“The Supreme Court seems all but certain to rewrite the country’s abortion laws when it rules in coming months on a case from Mississippi. But the real-world effects of that ruling will differ enormously depending on how far the justices go.
In one scenario, only a small share of abortions now being conducted in the U.S. — less than 2 percent, perhaps — would become illegal. In another scenario, the ruling could lead to sweeping changes in abortion access and a large decline in abortions.
-David Leonhardt, “A Portrait of Abortion.” The New York Times: The Morning Newsletter. December 14, 2021https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/12/the-fda-just-made-medication-abortions-a-whole-lot-easier-to-get/
Every weekday morning and Sunday, I read David Leonhardt’s The Morning Newsletter to my wife. Her politics are Democratic Party liberal politics, and The New York Times is the paper of record for liberals in the United States. So, this newsletter explains the thinking of that demographic.
While I enjoy talking to my wife about the issues of the day, I find the framing of these issues by the The Morning Newsletter bordering on incompetence. As you can see from the quote above, the framing of the issue is a false dichotomy, between less or more restriction, with an understanding that abortion is some surgical procedure done by a doctor, or by some illegal clinic harkening back to Prohibition. But, I’d say there’s a key element missing in The New York Times discussion. There are modern medical abortifacients, i.e., mifepristone and misoprostol, that can end a pregnancy. Together, they are an “abortion pill”. Here’s Planned Parenthood providing an overview:
“Abortion pill” is the common name for using two different medicines to end a pregnancy: mifepristone and misoprostol.
First, you take a pill called mifepristone. Pregnancy needs a hormone called progesterone to grow normally. Mifepristone blocks your body’s own progesterone, stopping the pregnancy from growing.
Then you take the second medicine, misoprostol, either right away or up to 48 hours later. This medicine causes cramping and bleeding to empty your uterus. It’s kind of like having a really heavy, crampy period, and the process is very similar to an early miscarriage. If you don’t have any bleeding within 24 hours after taking the second medicine, call your nurse or doctor.
-“The Abortion Pill.” Planned Parenthood.
So, you no longer have to have a surgical procedure to have an abortion. You simply have to take two medications, within 48 hours of one another.
Now, the implications of that fact are profound. This means that stopping abortions is as practical as stopping people from taking drugs or drinking alcohol. Decades of a U.S. “Drug War” and the experiment of Prohibition illustrates a simple fact. The minute you prohibit a legal means of getting something done, you create an illegal market for it.
The implications are obvious. The level of restrictions that the Supreme Court allows and individual states implement will create illegal markets in mifepristone and misoprostol. As with other drugs, it will be impossible to prevent these drugs from reaching the people that want them.
So,, prohibiting surgical abortion might have the counter-intuitive effect of creating a illegal market for abortion drugs that will make abortion more accessible, not less. And, when the Pro-Life movement understands this fact, they will then try to go after women using these medications, except instead of draconian drug laws, they’ll create abortion specific laws or try to make using these medications an action that can be charged as murder.
Action, reaction. All very predictable, and all not even hinted at in the The New York Times dichotomy of more restrictive and less restrictive options.
Perhaps, we should give David and the other writers at The Times the benefit of the doubt. It is a daily, and they are limited in the amount of detail they can put in. However, this doesn’t change the fact that their efforts are more likely to misinform people than provide them with a useful framework for understanding the world.
Fake news is everywhere because most of the thinking presented in mass media is bad, top to bottom. It’s not a problem of a particular political point of view. It’s a problem across the board. The real question one should be asking is: who benefits from viewing the abortion issue as a dichotomy hinged on the decisions on The Supreme Court? A question left as an exercise for the reader.
Update: Not even two days after writing this Mother Jones reports:
“The Food and Drug Administration announced on Thursday that it will loosen restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone, allowing people to receive the pill via mail or pharmacy instead of having to appear in person at a clinic or hospital.”
-Lil Kalish, “The FDA Just Made Medication Abortions a Whole Lot Easier to Get.” Mother Jones. December 16, 2021.
Action, reaction.
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