by Charles Siegel

Last week the Supreme Court temporarily restored access to mifepristone, one of two drugs commonly used in combination to terminate pregnancy. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the most conservative circuit court of appeals in the country, had halted shipments of mifepristone while weighing a suit by the state of Louisiana. For now, at least, shipments will resume while the case proceeds in the Fifth Circuit, and possibly in the Supreme Court as well.
The case is another in the endless series of battles over abortion access that have played out in the years since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org. The point of Dobbs, as Justice Alito so solemnly intoned, was to “return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” But that is not what the implacable foes of women’s reproductive rights want at all.
In the four years since Dobbs, they have tried, in every way imaginable, to subvert the will of the people. They have poured billions of dollars worth of lobbying and litigation into this effort, and will never stop.
Take Missouri, for example. Two years after Dobbs, voters approved an amendment to the state constitution, enshrining the right to abortion. Yet Republican legislators immediately sued to invalidate it, and have sought to place a contradictory referendum on the ballot soon too. Similar fights have occurred in Kansas, Arizona and elsewhere.
And they’re not content with trying to undo the actual votes of the people in state after state. Read more »





David Hammons. Untitled, Ca. 1990.











