Dear SCOTUS, What Happened Last Week?

A Quick Explainer on Last Tuesday’s Events and What Lies Ahead

If you could use a simple explainer of what happened and didn’t this week in access to health care in SCOTUS deliberations, then this is for you.

In June 2022, the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, so decisions on women’s bodies rights went down to the states. This landmark decision has had devastating effects on women’s health across the country, and at the time, thought that this reversal would have an outsized impact on health outcomes for low income women, as well as women of color. No surprise there.  The Supreme Courts’ decision was deeply unpopular among Americans, with nearly six-in-ten adults (57%) disapproving of the court’s ruling, including 43% who strongly disapproved.

The next frontier of the reproductive justice fight is now back at the Supreme Court level. Last week, SCOTUS heard oral arguments in the FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine case. The case asks the court to ban the most commonly used abortion drug - mifepristone. Throughout the day, Justices seemed likely to reject the appeal to limit patients’ and physicians’ access to mifepristone. 

“They appeared to pave a path for a future Republican administration to turn to a 151-year-old law, the Comstock Act, to block the mailing of all abortion-related drugs and materials and to effectively ban most abortions nationwide.”

Yikes. This has many repercussions, some of which we might not be thinking about (looking at you, Zurawski v. State of Texas). And don’t forget that even if SCOTUS decided in favor of continued access, the medication will still be banned in the 14 U.S. states which already have near-total bans. 

Fortunately, as of now, it appears that SCOTUS will not ban the use of mifepristone. But this is certainly one more step in the fight to protect choice and women’s access to health.

This is a jumbled up jumble that results in endangering our basic freedoms. None of this comes as a surprise, beginning when Trump padded SCOTUS with hand-picked anti-abortion judges.

SCOTUS is set to make a decision on FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine before this current session ends in June.

Reproductive health care is a top priority this election season with 51% of voters believing the upcoming elections will have a major impact on access to abortion and 1 in 5 voters believing the right to use contraception is being threatened. The update presented here is just another turn in the road to protect women’s access to reproductive health.

Today, this trend continues with 59% of Americans opposing SCOTUS' decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Here at New Democracy our survey of nearly 500 New Liberals shows that while only 18% have been personally affected by the overturn of Roe v. Wade, over 80% believe that it is important for Democrats to focus on protecting access to abortion. 

With Hope and Yes We Can energy long gone, we should remind ourselves that our vote counts. Elections matter.