Republican states want to raise the teen birth rate
New court filing in the mifepristone lawsuit is scary shit!
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On June 13, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) rejected an attempt by anti-abortion groups (in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA) to severely restrict mifepristone nationwide, based on the plaintiffs’ lack of standing. “Standing, or locus standi, is the capacity of a party to bring a lawsuit in court. To have standing, a party must demonstrate a sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action being challenged.”1 The Court did not rule on the merits of the case.
Prior to the March oral arguments at SCOTUS, in an attempt to buttress the original plaintiffs’ absurdly weak claims to standing, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk allowed three states - Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri - to join the lawsuit. This meant that “even if the Supreme Court [found] that the anti-abortion groups behind the original lawsuit [had] no legal standing to sue — a key issue in the case — the states could try to continue the litigation.”2
SCOTUS chose not to hear from the states in the first go-around of this lawsuit. It also didn't outright dismiss the lawsuit. Thus, the Plaintiff States can keep the lawsuit going. And that’s exactly what these states are doing.
On October 11, 2024, Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri filed an amended complaint in an effort to revive the lawsuit and ultimately bring it back before SCOTUS. The amended complaint seeks to overturn the FDA's 2016 and 2021 eased access regulations for mifepristone, prohibit mifepristone use by anyone under 18 years of age, and “put back restrictions in place prior to 2016. Those include changes in how far into a pregnancy mifepristone can be prescribed and whether it needs to be dispensed in person.”3 You can review the regulations in question here.
In the amended complaint, the Attorneys General for the states of Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri make many of the same bogus claims found in the original lawsuit, including debunked pseudoscience and references to retracted papers. But one of the states’ claims is sure to make your skin crawl.
In a section, “Sovereign Injuries to Plaintiffs’ Population Interests,” the three states claim that mifepristone is “depressing expected birth rates” for teenage girls “in Plaintiff States,” which injures Plaintiff Sates by depriving said States of increases in population (p. 190) — as if teenage girls, which the States refer to as “teenaged mothers,” exist for the purposes of churning out new citizens for the States.
Teenagers!
The Plaintiff States then claim that this population injury results in the “diminishment of political representation” and the “loss of federal funds” (p. 190).
You have to read it to believe it.
In other words, Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri are claiming to have a legitimate, sovereign state interest in forced birth — in teenage girls and women as breeders. It’s an argument that positions everyone capable of birthing as brood mares - a scenario in which the State does not exist for the people, but the people for the Sate - and augurs a future claim for the prohibition of contraception.
The Plaintiff States’ argument here is functionally a slaver’s argument: A caste of humans must perform unpaid, involuntary labor so that the Master can maintain power and reap financial benefits.
So here were are. In 2024. And Republican states are making slaver arguments for forcing teenagers to birth babies for the State. In writing.
I want off this ride.
**To read more of what is in this filing, click here.
Cornell Law School. (n.d.). Standing. Legal Information Institute. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/standing
Pierson, B. (2024, January 12). States can join lawsuit seeking to restrict abortion pill, judge rules ... Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/states-can-join-lawsuit-seeking-restrict-abortion-pill-judge-rules-2024-01-12/
Geidner, C. (2023, December 13). Supreme Court takes up cases over eased access to medication abortion drug. lawdork.com. https://www.lawdork.com/p/breaking-supreme-court-takes-up-cases
I have never heard of such bullshit in my life. It’s funny how the GOP is always blaming the Dems for crime and rising crime rates but they’re contributing to high crime itself. If the court can’t see through this then they are complicit in this criminality as well as being criminals themselves. This case is totally void of merit and any court should throw it out.
One of the reasons why the teen pregnancy rate is so much lower is because public schools in the North and the east and west coasts are more progressive and teach sex education and maybe abstinence. The south and the midwest have the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country. They don’t teach sex ed but abstinence only which has proven to be a colossal failure. The other states demand that they have excellent public schools that are some of the most competitive in the country. There’s a lot of teen girls that are very good in mathematics and science and many of them choose STEM careers and they often out perform boys in those subjects. So why waste a perfectly good brain? If they choose to have children then great! If they don’t then that’s great too. No one should ever be forced into parenthood by anyone for any reason.