{O} ver one year has passed since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and empowered the people and their elected lawmakers to address the issue of abortion. That tectonic shift has exposed the latent radicalism of the far left’s near-religious commitment to abortion, whatever the cost.
That commitment will now be put to the test before the Supreme Court.
On August 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued its latest ruling in the Alliance Defending Freedom case Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The court found that the FDA likely acted illegally in its 2016 elimination of several longstanding safeguards governing the prescription and administration of the chemical abortion drug mifepristone, and in its 2021 complete removal of any requirement that patients see a certified prescriber at all before or after ingesting the drug. The court found the FDA made these changes without properly studying their effect on women’s health and safety. On December 13, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case before its current term ends in June 2024.
The upshot is that the Fifth Circuit’s decision will, if allowed to stand, reinstitute the same prescribing rules in place throughout all but the final year of the Obama administration. Those safeguards include requirements that only practicing physicians prescribe mifepristone, and that prescribers report non-fatal adverse events caused by mifepristone use. The court’s ruling also would reinstate the requirement that patients have an in-person visit with a certified prescriber to screen for potential complicating factors — a safeguard that governed mifepristone use for over two decades, but that the Biden administration repealed.
One would think that even the most ardent advocates of abortion on demand would acknowledge the logic of the Fifth Circuit’s decision to curb the FDA’s unlawful — and politically motivated — elimination of even basic protections for women using mifepristone. But the prevailing pro-abortion extremism allows no room for such common sense.
Vice President Kamala Harris called the Fifth Circuit’s decision “a threat to a woman’s freedom to make decisions about her own body” that “endangers our entire system of drug approval and regulation.” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dutifully described the decision as part of an unidentified series of “unprecedented attacks on women’s health.” And Representative Ayana Pressley declared that if the Supreme Court allows the Fifth Circuit’s ruling to go into effect, vulnerable communities “will suffer devastating consequences.”
Former president Barack Obama may be surprised to learn that, for seven years of his administration, the health of women and vulnerable communities was under “unprecedented attack” and at risk of “devastating consequences” because of policies enforced by his own FDA for the vast majority of his presidency.
These statements by leading pro-abortion politicians, however, are indicative of the Left’s recent lurch into even greater abortion extremism. Recall that, in 1992, President Bill Clinton declared that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Fast-forward to 2020, when then-candidate Joe Biden ran on a platform announcing a commitment to “protecting and advancing reproductive health, rights, and justice,” and promising to “codify the right to reproductive freedom” in federal law. That platform recognizes no limitations on abortion — even up to the point of birth. Saying the quiet part out loud, several prominent politicians, including New York mayor Eric Adams, Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman, and Arizona governor Katie Hobbs, have expressly embraced a “no limits” position on abortion.
That extreme position stands at odds with Americans’ complicated and evolving views about abortion. A Gallup poll reveals that only 34 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal “under any circumstances.” Contrast that with the 49 percent of Americans who believe abortion should be legal “only in a few” (36 percent) or “illegal in all” (13 percent) circumstances. Tellingly, only 37 percent support abortion during the second trimester of pregnancy, and that number falls to 22 percent for the third trimester. And, as revealed in another Gallup poll, 59 percent of Americans oppose mifepristone’s availability as a prescription drug in the United States.
Despite these nuanced views held by the American public, the far left remains undeterred in seeking to impose its extreme abortion policies on the nation. That effort is best illustrated by the series of state-level ballot initiatives, including a recent successful initiative in Ohio, that would institutionalize pro-abortion policies which lie far to the left of most voters, who consistently reject unrestricted abortion-on-demand regimes that resemble those of North Korea and China.
Gone are the days when the Left embraced “safe, legal, and rare.” And gone are the days when the Left agreed that a woman taking mifepristone was required to see a doctor at least once before undergoing a potentially life-threatening chemically induced abortion. Instead, post-Dobbs, leftists are ideologically committed to abortion no matter the cost to society or women. Improbably, the Clinton and Obama administrations look less radical by comparison.