The Abortion Thread

[NattyBohChamps04]

Our maternal mortality rates are flat out embarassing. Unsurprisingly worse for people of color. Texas racing ahead in that department, already in the top 10 highest.

In other red state news, Idaho is looking to catch up to Texas. Citing staffing issues and political climate, North Idaho hospital will no longer deliver babies.

Of course they'll still have to deliver babies in the ER if someone comes in. In very sub-optimal conditions. Doubt the worsening outcomes will change any votes.

[OCanada]

There are a set if states that live on the bottom for healthcare, education, state domestic product, life expectancy but high on dependency for federal dollars whike their states are net users of fed tax revenues

[Farfromgeneva]

There are a set if states that live on the bottom for healthcare, education, state domestic product, life expectancy but high on dependency for federal dollars whike their states are net users of fed tax revenues

Elon Musk will be funding the state of TX soon…given the way he rolls I’m going to guess he prefers maternal deaths so he doesn’t have to add to his dependent payroll.

[CU88]

r's fighting military over troop readiness


https://www.military.com/daily-news/202 ... dium=email


https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... uberville/

[SCLaxAttack]

r's fighting military over troop readiness


https://www.military.com/daily-news/202 ... dium=email


https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... uberville/

The same Rs are among the most vocal to blame the D executive branch for the military’s current recruiting challenges.

Maybe this is a good tactic. Tick off current and potential female military so this way we reduce the potential for further diminishing of our war-fighting ability with too many of the weaker sex.

[jhu72]

Update on actions various states are taking in response to SCOTUS.

[Seacoaster(1)]

Good article about the Texas federal judge's effort to disable the pill:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... rrors.html

"On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued an order overturning the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. The order will take effect within seven days unless it is stayed or reversed by a higher court.

The court holds that the plaintiffs have standing, that their lawsuit was filed on time, that their lawsuit can proceed even though they did not make their arguments to the FDA, and that they win on the merits. Each of these holdings is egregiously wrong. This excerpt will walk through the court’s errors on the issue of standing, which are sufficient to establish that a higher court should stay and ultimately reverse Judge Kacsmaryk’s decision.

The plaintiffs are organizations of pro-life doctors seeking to overturn the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in 2000. Under a 2013 Supreme Court case called Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, the plaintiffs bear the burden of proving a “certainly impending” injury from the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. Neither the organizations, nor their doctor-members, can meet that standard. The plaintiffs’ philosophical disagreement with abortion does not give them standing to seek a federal court order banning all doctors nationwide from prescribing mifepristone to their patients.

The district court nonetheless finds that the plaintiffs have both associational standing (based on injuries suffered by their doctor-members) and organizational standing (based on injuries to the organizations themselves). Both holdings are profoundly wrong.

The court starts with associational standing. It begins by reciting assertions from the plaintiffs’ filings and declaring, without additional analysis, that they establish standing. For example, the court quotes the plaintiffs’ assertions that “chemical abortion drugs can overwhelm the medical system” and “consume crucial limited resources” such as “blood for transfusions.”

These allegations do not establish standing. To establish standing, the doctor-members must show that they personally face an imminent risk of concrete and particularized injury. Vague speculation that someday, somewhere, some unspecified doctor will be “overwhelmed” by an onslaught of patients coming to the ER after taking mifepristone does not establish that these particular doctors face an imminent risk of a concrete and particularized injury.

Also, these allegations are disconnected from reality. Mifepristone has been on the market for the past 23 years. Patients suffering complications from mifepristone abortions have not “overwhelmed the medical system” or rendered blood unavailable for transfusions. The agency record shows that the rates of transfusions are 0-0.1 percent and hospitalization is 0-0.7 percent. The judge was required to defer to these factual findings if substantial evidence supports them, which it does: The FDA reached these conclusions by compiling eleven studies containing data on over 30,000 patients.

How does the court deal with these facts? It doesn’t. The court appears completely uninterested in conducting any kind of neutral evaluation of whether the plaintiffs’ allegations are true. It simply quotes them and declares victory for the plaintiffs.

The court also credits the plaintiffs’ allegation that the doctors may be forced to be made “complicit” in an “elective chemical abortion” by forcing them into a situation in which they “need[] to remove a baby with a beating heart or pregnancy tissue as the only means to save the life of the woman or girl.” It doesn’t appear that any of the doctor-members have ever had to involuntarily “remove a baby with a beating heart” as a result of an unsuccessful mifepristone abortion; it’s unclear whether this has happened to any doctor, ever.

But even if it has, it’s absurd to suggest that this is a “certainly impending” outcome for these doctors. Think of what these doctors are saying: They are claiming standing to ban all women from obtaining mifepristone from all doctors in all 50 states, and force all of these women to obtain surgical abortions if they want to terminate their pregnancies, in order to ward off against the hypothetical possibility that some unspecified woman, somewhere, might someday take mifepristone, have some extremely unusual reaction, enter a hospital, and randomly encounter one of these particular doctors, who personally will have to conduct an extremely rare surgical procedure to save the woman’s life, which will lead to the doctor experiencing emotional harm from being “complicit” with abortion. Really?

Next, the court says: “Plaintiffs also argue the challenged action ‘prevent Plaintiff doctors from practicing evidence-based medicine’ and have caused Plaintiffs to face increased exposure to allegations of malpractice and potential liability, along with higher insurance costs.” Each of these allegations is weaker than the last. The plaintiff doctors don’t prescribe mifepristone, so the fact that other doctors choose to do so does not prevent them from practicing “evidence-based medicine.” It is a joke to say that the plaintiff doctors face a “certainly impending” injury on the theory that the FDA’s approval of mifepristone 23 years ago might lead to some unspecified hypothetical lawsuit at some point in the future. And it is totally speculative to suggest that “insurance costs” will decrease if the plaintiffs prevail.

It gets worse. Even though literally millions of women have taken mifepristone, and there are many studies exhaustively studying the health effects of mifepristone, the district judge does not feel that there are enough studies, and therefore feels that “women and girls are prevented from giving informed consent to providers.” Of course, this does not establish that the plaintiffs, who are pro-life doctors who do not prescribe mifepristone to their patients, have standing to block other doctors from prescribing mifepristone.

But let’s set that point aside for a moment and see how the court justifies its conclusion regarding informed consent. The court rests its analysis on a study:

Women also perceive the harm to the informed-consent aspect of the physician-patient relationship. In one study, 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. See Katherine A. Rafferty & Tessa Longbons, #AbortionChangesYou: A Case Study to Understand the Communicative Tensions in Women’s Medication Abortion Narratives, 36 HEALTH COMMC’N. 1485, 1485–94 (2021). Plaintiff physicians’ lack of pertinent information on chemical abortion harms their physician-patient relationships because they cannot receive informed consent from the women and girls they treat in their clinics.

What is this study? It’s a study consisting of an analysis of anonymous blog posts on a pro-life website. A group called the “Institute of Reproductive Grief Care” maintains a website called “Abortion Changes You” that, among other things, includes anonymous blog posts of women who regretted having abortions. In the study, the authors try to draw conclusions from these blog posts. Here’s a quote from the abstract:

Our contrapuntal analysis rendered four sites of dialectical tension found across women’s blog posts: only choice vs. other alternatives, unprepared vs. knowledgeable, relief vs. regret, and silence vs. openness. Each site of struggle characterized a different noteworthy moment within a woman’s medication abortion experience: the decision, the medication abortion process, identity after abortion, and managing the stigmatizing silence before and after the abortion.

To recap: Judge Kacsmaryk asserts that “fourteen percent of women and girls report having received insufficient information,” without revealing that the entire sample consists of anonymous blog posts on a pro-life website designed for women who regret their abortions. Perhaps this sample might not be reflective of the entire universe of women who have abortions?

I would also not say that the methodology of this study is ironclad. The authors’ methodology consists of scanning anonymous blog posts for words such as “but”:

Women used negating when saying, “can’t,” “not,” “couldn’t,” and “never.” Examples of countering were most apparent when women used the word “but.” Entertaining often occurred when women used the words “possibility” and “could have.” Finally, we identified where and how competing discourses interpenetrated.

The sample size consists of 98 blog posts. You might think this is a small sample size, but actually it turns out that the authors applied their methodology on only 54 blog posts, decided they’d had enough, and then decided to skim the rest for good quotes:

Data were analyzed until the point of theoretical saturation (i.e., no new thematic categories were present in the blog posts; Strauss & Corbin, Citation1990), which occurred after the 54th blog post. However, we continued to analyze the remaining blog posts in an effort to verify that our analysis of the discourses evident in the 54 posts accurately reflected all of the posts within the entire data set. Further, we wanted to extract the best exemplars from the entire case study and desired that quotations within all posts be considered for representation.

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And again, I am totally lost on how this shows that pro-life doctors who never even prescribe mifepristone have standing to seek an order banning all women from taking mifepristone.

The court then claims that “Plaintiff medical associations have associational standing via their members’ third-party standing to sue on behalf of their patients.” This section reveals that the court does not understand what “third-party standing” means.

“Third-party standing” is something that plaintiffs sometimes have to show in addition to—not instead of—Article III standing. Plaintiffs always, 100 percent of the time, have to show what the Supreme Court has called the “irreducible constitutional minimum” of standing under Article III: (1) a concrete and particularized injury that is (2) caused by the defendant’s action and (3) redressable by the requested relief. In some cases, a plaintiff that has standing asserts that some action harming them is illegal because it violates someone else’s rights. In that case, they bear the additional burden of showing they are entitled to assert the rights of that third party. That’s third party standing.

Lawsuits by abortion providers challenging abortion restrictions are a classic illustration of the third-party standing doctrine in action. In most cases, especially pre-Dobbs, abortion restrictions target abortion providers rather than women seeking abortions: If a provider performs an abortion in violation of state law, the provider is punished. Abortion providers who sue states seeking to enjoin abortion restrictions have obvious Article III standing. They face a concrete and particularized injury (the state is going to shut them down and incarcerate their doctors if they perform illegal abortions); it’s caused by the state, which enforces the law; and an order enjoining the state from enforcing the law would redress the injury.

In challenging those laws pre-Dobbs, the providers would claim that the laws are unconstitutional because they violate their patients’ constitutional right to an abortion. Thus, although the providers were the direct targets of the law, the providers’ legal theory was that the laws were unconstitutional because they violated the constitutional rights of third parties—that is, their patients. In this context, courts would consider whether the providers were permitted to assert the legal interests of their patients under a doctrine known as “third-party standing,” or whether instead the plaintiffs had to be women seeking abortions. So, for plaintiffs who already had Article III standing, courts would consider whether the plaintiffs also had third-party standing.

The district judge doesn’t understand this. He says: “The injuries suffered by patients of the Plaintiff medical associations’ members are sufficient to confer associational standing.” In other words, he thinks that if hypothetical patients have Article III standing, this means that the doctor-members of the plaintiff organizations can also assert “third-party standing” without a showing that the doctor-members themselves were injured. Standing does not work this way; this is completely wrong.

Even if standing did work this way, the court’s application of the doctrine would still be wrong. Let’s start with the black-letter law. To establish third-party standing, a plaintiff must typically show two things: (1) the party asserting the right has a “close” relationship with the person who possesses the right, and (2) there is a “hindrance” to the possessor’s ability to protect his own interests. In assessing third-party standing, courts also consider whether there is a conflict of interest between the party asserting the right and the party possessing the right.

The “right” at issue is the right to be safe from dangerous drugs. So, I guess, the women who face “certainly impending” harm from mifepristone are women who are considering taking mifepristone and must be protected from their own bad decisions.

Do the plaintiffs have a “close relationship” with those women? Obviously not! They are other doctors’ patients. The plaintiff-doctors don’t even know who they are!

The court holds otherwise, finding that the plaintiff-doctors have the requisite “close relationship” to women who, in the future, will take mifepristone prescribed by other doctors, have complications, and then switch to the plaintiff-doctors. I find it bizarre to suggest that the plaintiffs have a “close relationship” with this totally conjectural class of patients. But even assuming these hypothetical patients ever actually materialize, by the time the plaintiff-doctors see the patients, they have already taken the mifepristone and wouldn’t benefit from an order banning it. It’s literally never the case that any of the plaintiffs’ actual patients could benefit from an order banning mifepristone.


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This article is an excerpt from Adam’s Legal Newsletter. Read the full post here. The views expressed in this publication are the author’s views alone.

On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued an order overturning the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. The order will take effect within seven days unless it is stayed or reversed by a higher court.

The court holds that the plaintiffs have standing, that their lawsuit was filed on time, that their lawsuit can proceed even though they did not make their arguments to the FDA, and that they win on the merits. Each of these holdings is egregiously wrong. This excerpt will walk through the court’s errors on the issue of standing, which are sufficient to establish that a higher court should stay and ultimately reverse Judge Kacsmaryk’s decision.

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The plaintiffs are organizations of pro-life doctors seeking to overturn the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in 2000. Under a 2013 Supreme Court case called Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, the plaintiffs bear the burden of proving a “certainly impending” injury from the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. Neither the organizations, nor their doctor-members, can meet that standard. The plaintiffs’ philosophical disagreement with abortion does not give them standing to seek a federal court order banning all doctors nationwide from prescribing mifepristone to their patients.

The district court nonetheless finds that the plaintiffs have both associational standing (based on injuries suffered by their doctor-members) and organizational standing (based on injuries to the organizations themselves). Both holdings are profoundly wrong.

The court starts with associational standing. It begins by reciting assertions from the plaintiffs’ filings and declaring, without additional analysis, that they establish standing. For example, the court quotes the plaintiffs’ assertions that “chemical abortion drugs can overwhelm the medical system” and “consume crucial limited resources” such as “blood for transfusions.”

These allegations do not establish standing. To establish standing, the doctor-members must show that they personally face an imminent risk of concrete and particularized injury. Vague speculation that someday, somewhere, some unspecified doctor will be “overwhelmed” by an onslaught of patients coming to the ER after taking mifepristone does not establish that these particular doctors face an imminent risk of a concrete and particularized injury.

Also, these allegations are disconnected from reality. Mifepristone has been on the market for the past 23 years. Patients suffering complications from mifepristone abortions have not “overwhelmed the medical system” or rendered blood unavailable for transfusions. The agency record shows that the rates of transfusions are 0-0.1 percent and hospitalization is 0-0.7 percent. The judge was required to defer to these factual findings if substantial evidence supports them, which it does: The FDA reached these conclusions by compiling eleven studies containing data on over 30,000 patients.

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How does the court deal with these facts? It doesn’t. The court appears completely uninterested in conducting any kind of neutral evaluation of whether the plaintiffs’ allegations are true. It simply quotes them and declares victory for the plaintiffs.

The court appears completely uninterested in conducting any kind of neutral evaluation of whether the plaintiffs’ allegations are true.
The court also credits the plaintiffs’ allegation that the doctors may be forced to be made “complicit” in an “elective chemical abortion” by forcing them into a situation in which they “need[] to remove a baby with a beating heart or pregnancy tissue as the only means to save the life of the woman or girl.” It doesn’t appear that any of the doctor-members have ever had to involuntarily “remove a baby with a beating heart” as a result of an unsuccessful mifepristone abortion; it’s unclear whether this has happened to any doctor, ever.

But even if it has, it’s absurd to suggest that this is a “certainly impending” outcome for these doctors. Think of what these doctors are saying: They are claiming standing to ban all women from obtaining mifepristone from all doctors in all 50 states, and force all of these women to obtain surgical abortions if they want to terminate their pregnancies, in order to ward off against the hypothetical possibility that some unspecified woman, somewhere, might someday take mifepristone, have some extremely unusual reaction, enter a hospital, and randomly encounter one of these particular doctors, who personally will have to conduct an extremely rare surgical procedure to save the woman’s life, which will lead to the doctor experiencing emotional harm from being “complicit” with abortion. Really?

Next, the court says: “Plaintiffs also argue the challenged action ‘prevent Plaintiff doctors from practicing evidence-based medicine’ and have caused Plaintiffs to face increased exposure to allegations of malpractice and potential liability, along with higher insurance costs.” Each of these allegations is weaker than the last. The plaintiff doctors don’t prescribe mifepristone, so the fact that other doctors choose to do so does not prevent them from practicing “evidence-based medicine.” It is a joke to say that the plaintiff doctors face a “certainly impending” injury on the theory that the FDA’s approval of mifepristone 23 years ago might lead to some unspecified hypothetical lawsuit at some point in the future. And it is totally speculative to suggest that “insurance costs” will decrease if the plaintiffs prevail.

ADVERTISEMENT

It gets worse. Even though literally millions of women have taken mifepristone, and there are many studies exhaustively studying the health effects of mifepristone, the district judge does not feel that there are enough studies, and therefore feels that “women and girls are prevented from giving informed consent to providers.” Of course, this does not establish that the plaintiffs, who are pro-life doctors who do not prescribe mifepristone to their patients, have standing to block other doctors from prescribing mifepristone.

But let’s set that point aside for a moment and see how the court justifies its conclusion regarding informed consent. The court rests its analysis on a study:

Women also perceive the harm to the informed-consent aspect of the physician-patient relationship. In one study, 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. See Katherine A. Rafferty & Tessa Longbons, #AbortionChangesYou: A Case Study to Understand the Communicative Tensions in Women’s Medication Abortion Narratives, 36 HEALTH COMMC’N. 1485, 1485–94 (2021). Plaintiff physicians’ lack of pertinent information on chemical abortion harms their physician-patient relationships because they cannot receive informed consent from the women and girls they treat in their clinics.

What is this study? It’s a study consisting of an analysis of anonymous blog posts on a pro-life website. A group called the “Institute of Reproductive Grief Care” maintains a website called “Abortion Changes You” that, among other things, includes anonymous blog posts of women who regretted having abortions. In the study, the authors try to draw conclusions from these blog posts. Here’s a quote from the abstract:

ADVERTISEMENT

Our contrapuntal analysis rendered four sites of dialectical tension found across women’s blog posts: only choice vs. other alternatives, unprepared vs. knowledgeable, relief vs. regret, and silence vs. openness. Each site of struggle characterized a different noteworthy moment within a woman’s medication abortion experience: the decision, the medication abortion process, identity after abortion, and managing the stigmatizing silence before and after the abortion.

To recap: Judge Kacsmaryk asserts that “fourteen percent of women and girls report having received insufficient information,” without revealing that the entire sample consists of anonymous blog posts on a pro-life website designed for women who regret their abortions. Perhaps this sample might not be reflective of the entire universe of women who have abortions?

I would also not say that the methodology of this study is ironclad. The authors’ methodology consists of scanning anonymous blog posts for words such as “but”:

Women used negating when saying, “can’t,” “not,” “couldn’t,” and “never.” Examples of countering were most apparent when women used the word “but.” Entertaining often occurred when women used the words “possibility” and “could have.” Finally, we identified where and how competing discourses interpenetrated.

The sample size consists of 98 blog posts. You might think this is a small sample size, but actually it turns out that the authors applied their methodology on only 54 blog posts, decided they’d had enough, and then decided to skim the rest for good quotes:

Data were analyzed until the point of theoretical saturation (i.e., no new thematic categories were present in the blog posts; Strauss & Corbin, Citation1990), which occurred after the 54th blog post. However, we continued to analyze the remaining blog posts in an effort to verify that our analysis of the discourses evident in the 54 posts accurately reflected all of the posts within the entire data set. Further, we wanted to extract the best exemplars from the entire case study and desired that quotations within all posts be considered for representation.

ADVERTISEMENT

And again, I am totally lost on how this shows that pro-life doctors who never even prescribe mifepristone have standing to seek an order banning all women from taking mifepristone.

The court then claims that “Plaintiff medical associations have associational standing via their members’ third-party standing to sue on behalf of their patients.” This section reveals that the court does not understand what “third-party standing” means.

“Third-party standing” is something that plaintiffs sometimes have to show in addition to—not instead of—Article III standing. Plaintiffs always, 100 percent of the time, have to show what the Supreme Court has called the “irreducible constitutional minimum” of standing under Article III: (1) a concrete and particularized injury that is (2) caused by the defendant’s action and (3) redressable by the requested relief. In some cases, a plaintiff that has standing asserts that some action harming them is illegal because it violates someone else’s rights. In that case, they bear the additional burden of showing they are entitled to assert the rights of that third party. That’s third party standing.

Lawsuits by abortion providers challenging abortion restrictions are a classic illustration of the third-party standing doctrine in action. In most cases, especially pre-Dobbs, abortion restrictions target abortion providers rather than women seeking abortions: If a provider performs an abortion in violation of state law, the provider is punished. Abortion providers who sue states seeking to enjoin abortion restrictions have obvious Article III standing. They face a concrete and particularized injury (the state is going to shut them down and incarcerate their doctors if they perform illegal abortions); it’s caused by the state, which enforces the law; and an order enjoining the state from enforcing the law would redress the injury.

I find it bizarre to suggest that the plaintiffs have a “close relationship” with this totally conjectural class of patients.
In challenging those laws pre-Dobbs, the providers would claim that the laws are unconstitutional because they violate their patients’ constitutional right to an abortion. Thus, although the providers were the direct targets of the law, the providers’ legal theory was that the laws were unconstitutional because they violated the constitutional rights of third parties—that is, their patients. In this context, courts would consider whether the providers were permitted to assert the legal interests of their patients under a doctrine known as “third-party standing,” or whether instead the plaintiffs had to be women seeking abortions. So, for plaintiffs who already had Article III standing, courts would consider whether the plaintiffs also had third-party standing.

ADVERTISEMENT

The district judge doesn’t understand this. He says: “The injuries suffered by patients of the Plaintiff medical associations’ members are sufficient to confer associational standing.” In other words, he thinks that if hypothetical patients have Article III standing, this means that the doctor-members of the plaintiff organizations can also assert “third-party standing” without a showing that the doctor-members themselves were injured. Standing does not work this way; this is completely wrong.

Even if standing did work this way, the court’s application of the doctrine would still be wrong. Let’s start with the black-letter law. To establish third-party standing, a plaintiff must typically show two things: (1) the party asserting the right has a “close” relationship with the person who possesses the right, and (2) there is a “hindrance” to the possessor’s ability to protect his own interests. In assessing third-party standing, courts also consider whether there is a conflict of interest between the party asserting the right and the party possessing the right.

The “right” at issue is the right to be safe from dangerous drugs. So, I guess, the women who face “certainly impending” harm from mifepristone are women who are considering taking mifepristone and must be protected from their own bad decisions.

Do the plaintiffs have a “close relationship” with those women? Obviously not! They are other doctors’ patients. The plaintiff-doctors don’t even know who they are!

The court holds otherwise, finding that the plaintiff-doctors have the requisite “close relationship” to women who, in the future, will take mifepristone prescribed by other doctors, have complications, and then switch to the plaintiff-doctors. I find it bizarre to suggest that the plaintiffs have a “close relationship” with this totally conjectural class of patients. But even assuming these hypothetical patients ever actually materialize, by the time the plaintiff-doctors see the patients, they have already taken the mifepristone and wouldn’t benefit from an order banning it. It’s literally never the case that any of the plaintiffs’ actual patients could benefit from an order banning mifepristone.

ADVERTISEMENT

I am also wowed by this statement by the court:

Here, the physician-patient dynamic favors third-party standing. Unlike abortionists suing on behalf of women seeking abortions, here there are no potential conflicts of interest between the Plaintiff physicians and their patients.

Really? There are “no potential conflicts of interest” between women who want to use mifepristone to have an abortion and doctors who are seeking to ban them from using mifepristone?

The court also finds that that the plaintiffs’ patients have a “hindrance” to asserting their own rights. It claims that “women who have already obtained an abortion may be more hindered than women who challenge restrictions on abortion” because “adverse abortion experiences that are often deeply traumatizing pose a hindrance to a woman’s ability to bring suit.” The court doesn’t seem to realize that “women who have already obtained an abortion” don’t have standing based on the prior abortion. The plaintiffs aren’t seeking damages to redress prior harms; they are seeking an injunction to redress future harms. These women don’t have standing unless they wish to obtain an additional abortion, in which case there is a rather obvious conflict of interest between those women and the plaintiffs who seek to ban them from getting the medical care they want.

Satisfied that there is associational standing, the court then turns to organizational standing. The court finds that “because of FDA’s failure to require reporting of all adverse events, FDA’s actions have frustrated their ability to educate and inform their member physicians, their patients, and the public on the dangers of chemical abortion drugs.” And: “Plaintiffs have re-calibrated their outreach efforts to spend extra time and money educating their members about the dangers of chemical abortion drugs.”

This theory of standing directly contradicts Supreme Court precedent and can’t possibly be right. First, Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, explicitly rejects this diversion-of-resources theory unless the diversion of resources is curing the members’ injury caused by the challenged law (in which case organizational standing adds nothing to associational standing).

The district court fails to cite Clapper in its discussion of organizational standing. Instead, it offers this citation to a post-Clapper 5th Circuit case:

See also Zimmerman v. City of Austin, Tex., 881 F.3d 378, 390 (5th Cir. 2018) (changing one’s “plans or strategies in response to an allegedly injurious law can itself be a sufficient injury to confer standing”).

Looks promising! But here’s what Zimmerman actually says (emphasis mine):

Finally, while changing one’s campaign plans or strategies in response to an allegedly injurious law can itself be a sufficient injury to confer standing, the change in plans must still be in response to a reasonably certain injury imposed by the challenged law.

Oh.

In addition to directly contradicting Supreme Court precedent, the district court’s theory implies that any organization can immediately manufacture standing to challenge any rule in the entire world it thinks would harm “safety.” It’s simple:

Federal agency does something that the organization thinks is “unsafe.”

Organization now has to start educating people about safety, which it wouldn’t have to do without the rule.

Organization has less money to do other things.

And actually, I don’t even see why the rule would have to be a safety rule, presumably it could be any rule:

Federal agency enacts rule.

Organization doesn’t like rule, spends money educating people about why rule is bad.

Organization has less money to do other things.

Presto, standing! The district court doesn’t identify any kind of limiting principle. It just blows past this.

The court then spends some time explaining why it thinks the injuries are “concrete and redressable” The Supreme Court has held that an injury cannot give rise to standing unless it is “certainly impending,” and the court finds that this standard is satisfied. The court’s reasoning boils down to this: “Plaintiffs’ declarations list specific events where Plaintiff physicians provided emergency care to women suffering from chemical abortion.” And based on those past “events,” plaintiffs “have good reasons to believe their alleged injuries will continue in the future, and possibly with greater frequency than in the past.” That doesn’t sound “certainly impending” to me, but the court assures us that “the ‘certainly impending’ standard for an ‘imminent’ injury is not as demanding as it sounds.”

The problem here is that the organizations have no idea which doctor-members will be harmed, or who the hypothetical future patients will be; they’re simply saying that statistically, it’s likely that some unspecified doctors will be harmed in the future by encountering future patients who show up in the emergency room. The Supreme Court has rejected this exact theory of standing in Summers v. Earth Island Institute, a 2009 decision by Justice Scalia:

The dissent proposes a hitherto unheard-of test for organizational standing: whether, accepting the organization’s self-description of the activities of its members, there is a statistical probability that some of those members are threatened with concrete injury … This novel approach to the law of organizational standing would make a mockery of our prior cases, which have required plaintiff-organizations to make specific allegations establishing that at least one identified member had suffered or would suffer harm.

The court fails to cite this binding Supreme Court precedent in its decision.

To sum up, the court’s analysis of standing directly contradicts binding precedent, relies on skewed evidence, and would yield absurd consequences. For that reason alone, the court’s decision should be reversed and the case should be dismissed.

[RedFromMI]

And now the appeals court (5th circuit) essentially walks a small part back and otherwise upholds the ruling - in particular the _standing_ issue which is clear bunk, and the use of the anti-abortion doctor group (incorporated in Amarillo just to make sure they get this particular judge) fictitious data about complications.

The corruption of the judiciary is real and ongoing. The most lasting legacy of R control of the nomination process for most of the last couple of decades.

[MDlaxfan76]

And now the appeals court (5th circuit) essentially walks a small part back and otherwise upholds the ruling - in particular the _standing_ issue which is clear bunk, and the use of the anti-abortion doctor group (incorporated in Amarillo just to make sure they get this particular judge) fictitious data about complications.

The corruption of the judiciary is real and ongoing. The most lasting legacy of R control of the nomination process for most of the last couple of decades.

That does indeed appear to be the case.
Pretty darn out there legal reasoning.
Radical, not "conservative".

[ggait]

And now the appeals court (5th circuit) essentially walks a small part back and otherwise upholds the ruling - in particular the _standing_ issue which is clear bunk, and the use of the anti-abortion doctor group (incorporated in Amarillo just to make sure they get this particular judge) fictitious data about complications.

The corruption of the judiciary is real and ongoing. The most lasting legacy of R control of the nomination process for most of the last couple of decades.

Lighten up. Appointing these dudes was all worked out while Leonard Leo was enjoying cigars and hospitality with Clarence Thomas at the Crow guy's Adirondack resort. There's even a painting of that moment!! Totally normal stuff.

Mostly, the two Trumper 5th Circuit guys are passing the buck. Why should they stick their pro-life necks out today? They let the pill kinda/sorta stay on the market (weaseling), throw some shade at the pro-choicers (cause you can never let a chance to own the libs go unused), and let Scotus take the eventual heat when the case is finally decided.

The Bush judge, like any normal human being, votes to stay the whole thing until it could be briefed and argued in full.

[a fan]

And now the appeals court (5th circuit) essentially walks a small part back and otherwise upholds the ruling - in particular the _standing_ issue which is clear bunk, and the use of the anti-abortion doctor group (incorporated in Amarillo just to make sure they get this particular judge) fictitious data about complications.

The corruption of the judiciary is real and ongoing. The most lasting legacy of R control of the nomination process for most of the last couple of decades.

Lighten up. Appointing these dudes was all worked out while Leonard Leo was enjoying cigars and hospitality with Clarence Thomas at the Crow guy's Adirondack resort. There's even a painting of that moment!! Totally normal stuff.

Mostly, the two Trumper 5th Circuit guys are passing the buck. Why should they stick their pro-life necks out today? They let the pill kinda/sorta stay on the market (weaseling), throw some shade at the pro-choicers (cause you can never let a chance to own the libs go unused), and let Scotus take the eventual heat when the case is finally decided.

The Bush judge, like any normal human being, votes to stay the whole thing until it could be briefed and argued in full.

Really enjoy reading the stories of working class women in Idaho lose access to a Hospital for just a plain ol' birth....because of all the games that these people are playing with other people's lives. So the hospitals can't afford to do it anymore. Oh well. Not my wife, so who cares, right?

This all hits the poor. Rich Republicans don't have to deal with these laws.

And voters are too stupid to understand that's why R's in Congress (all rich) are more than happy to pass laws that don't affect them or their families.

You'll find the exact same problems in our public schools. Like it's a "coincidence" that Florida's DeSantis is OVERJOYED to pass any and all laws that stick it to Public Schools......and his kids are all in private schools. Neat.

[jhu72]

--- Abortions will not end.
--- The Mifepristone pill will be as available as ever. Just goes black market. Can have them delivered to your door, just like any other drug. RepubliCONs are idiots. They go out of their way to prove it over and over again. The distribution chain is already in place.

--- You piss of 95% of physicians, the entire pharmaceutical industry, most all women including your wives so your dog will think you're licking his balls!

[ggait]

RonDe signs a six week abortion ban into law. Previously FL had a 15 week ban. Seems very out of step with FL's demographics.

FL voters do have the ability to put a state constitutional amendment on the ballot directly, but recent changes have made that initiative process very difficult and expensive. So the six week ban is going to stick in place, at least until November 2024. And maybe longer.

Should be a general election albatross for RonDe. Something like 25% of all American women will have an abortion over their lifetime. So think of how many people are encompassed by those women plus all of their families and their friends?

But I guess the GE doesn't matter unless you can first get the nomination.

[runrussellrun]

Really enjoy reading the stories of working class women in Idaho lose access to a Hospital for just a plain ol' birth....because of all the games that these people are playing with other people's lives. So the hospitals can't afford to do it anymore. Oh well. Not my wife, so who cares, right?

• oh NO, "reading stories" Hopefully NOT some guy on the internet

This all hits the poor. Rich Republicans don't have to deal with these laws. But ALL rich Democrats do ?

And voters are too stupid to understand that's why R's in Congress (all rich) are more than happy to pass laws that don't affect them or their families.

You'll find the exact same problems in our public schools. Like it's a "coincidence" that Florida's DeSantis is OVERJOYED to pass any and all laws that stick it to Public Schools......and his kids are all in private schools. Neat.

Wonder how far the "poor" of say, Island Pond, Vermont or Allegash waterway residents, of Maine, have to drive to give birth. Or, get an abortion ?

beyond that, incoherent ramblings at the tv in Archies Bar.........TAATS, you're better off when you are wearing THAT hat.

Who, are the "poor", in Congress ? Regardless of party ?

Congress members make a great salary. With great benefits. Only AFAN would call someone making $175k a year, PLUS benies, as "poor" .

Poor AOC (who, btw.....we watch her "boyfriends" trades, very closely ) ....

only MEDICAL advice, online.......everything else, brought to you by you twatter, fecesbook or Melinda Gates news feeds.

carry on

[a fan]

oh NO, "reading stories" Hopefully NOT some guy on the internet

So now you're pretending that you're so stupid that you can't tell the difference between reading an article on the internet to get general information....and reading things on the internet and using these things to make major medical decisions without consulting your personal doctor.

Neat.

And to you answer your stupid game of not blaming anyone with a R by their name for any laws they pass because you think it's edgy and cool: Dems aren't passing these laws surrounding Women's Health. It's only the Republicans that are playing this dangerous game.

So no, TAATS doesn't apply here. But you know that, and are yet again playing dumb in the hopes that contrarianism is the same thing as careful and reasoned thought.

[PizzaSnake]

Really enjoy reading the stories of working class women in Idaho lose access to a Hospital for just a plain ol' birth....because of all the games that these people are playing with other people's lives. So the hospitals can't afford to do it anymore. Oh well. Not my wife, so who cares, right?

• oh NO, "reading stories" Hopefully NOT some guy on the internet

This all hits the poor. Rich Republicans don't have to deal with these laws. But ALL rich Democrats do ?

And voters are too stupid to understand that's why R's in Congress (all rich) are more than happy to pass laws that don't affect them or their families.

You'll find the exact same problems in our public schools. Like it's a "coincidence" that Florida's DeSantis is OVERJOYED to pass any and all laws that stick it to Public Schools......and his kids are all in private schools. Neat.

Wonder how far the "poor" of say, Island Pond, Vermont or Allegash waterway residents, of Maine, have to drive to give birth. Or, get an abortion ?

beyond that, incoherent ramblings at the tv in Archies Bar.........TAATS, you're better off when you are wearing THAT hat.

Who, are the "poor", in Congress ? Regardless of party ?

Congress members make a great salary. With great benefits. Only AFAN would call someone making $175k a year, PLUS benies, as "poor" .

Poor AOC (who, btw.....we watch her "boyfriends" trades, very closely ) ....

only MEDICAL advice, online.......everything else, brought to you by you twatter, fecesbook or Melinda Gates news feeds.

carry on

Quite a little etymological knot you’ve wrapped yourself up in.

Have a nice sharp knife, Alexander? May I suggest Occam’s?

[jhu72]

Colorado declares itself an abortion and transgender care zone.

Way to go Gov. Polis!

[jhu72]

The New Pro-life Movement Has a Plan to End Abortion. This is what the right wing plans for all their "second class" citizens. Use the power of big government to crush you. I am 99% certain that they will fail, but not before they cause a lot of hurt and pain if given any quarter.

These are some damned evil Karens!!

[ohmilax34]

Counter argument:

In 2021, the organization started the Campaign for Abortion-Free Cities to promote what they call “alternatives to abortion” and neighborhood resources for pregnant women.

This seems like a pretty good thing.

[ggait]

I think the pending case about the abortion pill tells you everything you need to know.

Pro-lifers don't care about states rights, federalism, strict construction of the Constitution, conservative judges not legislating from the bench, or FDA safety decisions. That is all just cover. They just care about banning abortion. Everywhere, all the time, all at once.

And they will use every tool available to ban abortions in all 50 states. The end will always justify the means.

So if you can get one crazy forum shopped judge in Texas to overturn a 20+ year old, nation-wide, FDA approval with thin to non-existent scientific data, that's just fine.

The end stage of this is when voters (at least where voter initiatives are allowed) amend state constitutions to tell the theocratic pro-life bitter enders to pound sand. That's coming in Ohio, Florida and a bunch of other states.

So the net net bottom line of the holy jihad will be to make poor women in certain backward states travel farther and more expensively to get their procedures. So basically, a complete waste of 50 years effort. And kinda racist as a bonus.

But GOP politicians were glad to accept those votes and win 50 years of elections for effectively no ROI. As a political matter, the pro-lifers got totally played. And they don't even understand how badly.