Donald Trump
In case you missed it, reporting by HuffPost called out Donald Trump for the pivotal role he played in paving the path for the baseless attacks on mifepristone access in the United States.
The article details how, despite Trump’s silence on the pending Supreme Court case and his attempts to tiptoe around his far-right allies’ plans to roll back access to mifepristone and even IVF, “Trump’s fingerprints are all over the attack ― in particular, the many ‘beautiful judges,’ in his words, whom he put on the federal bench during his four years in office.”
“If Trump makes it back into the White House, women’s reproductive freedoms are on the chopping block,” said Think Big America communications director Christina Amestoy. “Trump paved the way for the downfall of Roe, celebrated its end, and is now standing back and standing by as his far-right, anti-choice allies use the roadmap to inch closer to a national abortion ban.”
Read the full article here and key excerpts below:
Trump Remains Silent On SCOTUS Abortion Pill Case, But His Fingerprints Are All Over It
Despite his best efforts to appear uninvolved in the Supreme Court mifepristone case, Trump helped engineer the attack.
By: Alanna Vagianos
Access to abortion pills has dominated national headlines this week, as the Supreme Court heard a case that could roll back critical access to mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in medication abortion.
But presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has remained silent on the Supreme Court case. Trump’s campaign did not respond to HuffPost’s multiple requests for comment on whether the former president supports restricting access to mifepristone.
The decision to stay quiet likely has something to do with the Republican Party’s recent realization that rolling back reproductive rights, including abortion care and in vitro fertilization, is thoroughly unpopular. It’s no longer politically expedient for Republicans to center their campaigns on restricting abortion ― and Trump knows that.
However, despite his best efforts to appear uninvolved in the mifepristone case, Trump’s fingerprints are all over the attack ― in particular, the many “beautiful judges,” in his words, whom he put on the federal bench during his four years in office.
Most Americans know that the former president appointed the three conservative Supreme Court justices who were central in overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. Trump used to brag about it all the time. But Trump and his allies also engineered the mifepristone case, hand-picking the anti-abortion judges who moved a case with no standing to the highest court in the country.
In 2019, Trump nominated and confirmed U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a devout Christian with extreme anti-abortion beliefs, to a federal district court in Amarillo, Texas.
When the Biden administration appealed, the case was handed over to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, where two of the three judges on the panel were appointed by Trump. The panel partially upheld Kacsmaryk’s decision, ruling that mifepristone should be restricted from its current approval window of 10 weeks to seven weeks. The panel’s decision also ended telehealth visits where abortion pills are prescribed.
One Trump appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, wanted to go further, fully siding with Kacsmaryk’s decision to repeal the FDA’s mifepristone approval, which would effectively ban regulated use of the drug. Ho argued that doctors “delight in working with their unborn patients, and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted.”
Both Ho and Kacsmaryk claimed it was illegal to send medication abortion through the mail because of the Comstock Act, a 150-year-old law that criminalizes sending “obscene” materials in the mail, including items that relate to sexual health and contraception.
When Trump was in the White House, he and his administration appointed and worked with some of the nation’s most extreme anti-choice leaders who are now trying to ban abortion nationwide. His administration tried to limit access to medication abortion during the COVID-19 pandemic, asking the Supreme Court in 2020 to reinstate a requirement that would force women to obtain abortion pills in person.
The former president recently confirmed that he is considering support for a national abortion ban if reelected. And he’s working with many of the same anti-abortion leaders from his first administration, who have laid out a policy agenda that includes revoking FDA approval of mifepristone and reviving the Comstock Act.
Think Big America is a nonprofit organization launched by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. Think Big America is focused on protecting and expanding reproductive rights, building on the progress that Gov. Pritzker’s administration and its allies have made in Illinois, and taking the fight to right-wing extremists across the country.
