This article was originally published with Abortion Rights UK.
Author Helena Trenkić is a PhD Candidate at the University of Cambridge, where she is also Co-Founder and Co-President of Cambridge University for Reproductive Rights.
A single judge has thrown access to medical abortion pills across the entirety of the US into doubt. His ruling is an example of how anti-abortion groups are co-opting feminist discourse and doubling down on misinformation – and we must be smart enough to debunk it.
Context – what the hell just happened?
The abortion pill mifepristone has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) since 2000. But according to Texan Judge Kacsmaryk, it is so dangerous that its approval must now be stayed. If implemented, his ruling would apply nationally. This would make mifepristone pills illegal in all fifty states, even those where surgical abortion continues to be legal.
Once again, conservative groups are weaponising the overreaching American judiciary to implement bans against the will of the electorate. The conservative Christian groups behind the case deliberately targeted the drug, which is used in the majority of US abortions, and deliberately brought the cases in Amarillo, Texas, knowing it would be ruled on by a Trump-appointed judge who has previously struck down protection for LGBTQ+ workers and denied young people confidential access to contraception. Kacsmaryk’s decision is being appealed by the Department of Justice and will likely escalate to the conservative-majority Supreme Court. But already, the uncertainty is creating a perfect storm of confusion for patients.
Debunking anti-choice misinformation
It’s crucial to break down Kacsmaryk’s 67-page opinion, which is an impressive overview of ‘every conspiracy, lie, and butchered logic’ commonly used by anti-choice groups. Essentially, the judgement claims that mifepristone is unsafe and harmful – both in ‘killing an unborn human’, but also to the pregnant user. In other words, Kacsmaryk justifies the ban through a faux concern for ‘ensuring that women and girls are protected from unnecessary harm’.
Kacsmaryk repeats the baseless claim that abortion ‘often’ results in ‘shame, regret, anxiety, depression, drug abuse and suicidal thoughts’. For the record, the only substantial and peer-reviewed studies on post-abortion emotions show that over 95% have no regrets [X, and X].
This data is not enough to reassure Kacsmaryk, who (according to his family) ‘has a real tender spot for caring for women, and particularly women who are pregnant’. Neither is he reassured by the fact that mifepristone is far safer than penicillin or Viagra. He worries that taking abortion pills at home endangers women – disregarding the studies proving that having a virtual consultation and getting pills sent in the post (telemedicine) is as safe as going to a clinic.
The American Medical Association points out that his ruling ‘flies in the face of science’, ‘disregards well-established scientific facts in favour of speculative allegations and ideological assertions’, and, far from protecting women, ‘will cause harm to our patients’. It’s true – restricting one of the safest methods for abortion is obviously going to endanger anybody who can fall pregnant. When abortion is banned, maternal mortality rises – wherever the ban and whenever the period. In these situations, doctors can’t provide adequate healthcare. Mifepristone is used to treat for a partial miscarriage or ectopic pregnancies, which are life-threatening. If it’s banned, medical abortion will be done with misoprostol alone, another pill which is still safe, but slightly less effective and with slightly higher risks of complications. Without access to mifepristone, many clinics will close. Those that provide surgical abortions will be under far more pressure; waiting times will go up, and many will be turned away. Those turned away, or who cannot get to a clinic in the first place, may turn to dangerous homemade surgical methods. There’s a reason the coat hanger was the symbol of the 1960s, when sepsis from unsafe backstreet abortions was the primary cause of death of African-American women. On top of that, criminalising mifepristone will send thousands of women to jail – whether they took the pill or not. It’s medically impossible to distinguish between a medical abortion and a miscarriage. They look the same. Even those who have miscarried could be accused of using pills illegally, and face prison. This isn’t a dystopia – it’s already happening in the US and the UK.
And yet, Judge Kacsmaryk continues to obfuscate his aim of forcing us all to carry pregnancies to term, denying bodily autonomy and threatening the health of millions, behind the guise of just. really. caring. about. women.
‘Pro-life and pro-women’ – a widespread anti-choice tactic
This is not an isolated example. Anti-choice (self-styled as ‘Pro-Life’) groups have in the past few years undergone a sophisticated, organised PR makeover. Knowing that banning abortion goes against public opinion in both the US and the UK, groups in both countries are trying to sanitise their language. By deliberately co-opting feminist discourse, they use surface-level nods to women’s safety and health as a Trojan horse for policies that reaffirm traditional gender roles, control and deny bodily autonomy, and endanger women’s health.
Like Kacsmaryk’s judgement, anti-choice leaflets are often no longer just about ‘foetal personhood’. Most groups now present themselves as concerned for women. For one, they invent the idea that abortion pills are harmful, inviting uninformed individuals to call for their tighter regulation. Women who have had abortions, once vilified as selfish sluts, have meanwhile been recast as victims harmed by evil ‘abortionists’ and now courageously seeking redemption. The new narrative intends to generate doubt over the safety of abortion, and sympathy for anti-choice women supposedly protecting their sisters from harm.
These anti-choice groups similarly present themselves as working to end Violence Against Women by claiming that people who have had abortions are victims of sexual violence. The evangelical charity ‘Concerned Women for America’ has suggested that women might be slipped emergency contraceptive pills (which they incorrectly believe prompt an abortion) instead of date rape drugs. In my student community in Cambridge, one of the ‘Pro-Life’ societies postulates that abortions always result from coercion by abusive partners or family members. In fact, the opposite is true: the ‘normal pattern’ is for abusive partners to force women to carry a pregnancy to term, and murder them if they find out about an abortion. Worst of all, these pseudo-feminist arguments miss the wider point: the pro-choice movement is about consent. Forced abortion is as much a human rights violation as forced pregnancy.
Put simply – if Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling really was about protecting women, then it is simply a terrible way to meet his aims. Abortion bans are ineffective, and even counter-productive, causing measurable harm without reducing rates.
But of course, it’s not about protecting women. Anti-choice groups are tactical – they know that this pseudo-feminist discourse is more successful than the foetus-centric argument at making your average bystander second-guess abortion access.
In a world of alternative facts, arm yourself with the truth: medical abortion is safe, and normal, and abortion access is a necessity for gender equality. In a world where abortion is still a taboo, where the only people shouting about it are those who want to ban it, we must wrest back the discourse. Knowing the visceral and violent impact of anti-choice policies, and having evidence-based arguments in mind, means you can cut through hypothetical moral babble about ‘protecting’ women. If anybody tries to justify restrictions on abortion through a faux reverence for women’s safety, make it known that that they’ve got the wrong end of the stick. Women’s health, careers, safety and citizenship are at their highest in societies where our reproductive rights are guaranteed.
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