Funding for To the Contrary provided by Coming up on To the Contrary, The US Supreme Court throws out a challenge against mifepristone the abortion medication.

(MUSIC) Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbe Welcome to To the Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

Up first, medical abortion.

The US Supreme Court unanimously dismissed a lawsuit challenging the FDA's approach to regulating mifepristone.

The ruling keeps the abortion pill widely available, allowing it to be distributed via US mail and without an in-person doctor is it?

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the anti-abortion doctors and groups lacked standing to sue as they did not demonstrate personal injury from the FDA's actions.

Joining us today to discuss this and more, Nan Hayworth former Republican Representative from New York, Debra Carnahan, retired Judge and former federal prosecutor Tiana Lowe Dozier, Washington Examiner columnist, and Jessica Washington, Freelance progressive journalist So, Debra, let's start out with the Supreme Court decision on mifepristone Is it, as it seems on its face, a big victory for the pro-choice factions which have been fighting for victory for this like this for a long time?

Or is it actually could it be temporary and something that the justices, some of whom we know are just straight politicians, really not judges, are sort of dangling there in front of the election to give Donald Trump better chances of being reelected?

You know, Bonnie I think it's a small victory for the pro-choice movement.

I know I was braced watching the TV when it came in.

I know that the Anti-choicers are upset, but it's going to come up again.

I mean, they kicked it out on a, quote, technicality, i.e., you have no standing, which you have to have.

You know, the plaintiffs separate this case.

You know, the court threw it out on that and said, you know what?

You are not the ones to bring this case.

It is not harming and affecting you.

So we're not going to hear it.

So tell me then, what are the pro-lifers going to have to find if they want to bring this case again?

They're going to have to find women who had access to this to mifepristone and had medical abortions and now regret it.

Or, who exactly who is against abortion rights, who would have standing in this case?

Right.

That's a brilliant question.

And I think if you look perhaps at OB-GYNs that do not want to use this medication that have their, you know, patients coming to them and saying, I want this, they would probably have a little more standing than they think.

There was a dentist in this one group that brought this case.

So, yeah, I would think so.

Maybe you might get a plaintiff who alleges she was harmed by taking the medication and prescribed it by her doctor and go through that argument again about the vetting process with the FDA.

Do you think Nan Hayworth, former Republican House member.

Do you think this is a decision that the anti-abortion people should be upset about, given the fact that it could be brought again, it's not like it was dismissed with prejudice, so to speak, not that it would be in this kind of a case, but with prejudice, meaning you can't come back.

Or is it something that after the election, I'm sure hoping after the fervor around the ethical behavior, some would say ethical violations, that that Justices Alito and Thomas have been going through.

For example, Alito's wife, you know, he said, quote unquote, which a lot of people, including judges writing in national publications, had a hard time believing when he said, my wife, I just happened to have a wife who likes to fly flags when she flew the U.S. flag at their house upside down and used the gates of heaven, which is a flag used by the people who destroyed parts of the US Capitol claim as their own.

So in other words, arch, right?

Conservative, anti-government.

I take issue with your portrayal of Justices Alito, and I think it was Thomas you mentioned.

Justice Sotomayor is probably almost assuredly at this point the most politically assertive justice on the court.

She accepted a substantial millions, I think its $4 million book advance from a publisher who subsequently presented a case before the court, and she didn't recuse herself.

So and what a justice's spouse.

I'm not familiar.

Let me just jump back and say I'm not familiar with the facts of that case.

But if it is, well, they are exactly as you relate, then.

Yeah, she should recuse herself (Nan)and she didn't.

There should have been a movement, as there should be for Alito and Thomas to get them impeached or thrown off the course of court, or at least recuse themselves in any case.

And I would I covered the court for nine years.

I want to say I never would have said this about Sandra Day O'Connor, about justice, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, probably every bit is typically conservative, as Alito and Thomas are.

Never said it about Scalia, who was my guest one year to the White House Correspondents Dinner and a brilliant jurist.

But these guys are not jurists.

I disagree vehemently with you, Bonnie.

Much as I like and respect you, they are rigorously faithful to the Constitution, which is their only job and their decisions are transparent.

They make them known in very lengthy opinions.

It was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in fact, who opined directly in public about her disapproval of Donald Trump when he was a candidate for office.

I mean, this is the.

I would I would submit to you that the folks on the left are seeking to neutralize the constitutionalist power.

The the the justices whom they most abhor are the ones who are the most insistent that the law is not as we wish it to be.

It is what the Constitution tells us it is.

And of course, that is subject to interpretation by the justices.

You're talking about whether they're adhering to the Constitution and all of the different views.

There are huge divisions over whether how people view the Constitution, but they don't view whether a justice such as Clarence Thomas, they don't have divisions over whether it's ethical and take Thomas out of here.

But what he did, taking billions of millions of dollars worth of free trips, gifts, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah from an extremely right wing person who was apparently who did have business before the company.

Bonnie, Bonnie, what does what does what does Clarence Thomas getting tickets from Harlan Crowe or Ketangi Brown Jackson getting tickets from Beyonce have to do with mifepristone being unanimously agreed upon by the court, including all the Trump appointees, saying that, no, you can't just come in and have.

Does it matter if it's a conservative interest group or a liberal interest group?

You can't just get the courts to ban things that ultimately the Congress to decide.

Well, this drug has been approved by the FDA for 23 years or for 24 years now because the court recognized that not only did this group not have standing, but also that you can't just use this emergency, take it away.

Look at the religious liberty concerns.

If you're a doctor that doesn't want to perform a surgical or medical abortion, that's one thing.

It's another thing to say, hypothetically.

I wouldn't want to have to treat someone that took mifepristone and is now having a complication.

They said, no, you can't do that.

This is a dumb order.

And as a result, it was a unanimous decision.

I think really, like we we are really living in our own political motivation was unanimous.

(some inaudible) No, no, wait.

It was a unanimous decision.

But one can just imagine knowing what is going on at the Supreme Court right now where you have an ethical Republican appointed Supreme Court chief justice who's lost power because the people who are more politically committed, you want to put it that way.

More people say, man, you are.

(Nan) This is a manufactured controversy to delegitimize (Bonnie) You dont think he went to had his clerks have conversations with the clerks of Clarence Thomas and and Alito and say, you're under a ton of pressure right now.

You are personally responsible in large part for why only 35% of the American public have faith in the institution of the Supreme Court?

How about you give me your vote, and especially on this case where another case can come along and we can go in the other direction and maybe a little bit of the public pressure one to get rid of you or reign you in will go away.

No one has suggested that the decision that any they can point to, no decision that either Justice Alito or Justice Thomas has participated in for the court.

That has been influenced by some outside actor.

They are completely transparent in their decision making.

Let's get Jessica in here.

Your thoughts, Jessica?

This ruling, when we're talking just on the basis of whether or not mifepristone is dangerous I think everyone has kind of concluded and, you know, medical experts, ACOG has concluded this is credibly safe.

It's been FDA approved for over 20 years, and it's safer than many medications that are on the market that are not being targeted like penicillin, like Viagra, others even some argument about it being safer than Tylenol.

So the argument this was about safety never made a lot of sense, particularly because people can still have medication abortions with misoprostol.

And that's actually more dangerous than having the two drugs combined.

So this would only make it more unsafe for people to be having medication abortions.

And then also that gets into miscarriage as well.

So kind of on that side of the argument, it does seem like we have a lot of agreement there whether or not the court does bow to political pressure.

I do think that's, you know, like we can argue, you know, okay, did that is this a pay for play situation?

I don't think that has been proven.

I don't think any of the reporting has borne out that so far.

I think are there arguments about the ways in which outside groups interact with the court in a way that might feel unethical or might not be to the standard that judges in lower courts are held to?

I think that's certainly true.

They're not held to the same standards that other judges are held to in this country.

And I think a lot of people would argue that's a huge problem.

Question to Tianna what should the anti-abortion movement do next?

Concerned as it is, as we know about this ruling?

Medication abortions are only effective up until ten weeks of pregnancy, right?

Surgical abortions are currently conducted in this country.

Well into the second trimester of pregnancy, well past the point of fetal viability in some states like California, Colorado.

I mean, clearly, we've seen where the where the pro-life agenda has great victories is when we're trying to win hearts and minds and also meet people where they are.

Incremental victories are still victories.

I look at somewhere like North Carolina, that's a reddish leaning purple state and then successfully passing a 12 week abortion ban right in line with the public opinion helps ending the most egregious partial birth abortions.

The percentage of third trimester abortions is extremely low range one where it's about one and a half percent.

And secondly, it's usually because the fetus is either going to die in utero and kill, potentially kill the mother.

These are not things people do lightly because, you know, what a good time it would be to do this gruesome, horrible thing..

They're done usually and frequently by women who want children.

But having this child could threaten their own life or or a child who they choose.

They are not equipped to bring in to the world with severe and massive disabilities they couldn't afford to care for.

They can't.

I mean, only Bonnie.

Those are two completely different things, though.

There is not a pro-life law or there is not an abortion ban on the books that doesn't have an exception at all stages of gestation for the life of the mother.

Right?

The question is what we (talking over each other) some of them, many of them, and particularly the state laws, are so vague that the doctors won't perform anything.

(Tiana) Okay.

But where it could be questioned, whether and you know, with medicine, like other sciences, they're always you're always able to question whether the life of the mother could possibly have been saved some other way.

Bonnie, But you talking about cases of the life of the mother that is dramatically different from wanting to terminate a fetus because it happens to have Down's syndrome.

Right.

Which is also very different from, let's say, a trisomy 13.

These are not all the same cases, but all the abortion bans make a very, very, very clear exception at all stages of pregnancy for the life of the mother.

That's just not true.

(inaudible) That is not true.

say that true, all stages of pregnancy have an exception for the case of the life of the mother.

(Debra)That's just not true, (Tiana) there comes a point at which if the fetus is viable, of course, the doctors are going to induce a birth right or perform an emergency C-section to try and save the child.

Right.

But most of the way to let let me get back and clarify a little bit the late the very late term abortions are things where the child's brain isn't developing or hasn't developed.

They're things where, you know, yes, you could maybe you could have a live birth and save the mother's life.

But it's very, very, very dicey.

I mean, this is just a first principles disagreement between this is the fundamental difference.

I think that pro-lifers believe that every life, including one with microcephaly, has as much right to live as you and me.

That's it.

And that's just a first principles disagreement.

If you don't agree that someone with Down's or someone with microcephaly has as much value in God's eyes and should have as much value in the law as eyes as you, me, everyone on this panel, that just we're never going to agree on that.

So you asked what the next steps for the pro-life movement should be.

Bonnie: And I'm not saying Tiana)Meet voters where they are (Bonnie) it was my opinion What matters?

What matters is the the woman who is going to, you know, has a whatever percent chance of losing her own life.

Is it worth taking that chance to save the other life?

Those are more like the I knew a woman who was a member of Congress from California who had a very late term abortion.

She desperately wanted a child.

She and her husband had gone through.

This was like 30 years ago.

They had gone through in vitro when it was first beginning.

They had done all kinds of things.

And she had a child who she had to have a third term abortion that she didn't want because the the fetus was going to die anyway and it was going to possibly take her life with it.

So I just want to paint the situation as they really are.

Not some 15 year old who had sex without a condom, waited six, eight months to find out she's pregnant and decides, I don't want a kid right now.

We're not talking about those kinds of situations.

Exactly.

Excellent point, Bonnie.

And also, statistics have shown for decades.

You know, we always referred to the teenage girl.

You didn't use a condom.

You know what most abortions are for women who were like age eight, 28 to 35.

They have had other children.

A lot of them are married into choose to terminate.

So it's called family planning, women's health.

All these things are clumped into everything that we're talking about.

And speaking of which, this ruling giving some power, at least temporarily, we don't know for how long.

Back to women who do want to use mifepristone in a in a time frame that's appropriate, i.e.

the first ten weeks of pregnancy.

What advice would you be giving pro-lifers from here on (Debra) Thats a tough question.

I want to see this overturned, to give pro/ I call them Anti-choicers, to give them advice.

They are going to keep coming and coming and chipping away at Roe.

Even though Roe is overturned.

This is going to be a complete battle, I think, for the foreseeable future in our country.

A majority of Americans, 70% or so at this point in time.

Last poll I saw support abortion rights in some form.

Is that going to be a motivating force in November?

And will the the people who support abortion rights get out there in November and vote or not, or is or are they just going to.

(Debra) They are.,they are.

(Bonnie) How do you know?

Well, you know, there's a wind going, you know, and if you're sailing your pull up the sails and you catch that wind and you've seen it in Kansas, you've seen it in Ohio, you've seen it in states that are pretty much red or moving red.

Women are not happy about this.

Men are not happy about this.

We're seeing the consequences of the overturning of Roe, and it's highly motivating out there.

What impact do you see it having on your home state of Missouri, which was, you know, a long time ago, like much of the south, a blue state, purple,nowturned pretty red?

(Debra) Yes.

What's going to happen in November as a result?

We've got I'm thrilled.

And I've been actually part of this.

You know, we have a petition to protect abortion rights, which because we were one of those states that it was an automatic trigger, no abortions.

And we got three times the signatures that we needed to get this on the ballot for the voters in November.

And I think it's going to have a huge impact on how people vote and how many people turn out to vote because women and pro-choicers are really fired up in this state right now.

No, I would completely agree that this is going to be a motivating issue.

I mean, we saw it in the midterms.

This is the first general election since the Dobbs decision.

So we should definitely expect that, like with the midterms, we are going to see this be a motivating issue.

I think also the ballot initiatives, which you already mentioned, there are several ballot initiatives going on throughout the United States.

I think those always draw people.

You also have a lot of women candidates that are actually working on a story about it, which is a little bit helpful with this.

But yeah, there's a huge influx of women who are running on the issue of abortion and not just running on this issue as in years past, where you saw some people take it on as a lead issue and others kind of just include it in their list of issues.

This is really an issue that people are talking about.

You have a lot of female candidates sharing their own abortion stories, talking about why this issue matters to them so much.

I agree with with Debra and Jessica that it is a highly motivating issue for a key group of voters and in a very tight election can definitely turn an election.

And we've seen that in the state of New York.

My feeling about this as a Republican is that where I think Republicans should or should go and where we can square the circle, because let's face it, for the most part, we we endeavor to be the party that's taking government out of your lives.

So some folks want more government, obviously.

My Democratic colleagues tend to want a lot more government.

But, you know, it's contradictory to me as a Republican that then we want to put the government right back into the relationship between a woman and her doctor.

We have a First Amendment right, and Tiana was referring to it.

For those that are.

By the way, I just want to say, you know, I'm older than you are, but those are the Republicans.

I grew up with in New York City.

Yeah, the mayor Lindsey, the Jacob Javits.

(Nan)Right.

(Bonnie) Etc., etc, They were (Nan) Right.

They were.

You know what doesn't exist anymore?

Moderate Republican, socially progressive, fiscally conservative.

And and enjoyed wide majorities of support in their home areas when they did exist.

I would agree with that.

I'm basically a kind of Republican myself.

That said, I actually had a pro-life record in Congress because I did vote to withdraw federal funding from Planned Parenthood because I don't think that taxpayers should be compelled to pay for procedures that they find repugnant.

But what would I do?

I wouldn't shut down Planned Parenthood.

I would love to see Republicans say, look, we are going to be the advocates for life on an entirely voluntary basis We're not going to get between women and their doctors.

And we're also not going to ask you, the taxpayer, to support things that you find morally repugnant.

Smartest thing that Republican voters have done specifically as it comes to this issue is kick out Ron DeSantis and nominate Donald Trump.

Because, look, Donald Trump understands the public opinion on this issue.

There's a reason why he's not running on a six week abortion ban.

But let me just ask you, because he is truly he has been all over the place on this issue.

And doesn't it kind of depend what mood is in and what week it is, whether you agree with him on abortion?

Find me a time when he said that it's up to the federal government to ban it.

He's never said that.

That may have been the only thing he hasnt said.

I think he is deeply federalist as most of us should be.

Look, I'm a pro-life federalist, right?

I may have my own personal views, but I also understand states have the right to regulate this issue.

Well, going forward, I have been wrong twice in a row saying that that this issue won't matter because I thought that all the other issues were bigger.

So I'm not going to make that prediction again.

I will say at the margin in a very tight election, which this one will be.

Of course it will influence things.

But look, I think the most important issue to women and to moms and to women who don't want to be moms is the fact that prices have increased 19% since Joe Biden took office from the fact that real average weekly wages have fallen 5% since Joe Biden took office.

The fact that you have Gaza in flames and Ukraine in flames.

I think that will be a lot more decisive an issue than the idea that Donald Trump is a pro-life federalist and understands it's not the federal government's job.

All right.

Thank you all so much.

And that's it for this edition.

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