Teh Stupid It Burns

 

Image by Lightspring/Shutterstock via Psychology Today.

I can't get over how bogus this whole Texas Mifepristone case is, from start (the lawsuit was originally filed by a group calling itself the "Alliance Defending Freedom", because nothing spells freedom like getting the state to block women from taking control over their own bodies) to finish. 

The five (5)  pieces of by now completely outdated research the anti-abortion faction has been pulling out of its briefcases for the last 23 years to "prove" Mifeprestone was dangerous didn't prove anything of the kind, The New York Times reported in an exhaustive report covering over a hundred (100) different up-to-date studies on Friday:

As evidence of this harm, the plaintiffs cite a handful of studies, none of which contradict the body of research in the Times review. Instead, the cited studies point to patient experiences that are common and expected, such as bleeding and pain, or experiences that are not a clear measure of serious complications, such as visits to the emergency room after taking the pills.

Almost all patients will experience bleeding and pain during a medication abortion, because the pills essentially trigger a miscarriage.

How do member of the "Alliance Defending Freedom", such as the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists (“AAPLOG”) and Christian Medical & Dental Associations claim to have standing in the suit? Exactly how has the existence of chemical abortions harmed them? Well, it hasn't exactly done that. Rather, Judge Kacsmaryk writes, they have "associational standing" under a theory in which

an association “has standing to bring a suit on behalf of its members when its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right, the interests at stake are germane to the organization’s purpose, and neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit [and] they allege adverse events from chemical abortion drugs can overwhelm the medical system and place “enormous pressure and stress” on doctors during emergencies and complications [that] “consume crucial limited resources, including blood for transfusions, physician time and attention, space in hospital and medical centers, and other equipment and medicines.”

although as far as I can tell their members don't actually perform abortions anyway—nobody's forcing them to—so what would they have to sue over? and although those emergencies and complications fundamentally don't exist. And then there's

the harm to the informed-consent aspect of the physician-patient relationship. In one study [Katherine A. Rafferty & Tessa Longbons, AbortionChangesYou: A Case Study to Understand the Communicative Tensions in Women’s Medication Abortion Narratives, which doesn't sound to me like a good source for statistics], fourteen percent of women and girls reported having received insufficient information about (1) side effects, (2) the intensity of the cramping and bleeding, (3) the next steps after expelling the aborted human, and (4) potential negative emotional reactions like fear, uncertainty, sadness, regret, and pain

I guess those suffering survivors of chemical abortion might have standing to sue, but they obviously aren't members of AAPLOG. Kacsmaryk suggests that the members would have standing to sue on the women's behalf, since the latter might be prevented from suing on their own account by "a desire to protect the very privacy of [their] decision from the publicity of a court suit” and their "adverse abortion experiences that are often deeply traumatizing pose a hindrance to a woman’s ability to bring suit". But not only have they not treated these women, it appears that the women don't really exist, on the whole, since

Five years after having an abortion, over 95 percent of the women in a landmark UC San Francisco study said it was the right decision for them.... Those who struggled with their decisions or felt stigmatized were more likely to experience sadness, guilt and anger shortly after obtaining the abortion. Over time, however, the number of women reporting these negative emotions declined dramatically, particularly in the first year after their abortion. This was also true for those who initially struggled with their decision. And relief was the most prominent emotion reported by all groups at the end of the study – just as it was at every time point in the study.

So Judge Kacsmaryk's ruling, if it stands, will save the doctors of AAPLOG from the harm that might come to them if they harmed their pregnant patients by prescribing them Mifepristone pills, on the unlikely chance that it turned out to harm them, as it almost never does, and although they are in no danger of prescribing them Mifeprestone pills anyway, since they are members of AAPLOG who would never do such a thing, so from no harm whatsoever—while seriously harming the millions of people including the vast majority of doctors, gynecologists, maternity nurses, midwives and doulas who did not ask AAPLOG or Judge Kacsmaryk or anybody else, including persons who may become pregnant when they don't want to, to ban the drug because they—we, I should say, because I'm at the least a parent and uncle and friend of all sorts of people who might become pregnant—don't want it banned.

I'm saying it's orders of magnitude stupider than Alito's crazy stupid opinion in Dobbs. It doesn't do one damned thing for the people it claims (completely falsely) to protect, who wouldn't need the protection in any case, and messes up the lives of masses the existence of whom it seems completely unaware but who are in the long run practically everybody. By a judge who knows absolutely nothing about the subject matter, against an extraordinarily widespread scientific consensus, because evidently God whispered in his ear but couldn't clearly explain why.

And I know, it's very nice and smart of that judge in Washington state to issue a contravening order for the 22 states that sued to demand that Mifepristone not be banned (for which their standing is unarguable, BTW, as far as I'm concerned, as state governments are responsible for public health and banning Mifepristone is obviously bad for it, especially since it has uses which are not abortion but essential to adequate medical care for women who want to have babies but suffer miscarriage), but given what the Republican supermajority on the Supreme Court has done in the last couple of years, I really don't know if it will do any good. If I weren't in such a rage I'd put on my concern troll hat and tell the Republicans how bad this is going to be for their 2024 election chances, but I just want to scream.