How The Far Right Engineered An Assault On Abortion Access, Even In Blue States

The Supreme Court took a sledgehammer to U.S. abortion rights two years ago, ostensibly sending it back to the states. But the campaign to dismantle abortion access continues, spurred on by a powerful network of ultraconservatives.

On Tuesday, the justices will hear arguments in a case specially designed to give them another opportunity to erode abortion access across the country: FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.

Since the court ruled on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe v. Wade, Americans have come to rely even more on an “abortion pill,” mifepristone, a method of ending a pregnancy that can fit through the mail and be taken from the comfort of home. The drug was already the most common drug used in medication abortions before the court’s bombshell decision, and data shows that its use has ticked up as abortion clinics shuttered across conservative-led states.

But with this case, access to mifepristone may now under threat even in states that passed measures to preserve the right to abortion.

For the conservative legal movement — a decades-long effort to legitimize right-wing legal theories that is fueled in large part by a network of dark-money groups — the dismantling of Roe v. Wade had been a pinnacle achievement, leading to short-lived questions about how to proceed.

In August 2022, a collection of five anti-abortion medical groups filed to incorporate as the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine in Amarillo, Texas. None of the groups were based in the small city, or even the state. But anchoring the umbrella organization in Amarillo provided an excuse to file a federal lawsuit in Amarillo, where there was a 100% chance that the case would be picked up by one man: U.S.