Dinner Table Digest: Abortion Edition № 3
Restrictions on Medication Access in the U.S. + Access Challenges in Ontario
It’s been a while since I put together a Dinner Table Digest: Abortion Edition, and I never did get around to putting together progressive responses to Dobbs ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States, which repealed Roe v. Wade, the court ruling that granted protection to abortion services up to the ill-defined ‘age of viability.’ In the months since the Dobbs ruling, right wing abortion opponents have been tightening their noose around reproductive rights more generally - ending Roe v Wade was, for many anti-abortion activists, just the beginning. Progressive responses to the new regime have, however, remained muted. While there are a variety of possible reasons for this, one of them, in my view, is that progressives generally have an optimistic view about the future - they tend to think that once things simmer down, we’ll return to a world of incremental progress, where rights are slowly strengthened over time, a natural progression of history, if you will. For my part, I think this rosy view is mistaken. I think that if history provides us with any lessons, we’re going to find that things are far more likely to get worse - much worse - before they get better.
This post is exclusively for Paid Supporters. As a disabled person without a regular income, I am deeply grateful for every person who gives $5 month to help keep Dinner Table Don’ts afloat. I couldn’t do this without knowing that my work is valued, and nothing says “your work is valued” quite like taking out a subscription.
Dobbs Was Always Just the Beginning - Dahlia Lithwick, Mark Joseph Stern - Slate
This first piece from Slate’s resident Supreme Court expert Dahlia Lithwick, describes one of the ways that anti-abortionists in the United States are turning up the heat on reproductive rights, in attempting to do what’s never been done before - have a single judge in a remote part of Texas effectively override FDA approval of a prescription medication.
… less than a year after the fall of Roe, conservative activists are trying to put the issue of abortion access into the hands of a single man for whom no one ever voted: a federal judge in Texas named Matthew Kacsmaryk. In the coming weeks, there is a very real possibility that Kacsmaryk will single-handedly outlaw medication abortion in all 50 states, massively disrupting access to reproductive health care across the entire country. Worse, there is a substantial likelihood that higher courts—including the Supreme Court—will let him get away with it. …
The suit was filed in the remote Amarillo division of the Northern District of Texas. No, there’s no specific connection between Amarillo and abortion pills. The plaintiffs only filed there because they were guaranteed to draw a single judge: Kacsmaryk, whom Donald Trump placed on the bench in 2019. Before donning his robe, Kacsmaryk served as deputy general counsel at the far-right First Liberty Institute, where he fought LGBTQ equality, abortion, and contraception. (He once said that being transgender is a “delusion” and scorned “secular libertines” who sacrifice children to their “erotic desires.”) Since his confirmation, he has gained a reputation as perhaps the most lawless jurist in the country.