Trump’s Pro-Life Legacy in the Balance

President Trump could yet achieve his avowed aim to be the “most pro-life president in history” — with some help from federal courts. That’s the upshot of the case being weighed at the Fifth United States Appeals Circuit over the widespread use of telemedicine and interstate deliveries of abortion medications. Lax federal rules set by President Biden have led to more abortions being performed today than before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.Mr. Trump, despite backing limits on abortion, has kept in place the Biden-era policies. Yet abortion opponents in Republican states are in court demanding that the rules be tightened, in line with the law and the principles of federalism. These states include Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. The states have imposed limits on abortion medications like mifepristone. Yet doctors in other states prescribe the medicines anyway and send them through the mails.Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion that reversed Roe, calls the interstate shipments of abortion medications “a scheme to undermine our decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.” Yet in May, the Nine agreed to let the shipments continue while litigation plays out in lower courts. One such dispute is before the riders of the Fifth Circuit, which is hearing Louisiana’s case against the lax federal abortion rules.“There’s no dispute that Louisiana is experiencing 1,000 abortions a month due to mifepristone mailed into the state,” the Pelican State’s solicitor general, Ben Aguiñaga, argued Wednesday in a hearing before a Fifth Circuit panel. Mr. Aguiñaga reckons that the telemedicine visits, and the medicine shipments from other states, are harming residents and imposing extra costs in Louisiana’s budget, while also infringing on the state’s sovereignty. The panel hearing the dispute includes Judge Stephen Higginson, a nominee of President Obama; Judge Dana Douglas, nominated by President Biden; and Priscilla Richman, a nominee of President George W. Bush. The Democratic-nominated judges during the hearing raised doubts, Reuters reported, that Louisiana had standing to sue the federal government over the abortion regulations.Judge Richman, by contrast, was more focused during the hearing on the evidence that Louisiana women were being admitted more often to hospital emergency rooms as a result of the abortion medications. She asked “how many of those complications would not have occurred had the woman seen a physician in person.” Louisiana aims to require women seeking prescriptions of mifepristone to see a doctor in person, not via telemedicine.Backers of the right to abortion defend the current policy, arguing that mifepristone is used widely and is “safe and effective,” Reuters says. A loss for Louisiana at the Fifth Circuit could lead the state to appeal to the circuit’s full bench or the Supreme Court. Yet the Nine in 2024 declined, in an unanimous ruling, to reverse the Biden-era rules on access to abortion pills, finding that doctors and opponents of the procedure lacked standing to sue Uncle Sam.The federal litigation puts Mr. Trump in what the Hill calls “an awkward political bind.” Mr. Trump isn’t speaking up to support the Biden-era regulations, yet neither is he moving to change the rules or settle the lawsuit filed by Louisiana, “to the disappointment of conservatives,” the Hill says. With Mr. Trump’s legacy as a “pro-life president” in the balance, it would seem logical for the sages of the Fifth Circuit to decide the case in line with Dobbs.

Trump’s Pro-Life Legacy in the Balance

Trump’s Pro-Life Legacy in the Balance

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