When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away last fall, reproductive rights advocates immediately sounded the alarm, suggesting it was only a matter of time before Roe v. Wade was overturned. Though that reality hasn’t yet come to pass, SCOTUS’ new conservative supermajority wasted no time in delivering a blow to abortion access: on Jan. 12, the court reinstated a federal requirement that the medication used in medical abortions be picked up in-person, even though patients take the pill at home alone. The requirement had been temporarily waived as a result of the pandemic, allowing providers to mail the pills (as they can for virtually any other, equally safe medication).
“There is absolutely no reason people should be forced to go to a clinic in person — unnecessarily increasing exposure to COVID in the midst of a pandemic — to get pills that they could get by mail and safely take at home,” Diana Kasdan, the Center for Reproductive Rights’ judicial strategy director, tells Bustle, adding that many people might live hundreds of miles from the nearest clinic. “Making that trip during a pandemic will be an insurmountable hurdle for many, especially those who have children at home due to school closures, or who are suffering the financial fallout of the pandemic. … There is no doubt that this Supreme Court ruling will deter and prevent some of those people from getting abortion care.”
But this decision isn’t the only major reproductive rights case coming in January, with other high-profile cases going before various federal Circuit Courts of Appeal (aka, the last legal step before reaching the Supreme Court). And with anti-abortion law professor Justice Amy Coney Barrett getting her sea legs on the bench, advocates say the cases on deck this month could determine your rights for decades to come.
Read more on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization; Whole Woman’s Health v. Paxton; Bryant et al v. Woodall