The Road To Gilead, Con't

With this week's 5th Circuit ruling against mifepristone providing future SCOTUS shenanigans towards the end of not just legalized abortion but contraception in America, Charlie Pierce shows us the road map to Gilead:

Right into the lap of Justice Sam Alito, who will undoubtedly find some obscure codicil in the Code of Hammurabi to justify upholding the ruling of the 5th Circuit, which is the Uruk-Hai to Alito's Saruman anyway. All the lawyers seeking to ban the drug will need to do is talk very fast and use the word "abortifacient" a lot. And the ducks will all be marching in formation.

The assembly line between the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans and the chambers of the Supreme Court is the best example we have of how completely the conservative takeover of the federal judiciary is. It is the Wal-Mart of conservative judge shopping. The most recent former president* put four judges on that court including James Ho, who is a real prize. From the Texas Tribune: 

The 5th Circuit had upheld an Austin campaign donation limit — a maximum individual contribution of $350 to a city council candidate. His opinion seemed to challenge all restrictions on campaign donations, arguing that “if you don’t like big money in politics, then you should oppose big government in our lives...If there is too much money in politics, it’s because there’s too much government,” Ho wrote. A cash-flooded campaign system, he added, is “the inevitable result of a government that would be unrecognizable to our Founders.”

It was through the Fifth Circuit that the Dobbs case was shuffled from Mississippi upwards to Alito and his invisible chorus of 17th Century witch hunters. And now the circle is nearly complete. Sooner or later, some loaded court will declare all contraceptives to be "abortifacients," and that will be the final end for a protected right of privacy.

That's the big finish here after SCOTUS decides in the next year or two that abortion medications are illegal nationwide. It won't just be mifepristone. It'll be all contraception, including birth control medication, hormone therapy, IUDs, the whole works. That's the next milepost on the road to Gilead, and unless SCOTUS is stopped, it's going to be reality.