Push To Defeat MAGA’s Threats To Abortion Rights Launched By Jamie Raskin

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Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who in this Congress is the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, took close notice of the recent ruling from a federal judge that if implemented would block access to a prescription drug used for abortion via medication — a threat of further curtailing access to basic healthcare, perhaps even in states where officials have implemented abortion protections through various means.

“Mifepristone is the key prescription medication that millions of women have relied on for decades for a safe non-surgical abortion,” Raskin said in prepared remarks. “This remarkable decision reflects neither the logic of law nor the facts of science but rather the political demands of an extremist MAGA movement seeking a total nationwide abortion ban. A ruling by a different federal judge in Washington state today, which may temporarily preserve access to mifepristone in certain states, makes clear just how extreme Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling is. Democrats will stand up again with the vast majority of Americans to defend reproductive freedom and the right of every American woman to make her own health decisions free from government repression and theocratic control.”

Some individual states have been able to make substantial progress on this front since the Supreme Court formally overturned Roe v. Wade, the past decision from the court that originally established nationwide access to abortion, and that push continues, like with the recent formal revocation of a Michigan abortion ban that predated Roe but had never been formally undone, although that Supreme Court decision followed by action within Michigan itself meant the restrictions largely weren’t enforced for some time already.

Putting protections for abortion into state Constitutions represents more lasting ways to ensure the allowances stick rather than become seriously vulnerable to oppositional political machinations at some future point. Florida may soon become one of the latest locales to vastly expand its already creeping restrictions on reproductive care. State leaders have been pushing a six-week abortion ban, adding to state limits that already start at 15 weeks, which is sooner than the legal standard before Roe.