On May 14, the U.S. Supreme Court “kicked the can down the road” on medical abortion, saving some votes for Trump cronies in the mid-term elections but signaling to the rest of us that tele-health prescribing of mifepristone remains in danger. The Court decided that a lower-court decision from Louisiana that required patients, including those living in states with complete abortion bans, to visit a doctor’s office to get a mifepristone prescription would remain “paused.” In the meantime, the issue would continue to be litigated in the lower courts and the part of the Republican base that remains pro-abortion would not be stirred up before voting. This maneuver has allowed the high court to expediently delay, but be ready use its powers to further erode the availability of reproductive health care when it is more politically convenient. Simultaneously, on another front, the MAGA-run Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, is slow-walking an unnecessary and highly suspect...
Nearly 5000 protesters assembled in Montgomery, Ala., on Saturday, May 16, as part of the emergency mobilization dubbed All Roads Lead to the South. The Montgomery rally followed the recreation of a segment of the first Selma to Montgomery march of 1965, when 600 protesters were attacked by state troopers on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, an event that has come to be known as “Bloody Sunday.” Faith leaders, politicians, and activists joined figures like the “oldest living foot soldier” from that original crossing, 84-year-old Annie Mae Avery, and Sheyann Webb-Christburg, who was an eight-year-old participant and victim of the police assault. These mobilizations were a response to the Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling on the case of Louisiana v. Callais , which granted Louisiana the right to gerrymander voting districts to make Black representation to Congress nearly impossible. Within days of the verdict, other white Southern state governors and legislators rushed to u...