Saturday, April 8, 2023

The ADF is responsible for the mifepristone ruling

On August 1, 2021, an article called "Splitting the T from the LGB," written by Steph Richards, was published by the UK org TransLucent.

First of all, in early 2017, a group called Hands Across The Aisle was founded by "staunch Catholic Kaeley Triller Haver and anti-trans lesbian Miriam Ben Sharlom," Richards explains. The Hands Across the Aisle website says: "We are radical feminists, lesbians, Christians and conservatives that are tabling our ideological differences to stand in solidarity against gender identity legislation, which we have come to recognise as the erasure of our own hard-won civil rights." Their goal was "working together, rising above our differences, and leveraging our collective resources to oppose gender identity ideology." They named Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, aka Posie Parker, and among their specifically "left" wing allies, they named Fair Play for Women and Transgender Trend. In 2018, Jules Joanne Gleeson wrote about Hands Across The Aisle in the New Socialist. Separately, Gleeson described Fair Play for Women as a "single issue anti-trans group" that "used their official Twitter to publicly fantasise about trans people dying from ‘a thousand cancers’" and later deleted the tweets, and described Hands Across The Aisle as "a group founded by Christian evangelicals to unite right and left-wing transphobia" in accordance with "the stated agenda of the Christian far-right in splitting ‘LGB’ from ‘T’ groups in order to make both more easily defeated." (Richards notes that the Hands Across The Aisle website went offline around early 2020. I see other people cited their website in late 2022, but in mid-2023, they're offline again.)

Then, something happened later in 2017. Richards went on: "Every year the American Christian right-wing extremists attend a gathering known as the 'Values Voter Summit'. Organised by the controversial Family Research Council (FRC), this networking event ... is attended pretty much by all the right-wing anti LGBT+ hate groups together with the anti-abortion groups. Sponsors include Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and The Heritage Foundation, who both have close links to the UK’s Conservative Party. ... [In 2017,] a sitting President, Donald Trump, addressed the faithful gathering for the first time ever." At the same 2017 gathering, transphobia made its first significant appearance at the VVS. Meg Kilgannon recommended — according to SPLC's Hatewatch reporting, and with general agreement from RightWingWatch that this is indeed what Kilgannon was saying — that they "separate trans activists from the gay rights movement," with the strategy of "divide and conquer. For many, gender identity on its own is just a bridge too far. If we separate the T from the alphabet soup, we’ll have more success." She said that recognizing trans people's gender "only come[s] at the expense of others": it leads to the "erasure of women," including through "lesbian eugenics" and the elimination of the value of "modesty." That was her right-wing anti-trans platform. Also from the Hatewatch article: Cathy Ruse, a senior fellow with the Family Research Council, also spoke, saying: "Did you know that feminists are at odds with the transgender movement? Last year a prominent feminist published a compendium of articles under the title of Female Erasure." She suggested there was an "impact on girls who are bombarded with gender transition messages," who, "in their young minds," might interpret the existence of trans men as meaning "that being female isn’t good enough". Meanwhile, Peter Sprigg, also an FRC senior fellow, spoke on the same platform, suggesting that gender transition is "a violation of the natural law"; for context, he also opposes gay people, linking them to pedophiles.

Richards said: "the concerted attacks on Stonewall [for advocating for trans rights] are further evidence of the attempts to split the LGB from the T precisely as Kilgannon had called for. And whilst peddling these far-right extremist views by helping to spread hatred directed against the trans community, they are also being complicit in aiding the real war on women – abortion rights."

Marisa Kabas writes (May 17, 2024) that

"abortion does not exist in a vacuum, because no struggle does. Multiple speakers [at ComstockCon] referenced the protests against genocide in Gaza and Harvard’s student encampment a few minutes away; anti-blackness and racism undergirded every panel; and numerous links were made to trans liberation and health care. And by the end of the day, one thing was clear: The most powerful tool for protecting and expanding abortion rights—and all human rights—is through solidarity.

* * *

Isolating married white women with exceptions as the prime victims of anti-abortion laws is quite the opposite of solidarity, the conference speakers agreed: It elevates them above the poor and Black and Brown and queer and disabled and immigrant women who faced barriers to terminating pregnancies well before Roe fell. ... Comstock himself disproportionately went after immigrants and Jews for indecency, and this go-round by Christian Nationalists is unlikely to be much different."

As this left/right alliance against trans people presents a branding challenge, they call themselves "gender-critical."

TransLucent tweets on May 25, 2023: The EHRC Board have, instead, promoted 'gender-critical' views - that of a global movement which orignated from the Christian far-right based in the US and with whom the Conservatives has strong links. We know part of their campaign involves splitting the T from the LGB.
Aubrey Hirsch (@aubreyhirsch) on Twitter, April 13, 2023: Woke up this morning confused AGAIN about the impacts of this new ruling on abortion drugs. So I (very quickly) put together this only-slightly-sweary illustrated explainer on WTF is going on with Mifepristone. (1/3)

Erin Reed, on Twitter:

Ashley is referring to Mark Joseph Stern's tweet about this article: "A Scalia Clerk Dismantles the Medication Abortion Decision: The court’s analysis directly contradicts binding precedent, relies on skewed evidence, and would yield absurd consequences." Adam Unikowsky, April 12, 2023.

"Justice Department Files Immediate Appeal To Abortion Pill Ruling," Alanna Vagianos, HuffPost, April 7, 2023

"The Shared Anti-Trans and Anti-Abortion Playbook," Irin Carman, NY Intelligencer (paywalled), April 4, 2023

"The MSNBC host [Nicolle Wallace] noted that she typically avoids amplifying Trump or Fox News, but said that this rhetoric provided important context on the recent Republican-led efforts to strip back abortion rights, implement voter suppression laws and silence dissent in the Tennessee state legislature.

“It’s important to understand they’re not bodily functions. They’re not burping out random policies. They’re following their leader, who’s following the world’s most heinous authoritarians,” Wallace said. “And we showed you that to show you just how dangerous his rhetoric is.”

— "'Such An Idiot': Nicolle Wallace Bursts Out Laughing Over Trump Comment On Fox News." Josephine Harvey. HuffPost. Apr 12, 2023.

Also:

"As a lawyer for a conservative legal group, Matthew Kacsmaryk in early 2017 submitted an article to a Texas law review criticizing Obama-era protections for transgender people and those seeking abortions.

The Obama administration, the draft article argued, had discounted religious physicians who 'cannot use their scalpels to make female what God created male' and 'cannot use their pens to prescribe or dispense abortifacient drugs designed to kill unborn children.'

But a few months after the piece arrived, an editor at the law journal who had been working with Kacsmaryk received an unusual email: Citing “reasons I may discuss at a later date,” Kacsmaryk, who had originally been listed as the article’s sole author, said he would be removing his name and replacing it with those of two colleagues at his legal group, First Liberty Institute, according to emails and early drafts obtained by The Washington Post." [emphasis mine]

"The controversial article Matthew Kacsmaryk did not disclose to the Senate," (unpaywalled gift link) Caroline Kitchener, Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow, Washington Post, April 15, 2023

Also:

"The federal judge who suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of an abortion pill failed to disclose two interviews on a Christian radio show where he discussed his extremist views on contraception and gay rights, CNN reported [April 20]..." — HuffPost

Also, bonus: "vile sexist stereotypes" (CNN video) on the Tucker Carlson show, as alleged by Abby Grossberg days after his show was concerned. Carlson's show had 3.05 million viewers on the Wednesday before he was fired (April 19, 2023); a week later, the Wednesday after he was fired, the same Fox time slot (8 p.m., hosted by Brian Kilmeade) had dropped by more than half, to only 1.33 million viewers.

.

Consequences of anti-abortion legislation

Please read this story. The discrimination is blatant. Ohio Woman Charged After Miscarrying Non-Viable Fetus In Bathroom: The Black woman's ordeal highlights the perils and uncertainties of being pregnant in a post-Roe America. Julie Carr Smyth. HuffPost. Dec 16, 2023. See more on this story from MSNBC, Dec 21.

Court date

The Supreme Court will hear mifepristone arguments on March 26, 2024.

"Research at the heart of a federal case against the abortion pill has been retracted," Selena Simmons-Duffin, NPR, February 9, 2024

What to expect when you’re expecting an abortion pill argument, Impromptu (Washington Post podcast), March 20, 2024

How The Far Right Engineered An Assault On Abortion Access, Even In Blue States: The Supreme Court is set to hear a case that threatens to erode abortion rights even in states that have acted to preserve them. Sara Boboltz, HuffPost, Mar 23, 2024

Supreme Court Again Confronts Abortion, This Time Over Access To Widely Used Medication: Abortion opponents on Tuesday will ask the high court to ratify a ruling from a conservative federal appeals court that would limit access to the medication mifepristone. Mark Sherman, HuffPost, Mar 25, 2024

Supreme Court Unanimously Rejects Efforts To Restrict Abortion Pill The justices ruled the plaintiffs didn't have the standing to bring the case in the first place. Alanna Vagianos, HuffPost, Jun 13, 2024

"By basing its decision on procedure rather than merit, the Court left the door ajar for anti-abortion groups to pursue other legal challenges. For instance, ADF’s takeaway was that, “The court recognized that our doctors would have standing to protect their conscience rights,” which allow medical providers to deny care based on their religious beliefs. And rather than being dismissed, the FDA case will return to the lower courts, where attorneys general for Kansas and Missouri have already promised to continue their litigation."
They won't stop, but neither will we," email from Nick Fish, president of American Atheists, June 15, 2024

The Mifepristone Battle Isn’t Over Yet: On the eve of Dobbs’s second anniversary, we celebrated a small victory with the mifepristone decision. But the time is now for Dems to make a preemptive strike to protect abortion rights before SCOTUS takes another swing at them. Andrea Grimes, Dame, Jun 25, 2024

Abortion Opponents Shift Focus To Pills With Lawsuits, Proposed Laws And Possible Federal Action: The battles over abortion in the U.S. are increasingly focusing on the pills that are now the most common way pregnancies are ended. Geoff Mulvihill, AP, HuffPost, Dec 23, 2024

woman with head bowed in green lighting
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