Update on abortion after a week-long break
There is always news, even when it's not being reported.
I took a lovely few days off, but I didn’t stop monitoring what happened with abortion rights in the country and world. It’s essential to make time for ourselves, even in the face of the uncertain landscape of reproductive rights. The problems will still be there when you wake up or get back from vacation. Anyway, I’ll bring everyone up to speed if they missed anything.
The Missouri Supreme Court blocked access to abortion after lifting an injunction issued by a lower court judge. The state had passed an amendment last year that protected abortion access.
Tom Bastian, spokesman for the ACLU of Missouri, sent me a statement on the matter.
“The Missouri Supreme Court issued an order clarifying the legal standard to grant a preliminary injunction. In doing so, the orders blocking Missouri’s abortion ban and other restrictions have been temporarily vacated,” Bastian said. “We will be in communication with the court promptly, highlighting that our arguments met this standard, and we anticipate new orders complying with the peremptory writ and granting the preliminary injunctions blocking the ban and restrictions, once again allowing Missourians access to abortion care.”
Bastian also sent me a correspondence to the court, which I have attached below.
Missouri’s antiabortion Attorney General Andrew Bailey hailed it as a victory. He said the restrictions the state had enacted protected women from unqualified medical practitioners, moldy equipment, and a lack of plans for medical complications. He said Planned Parenthood had a sordid history of subverting state law.
“The law is clear. The evidence is overwhelming. And Missouri will enforce every word of it,” Bailey said in a news release. “This ruling is a win for common sense, for basic medical safety, and for the sanctity of human life. We will continue to hold Planned Parenthood accountable, and we will always fight to protect women, children, and the rule of law.
Abortion pill creator dies
Étienne-Émile Baulieu, the researcher behind the development of the abortion pill, died at the age of 98 at his home in Paris on Friday.
Baulieu had conducted research with people who had developed the birth control pill. During that time, he and others envisioned using progesterone to cause a pregnancy to end. He was contracted to work with Roussel Uclaf, a French pharmaceutical company. That work eventually led to the development of RU-486, which is now known as mifepristone. It was completed by 1980, but it took eight tumultuous years in Europe to gain approval for widespread use.
If you’re interested in that history and the development of medication abortion, read Carrie Baker’s fantastic work, Abortion Pills: US History and Politics, which I featured in this newsletter back in January.
She told me that he had been involved in the early stages of conceptualizing a progesterone blocker that could cause an abortion. He had studied with some of the people who developed the birth control pill. Out of that grew his idea for what became known as RU-486.
“People have talked about him as the father of the abortion pill,” Baker said to me.
Texas bill dies
According to the Texas Tribune, an oppressive abortion ban failed to pass in the state legislature. It called for punishments of up to life in prison for assisting or funding abortions, including those out of state. If a person provided information on abortion, they could be sued for $100,000 for each violation. The bill also imposed penalties on judges who find abortion bans unconstitutional and lawyers who bring challenges to them.
SB 2880 passed the Senate easily last month despite concerns from Democrats, but had languished in the House State Affairs committee before it passed out at the last minute. The report didn’t reach the committee that schedules bills for the House floor in time to meet the Tuesday deadline.