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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   24126 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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FDA vs Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the mifepristone case, was decided by SCOTUS. Full verdict here. The anti-abortion plaintiffs lose 9-0 on standing, with (quite properly for a case lost on standing) no discussion of the merits. Kav writes for the majority, with Thomas concurring on a technical point of standing law (on one of three theories of standing advanced by AHM the majority think they lose on the facts, but Thomas admits that this is correct under current precedent buy under a correct reading of the Constitution he thinks they lose on the law instead).

Quick thoughts:

  • The unanimous opinion treats this as an easy standing case. It is somewhat longer than an opinion needs to be in an easy standing case, which suggests that at least some of the justices wanted to benchslap Judge Kacsmaryk and the 5th Circuit panel.
  • Standing requirements make lawfare harder. If the right-wing Justices wanted to unleash a campaign of right-leaning lawfare then they could have decided this case differently, so it looks like the small-c conservative aversion to lawfare is holding up even with a right-wing Court.
  • Nevertheless, I suspect the pro-life movement can find a plaintiff with standing - perhaps a Catholic mail carrier who objects to delivering abortifacients could sue under the Comstock Act (which looks like the plaintiffs' best argument on the merits). But nothing is going to be decided before the election if a plaintiff wiht standing files a new suit.
  • The Project 2025 says that an incoming Republican administration should aggressively enforce the Comstock Act (which is prsumptively constitutional post-Dobbs) against pharmacies posting mifepristone to patients. This would render this litigation irrelevant.

mifepristone

So correct me if I am wrong, but this is suppose to induce a miscarriage at home and the woman is supposed to deal with the remains herself?

Mail-order abortificants seem like something that is going to blow up in proponents faces.

They’ll blame pro-life laws for it. As dumb as it is, there are people blaming drug prohibition for overdoses.

As dumb as it is, there are people blaming drug prohibition for overdoses.

Those people are entirely correct. ODing from a surprising dose of Fentanyl mixed in with other drugs wouldn't happen if drugs were distributed by pharmaceutical companies rather than Mexican cartels.

The ultimate effect of drug bans are that society is awash in illegal drugs and the kinds of people who make illegal drugs have poor quality control.

I was thinking recently that this type of reasoning leads to some pretty hilarious conclusions. The splashy one is that every single pro-legalization advocate should be bowing down to the Sackler family and protesting against the cruel use of law against them, which, after all, only hurts drug users. Rather than being in any way related to increased drug usage (that's magically impossible), all they were doing was producing a perfectly safe pharmaceutical product which, as a matter of pure logic, necessarily saves lives. Will you join in erecting a statue in their honor? Maybe we can place it next to St. George Floyd's statue.

I'm not planning on erecting statues or bowing to them. But they didn't spike all sorts of drugs with surprise fentanyl, so they're better than the cartel alternative.

that's magically impossible

Boo. Boo on this kind of snark. We should be better. You have an actual point here, but your need to get in cheap snarky jabs is obscuring it.

Would you like to put in some reasoning for why this magic is actually reality? Or just boo anything you disagree with? (I stand by that it's positing magic to make ridiculous claims that violate the basic laws of supply and demand in economics.)

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