Despite the Supreme Court unanimously from Navigator Research and Global Strategy Group. Seven in 10 Americans opposed the enforcement of the law after learning about it.
“The way that these anti-abortion extremists want to misuse the Comstock Act is entirely wrong from a legal perspective,” Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, told reporters during a Thursday press call. “They are defying the consensus of the federal appellate court, the U.S. Postal Service, Congress and the Department of Justice.”
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The third way Trump could ban abortion nationwide comes back to this week’s Supreme Court case. There will likely be continued litigation because the case was not dismissed but remanded back to Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s courtroom.
Kacsmaryk is the far-right Trump appointee, well-known for his anti-abortion views, who ruled last year that the FDA unlawfully approved mifepristone in 2000. After the Supreme Court took the case, Kacsmaryk allowed attorneys general from Idaho, Kansas and Missouri to be added as plaintiffs. Those officials have suggested they will continue litigating the case — either by continuing in Kacsmaryk’s Amarillo courtroom or by filing copycat lawsuits in other federal district courts.
The lawsuit that was in front of the Supreme Court should not be allowed to continue in Amarillo based on legal precedent, Kaye said. But if it does move forward in Amarillo or through copycat suits, a Trump Justice Department could stop defending the FDA and its evidence-based mifepristone regulations.
Mitchell, the attorney betting on enforcing the Comstock Act, is reportedly on Trump’s short list for attorney general.
“The bottom line is that these attacks on medication abortion and on all abortion nationwide are absolutely going to continue despite the relief of today’s decision,” Kaye said.
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