UPDATE – Pro-Life Fights Continue at Supreme Court Case and Massachusetts Legislation

This week, despite Americans across the country gearing up for Christmas, pro-life fights are occurring both at the Supreme Court and in the Massachusetts legislature.

On Monday, The Daily Citizen reported that U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang had once again denied a request by the Donald Trump administration to reinstate the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) restrictions on the abortion pill.

The Trump administration has now appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.

The abortion pill is one of only a handful of the thousands of medications approved by the FDA to have a REMS or Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies, which is a designation only used to manage the most dangerous and risky of drugs. Judge Chuang removed the REMS requiring providers to dispense the abortion pill, also known as mifepristone, in person to the patients. Now, the pill can be dispensed through telemedicine.

Pro-abortion organizations, ironically led by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, had argued that the REMS should be disregarded since women are having more difficulty accessing medicine due to COVID restrictions. The Trump administration argues that isn’t the case.

“Continued enforcement of FDA’s two-decade-old safety requirement during the pandemic does not create a substantial burden on abortion access,” acting U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall said in the new filing.

The case is Food and Drug Administration v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Turning to Massachusetts, the state legislature is expected to vote Wednesday to overturn Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s rejection of parts of a budget amendment, which would expand access to the procedure.

The Daily Citizen reported in November that the Massachusetts legislature was very interested in expanding access to abortion in the state if Roe v. Wade is overturned. To that end, the legislature introduced the ROE Act, which would eliminate requirements that minors have parental consent before an abortion, allow abortion after 24 weeks in the event of a fatal birth defect, remove the 24-hour waiting for abortions and require the state to cover the procedure for low-income women. Due to citizen opposition and Gov. Baker’s veto threat, the legislation has been sidelined.

But the pro-abortion lobby is unrelenting in its quest to kill preborn babies and has now included some of the ROE Act in the budget amendments. The language of the budget amendment would allow an abortion after 24 weeks if there is a fatal birth defect and change the age of parental consent for an abortion from 18 to 16. Gov. Baker, who is described as “pro-choice” and supports the legislation in part, was reportedly “unhappy” with using the budget to make legislation he disagrees with.

“I cannot support the other ways that this section expands the availability of late-term abortions and permits minors age 16 and 17 to get an abortion without the consent of a parent or guardian,” Baker wrote in an amendment letter.

In his changes, Baker maintained the age of consent at 18 and included language stating that an abortion after 24 weeks would be legal if “a continuation of the pregnancy will impose, in the best medical judgement of the physician, a substantial risk to” the mother’s health. The Democrats want to keep their language, which states that an abortion after 24 weeks can be performed if its’s “necessary, in the best medical judgement of the physician, to preserve the patient’s physical or mental health.”

Ironically, since the “mother’s health” usually has a rather broad definition that can include mental, physical, emotional or financial health, the pro-abortion lobby’s language is actually narrower than the governor’s.

But nothing is apparently good enough for pro-abortion activists who say that his language remains a “barrier” to abortion. It isn’t.

At press time, the vote to veto-proof the legislature’s budget language has not occurred.

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