Ideally, a kid can talk to their parent(s) and include them in a decision to seek birth control. But not all parents are good parents.
https://bsky.app/profile/cvh.bsky.social/post/3knjs3ge2zo2u Two tidbits: -The father suing says his daughters have never tried and have no intention of trying to get contraceptives from a title x clinic, but somehow the case still has standing -his lawyer is the architect of SB 8–texas' abortion ban he says he can't possibly raise his children to abstain from sex if there's a possibility of them being able to get birth control without him knowing, which is a justification so flimsy as to be see-through.
I imagine that’s an awkward conversation. As a parent (which I’m not), I’d definitely agree that what you’re saying is the ideal. However, if a kid can avoid that conversation I think they’re likely to. I still think the parent would want to be informed and should be involved in the decision. I don’t know how these cases could be expanded to other healthcare, but again, I think the parents should be involved in decisions for minors. I’m totally open to being crucified/educated on this topic, I think it’s legitimately a dicey topic for states vs. parents
I mean should a 14 year old be allowed to acquire birth control (an objectively responsible choice) if a parent doesn't want them to have it? (Yes. The answer is yes, and I find nothing dicey about that whatsoever, but I also don't believe in telling teenagers they absolutely can't have sex and that they're garbage if they choose otherwise.)
Hormonal birth control doesn’t come with a zero risk of complications. I do think parents should have input on those discussions with minors. Does this 14 year old know about their family history of blood clots or cancers?
Federalists whinged for decades about substantive due process and the idea that the Constitution protects non-enumerated rights and now rush in line to protect a parent’s purported right to raise their child in the particular manner that they want to
no, but who said anything about condoms? I take no issue with dispersing condoms FWIW This is true but the parent should still be involved. If my 14 y/o doesn’t know about family history of diseases, or actively hides that information from the doctor, they shouldn’t have access to hormonal contraceptives. There is a reason these hormones require a prescription.
The ruling applies to all contraceptives and family planning services, not just the pill. Its reasoning is not remotely based on medical or scientific considerations.
Well if that’s the case, that’s just beyond stupid Edit: I’m not sure what you’re saying is true. Several websites mention only birth control, which colloquially is hormonal contraceptives. This website says that emergent care and condoms are not affected. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/...ent-for-birth-control-following-court-ruling/
the term used throughout the statute and the court’s ruling is “contraceptives and other family planning services.” The reasoning is based on the parent’s “right” to exercise control over the child. Nothing in the ruling would limit its application to the pill, and the only reasoning the clinics could adopt to continue distribution of condoms is that condoms are widely available to anyone of any age such that their program doesn’t provide any meaningful additional access.
The uncomfortable reality that all of these conversations around teenage girls having access to contraceptives want to avoid is that for a teenage girl, it isn’t always her choice whether or not she has sex. If your decision, as parent, to ban her from access to contraceptives causes her to become pregnant following a rape, you are responsible for piling additional unnecessary trauma and shame on your daughter. Congrats. Also, teenagers of all genders are notoriously shitty at long term planning and make poor decisions in that regard. Help them all out by providing ready access to contraceptives (and don’t shame them for asking).
It’s tough. My sister is dealing with a patient who is pregnant but dying from cancer. The patient - She cannot have a code status of DNR/DNI here in Texas because she’s pregnant. So she will die eventually - and they will have to do CPR no matter what - despite the patient wanting that code status. Then baby also isn’t viable. Fucked.
That’s terribly sad. It doesn’t have to be tough, anyone with a heart knows what the empathetic way to address this is. Unfortunately, lawmakers, particularly in Texas, don’t make laws grounded in empathy.
Cross posting this here because I don’t want it to be overlooked in the other thread. It’s a very powerful and thoughtful speech that needs to be amplified
An important abortion case By Emily Bazelon Staff Writer, NYT Magazine How safe is it to take abortion pills? The F.D.A., the nation’s authority on drug regulation, says that it’s very safe. But the agency’s judgment is the topic of a sweeping challenge that the Supreme Court will hear tomorrow. The case could curtail Americans’ access to mifepristone, the first pill taken in a two-drug regimen for a medication abortion. Pills now account for most abortions in the United States. Increasingly, people take the medications at home. About 14,000 medication abortions per month are now prescribed online, with pills sent through the mail. Spoiler In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how the suit against the F.D.A. seeks to shut down this form of access and impose other restrictions. A decision in the plaintiff’s favor would change the landscape of abortion not state by state, like the effects of the 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, but across the country. Post-Roe America The abortion opponents who sued the government in tomorrow’s case, F.D.A. v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, are frustrated by how common abortion has remained. Since the high court struck down Roe, 16 states have banned or severely restricted the procedure. In those places, some women who would have ended their pregnancies are carrying them to term, as my colleagues Margot Sanger-Katz and Claire Cain Miller have explained. But the total number of abortions across the country has not fallen. It may actually have increased. That’s in large part because of abortion pills, which the F.D.A. first approved in 2000. “In the six months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the rise in the supply of pills outside of clinics significantly made up for the reduction in abortions otherwise,” said Abigail Aiken, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin with a new study on the topic. In some states, CVS and Walgreens recently started dispensing mifepristone along with misoprostol, the second abortion pill, in stores with a prescription. Outside the Supreme Court in June. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times The F.D.A. laid the foundation for these changes. In 2016, it let nurses and others prescribe mifepristone. It also permitted patients to take the pill 10 weeks into pregnancy, extending the limit from seven weeks. In 2021, the F.D.A. allowed providers to send mifepristone by mail, lifting a rule that had required an in-person medical visit. “Study after study has shown that when mifepristone is taken in accordance with its approved conditions of use, serious adverse events are exceedingly rare,” the F.D.A. said in its Supreme Court brief. The F.D.A.’s judgment The plaintiffs in today’s case, a coalition of anti-abortion physicians and medical groups, say the F.D.A. is wrong. They fault the agency’s collection of data and argue that some complications go unreported, creating an incomplete picture of risk. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed, ruling that the F.D.A.’s database of adverse events was “insufficient” and thus its decisions in 2016 and 2021 were invalid. The F.D.A. says that it is using its standard system for reporting drug complications — and that it has reviewed extensive research showing that mifepristone is safe, including to take at home. Its job, the agency argues, is not to “act based on perfect data, which seldom exists” but rather to “act reasonably based on the information available.” (And in February, a journal retracted two studies highlighting purported risks of mifepristone.) Because the F.D.A. followed its standard approval process, a victory for abortion opponents could undermine its authority to determine whether any drugs are safe. The case has unsettled the pharmaceutical industry. Congress intended the F.D.A., not the courts, to be the “expert arbiter of drug safety,” drug companies and investors argued in a brief. They said the Fifth Circuit created “an impossibly rigid new standard for drug approval.” Another question is whether the plaintiffs are even allowed to challenge the F.D.A. As a rule, litigants have to show that they have been harmed by an action to sue over it. The anti-abortion physicians say they may have to provide emergency care to women with incomplete abortions or other complications from taking mifepristone. The Fifth Circuit ruled this was enough, based on the likelihood that it could happen. But Supreme Court precedent rejects a statistical conception of standing. The plaintiffs also argue that they would be harmed by feeling that they had to help complete an abortion against their conscience. The government says that this conception of harm is hypothetical. The F.D.A.’s regulations for mifepristone, after all, don’t require any doctor to do anything. What happens next? If the F.D.A. loses, it’s unclear what will happen. Providers in the U.S. could still prescribe and ship misoprostol, the second abortion pill. Taken in higher doses without mifepristone, misoprostol is 88 percent effective, according to one study; the two-drug regimen is 95 percent effective or more. Misoprostol-only abortions also tend to include more hours of pain and cramping, with more side effects like nausea and diarrhea. So the upshot could be more physical discomfort for American women. Packages of medical abortion pills in Peabody, Mass. Sophie Park for The New York Times Another possibility is that more people will order the standard combination of mifepristone and misoprostol from foreign suppliers, though that market isn’t really legal. Whatever the court decides, the future of medication abortion is in the hands of the voters as well. The president decides who runs the F.D.A. The agency has continued or expanded access to mifepristone under the past five presidents. That includes Donald Trump. But with Roe overturned and control of the F.D.A. up for grabs in 2024, there’s much more pressure to restrict abortion pills than there was before. Related: In states where abortion is legal, doctors are sending abortion pills to tens of thousands of women in states where it is illegal
It’s been almost two years since the U.S. Supreme Court chucked 50 years of legal precedent to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, so we’re probably ready for them to wade back into it, right? …Anybody? The Big Takeaway The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed deeply skeptical of efforts to limit access to mifepristone, questioning whether a coalition of anti-abortion groups had the right to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug or a pair of decisions that broadened access to it, our D.C. bureau reported. “We have before us a handful of individuals who have asserted a conscience objection.” said Justice Neil Gorsuch. “This case seems like a prime example of turning what could be a small lawsuit into a nationwide legislative assembly on an FDA rule, or any other federal government action.” The court had accepted the case at the request of the Biden administration, which asked the justices to overturn an appeals court ruling that would, if enacted, limit access to mifepristone even in states where abortion remains legal. That decision came from the MAGA-friendly 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in August that mifepristone could remain on the market, but only under pre-2016 guidelines that required patients to see a physician (not a nurse practitioner or other provider) in person (not via telehealth) a minimum of three times (that is so many times) before obtaining a prescription, which could only be filled in person (not by mail). Spoiler This was, believe it or not, a less extreme version of an earlier ruling from a Donald Trump-appointed judge in Texas, who sided with anti-abortion groups in a lawsuit alleging that the FDA exceeded its regulatory authority to evaluate and approve medication in the United States by … evaluating and then approving medication to terminate pregnancies in the United States. The 5th circuit agreed that the agency overstepped its authority but left the drug’s approval intact at the request of the Department of Justice. The Supreme Court weighed in 10 days later, ensuring nationwide access to mifepristone while the lawsuit plodded through the appeals process. Not pictured: A teetering tower of court documents. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) The justices seemed poised to issue a similar ruling this year. (Except for Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.) Mostly, that’s because the lawsuit is a mess. It was filed 23 years after the FDA approved mifepristone, which is 17 years too late, according to the statute of limitations. (Even the otherwise sympathetic 5th Circuit couldn’t let that one slide.) It challenges the FDA’s authority to regulate drugs, which is what the FDA — and only the FDA — is authorized and required by law to do. The judicial branch is … pretty familiar with laws, which is why it has never revoked the FDA’s approval of a drug. This is, simply, what the FDA is supposed to do. Attorneys for the plaintiffs failed to prove — or really even argue — otherwise. They could not furnish proof that the current regulations have injured anyone, or that keeping them in place would inflict “concrete harm” on the doctors involved in the case (a requirement for bringing the suit in the first place). The anti-abortion groups had previously argued that wider access to mifepristone infringed on the religious beliefs of doctors who could be required to treat patients who suffer complications from the drug, but that rarely happens, and doctors who have conscientious objections to abortion are not required to care for patients when it does, according to Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. “Only an exceptionally small number of women suffer the kinds of serious complications that could trigger any need for emergency treatment,” Prelogar said. “It’s speculative that any of those women would seek care from the two specific doctors who asserted conscience injuries. And even if that happened, federal conscience protections would guard against the injury the doctors face.” The case marked the court’s first return to the issue of abortion since it overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, clearing the way for … well, stupid lawsuits just like this one. The ruling, expected this summer, will have an immediate impact on the 2024 presidential race as well as down-ballot congressional contests, particularly in swing states where Democrats have outperformed expectations by campaigning heavily on reproductive rights. Meanwhile, in Montana (Photo by Pixsooz/Adobe Stock) Republicans have done what they can to push back, often by attempting to block the issue altogether. Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen followed that playbook Monday, injecting a host of anti-abortion language into a proposal to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, the Daily Montanan reported. Knudsen, a Republican, had initially attempted to scuttle the proposed amendment altogether under the guise of “legal insufficiency” due to language that failed to give voters an accurate understanding of how the proposed initiative will change current law. The amendment, he argued, also precluded the state “from enforcing medical malpractice standards of using pregnancy outcomes, like babies who are born drug-addicted, to enforce other state policies.” Those arguments failed to persuade the state Supreme Court, which ordered him last week to prepare the ballot statement for the initiative. In response, Knudsen created his own method of compliance, citing his own failed legal arguments as justification for rewriting the proposal entirely. The new version, submitted Monday to the secretary of state’s office, transformed the referendum from a straightforward codification of reproductive rights to a mess of anti-abortion rhetoric, including disclaimers that the amendment “eliminates the state’s compelling interest in preserving prenatal life,” “may increase the number of taxpayer-funded abortions” and leaves things like “fetal viability” and “extraordinary medical measures” to the “subjective judgment of an abortion provider rather than objective legal or medical standards.” The move was not surprising for the groups behind the amendment, which filed an emergency petition Tuesday asking the state Supreme Court to overturn the rewritten statement in an expedited ruling to ensure adequate time to collect thousands of petition signatures ahead of a June 21 deadline. The groups, known collectively as Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, also requested a Friday deadline for both Knudsen’s response and any friend-of-the-court briefs. As of late Tuesday, the court had not set a schedule. “The attorney general’s strategy here is obvious and desperate: To force MSRR to go to court again, causing more delay in hopes of denying Montanans the opportunity to secure their right to abortion,” the group said in a statement. “Montanans deserve better and MSRR is determined to give voters a shot at a fair, sensible abortion rights initiative.” Ah yes, just who you’d prefer to be making decisions about reproductive health care. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector) Kansas Republicans approved a delay of their own Tuesday, advancing a bill that would force pregnant patients to answer a host of survey questions prior to obtaining an abortion. Allegedly, this will “help lawmakers make better decisions.” But opponents are pretty sure it’s just a deeply invasive way to push anti-abortion nonsense, the Kansas Reflector reported. The bill, approved 27-13, would require abortion providers to record each patient’s reason for terminating a pregnancy, then report that information to the state twice each year. Patients would select from a list “the most important factor” influencing their choice to have an abortion. (Is your partner abusive? Do you “not feel mature enough” to raise a child? Do you “not want others to know” you had sex? Is your pregnancy the result of a rape?) Patients can opt not to answer, but even that would go into the written record, along with a slew of demographic information, including age, race, marital status and level of education. The information would be anonymized before it goes to the state health department, which would (allegedly) use it to inform policy for pregnant Kansans, according to Mackenzie Haddix, a spokeswoman for Kansans For Life, an anti-abortion group that helped draft the bill. But the state already collects comprehensive data on abortion patients, which it publishes in an annual report, said Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, a Lenexa Democrat. “I think it is a farce that we are saying this is what we’re passing so that we can address good policy,” she said. “Because we have the data, we have the information, and we choose not to use it.” But not everything should be a choice, according to state Sen. Mark Steffen, a Republican best known for his love of horse dewormers and also for attempting to convert a reporter and a Muslim constituent to Christianity. “Abortion is the pathway to a life of regret and emptiness,” Steffen said. “Every abortion kills an innocent child. That’s a fact. Every abortion kills an innocent child.”
if I’m reading this correctly republican women don’t think republicans will ever have enough votes for a nation wide ban so they’ll vote for republicans?
It was probably something like 10 years ago when a lot of women (white women) supported abortion but of course voted for Republicans because they never thought they would actually overturn it. There's no Republican women left who think like this, it could not be more clear that the GOP is going to try to completely ban abortion.
Welp Add AZ to the list. No exceptions for rape and incest https://www.npr.org/2024/04/09/1243679136/arizona-abortion-court-decision-ban
Seems to contradict the establishing clause in the first amendment. Everyone taking part in the this should be removed from office and their votes voided.
This is the kind of shit that got Ireland to finally legalize abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar I'm so with VaxRule that we really need to just force this judicial crisis and ignore the Supreme Court. Women are dying, the overturning of Roe v. Wade to the states means this is going to happen if the SC doesn't lose two of its evil right wing members and that might take decades.
Yes, everyone should read this article. And the Supreme Court is about to tell hospitals they can ignore the health of the mother part of US federal laws and determine that state abortion laws supersede Federal Law (unless, of course, state law is more liberal on abortions)