side, this week the Florida state senate approved a six-week abortion ban, and the Florida House is supposed to vote on its version next week. Gov. Ron DeSantis declared last month he’d sign it into law. This is an extreme and radical measure that effectively amounts to a total ban, since many people don’t know they’re pregnant after six weeks, and even if you did, Florida lawmakers are imposing so many barriers to getting an abortion (including a ban on telehealth, a requirement for two in-person visits with a provider and a 24-hour waiting period) it would be virtually impossible to do any of that within 6 weeks. I had a story on Wednesday about what’s going on in Florida, how it would impact people across the South. Ron DeSantis, as I’m sure readers of this newsletter know, is one of the leading candidates for the White House in 2024, and his eagerness to flex his anti-abortion bonafides ahead of his Republican presidential primary, is both awful and unsurprising.
Thanks for reading, we’ll continue to cover these developments next week