A dangerous new chapter of post-Roe America is here

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May 3, 2026 #RoeVWade #ReproductiveRights #Politics

New medication abortion restrictions will reach across the country - including states where abortion is still legal, after a federal appeals court ruling in a case from Louisiana. The state sued the FDA to block tele-med access to the abortion drug mifepristone, arguing that its availability by mail undermined Louisiana’s abortion ban. An appeals court panel agreed - blocking mail-order access across the country. Drugmakers have already asked the Supreme Court to reverse the ruling. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is waging a quiet war on birth control, rewriting guidelines for a crucial family planning program. “There's become a kind of new coalition politics of opposing contraception,” says UC Davis Law Professor Mary Ziegler, “and the President is looking for a way to reach those social conservative voters who are angry with him about other things.” MS NOW: My Source for News, Opinion, and the World. » Subscribe to MS NOW:

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Transcript

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3 seconds

up quietly on Friday night at first glance,

6 seconds

it's going to sound like a story about one state that already bans abortion.

11 seconds

But there's a ripple effect that's going to roll back abortion access nationwide and it's by design. Here's what happened.

17 seconds

Louisiana sued the food and drug administration over a rule that allowed the abortion pill, Mifepristone,

24 seconds

to be prescribed and dispensed via telehealth.

27 seconds

The state's argument was that mail order access to abortion medication undermined that state's abortion BAN ON FRIDAY,

34 seconds

A FEDERAL APPEALS COURT PANEL AGREED AND ISSUED A RULING TEMPORARILY BLOCKING MAIL ORDER ACCESS, NOT JUST IN LOUISIANA, ACROSS AMERICA.

44 seconds

NEARLY TWO-THIRDS OF ALL ABORTIONS IN AMERICA ARE MEDICATION ABORTIONS.

48 seconds

IT'S IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THAT THIS RULING IS GOING TO BE DEVASTATING FOR PATIENTS WHO LIVE IN STATES WHERE ABORTION IS BANNED,

53 seconds

BUT IT WILL AFFECT PATIENTS IN STATES WHERE ABORTION RIGHTS ARE STILL PROTECTED.

57 seconds

STARTING NOW AND FOR AS LONG AS THIS RULING is allowed to stand,

1 minute

it will be harder for anyone seeking a medication abortion to access one.

1 minute, 4 seconds

It's one more medically unnecessary roadblock for women who are trying to access safe and reliable health care across the country.

1 minute, 11 seconds

The drugmaker that makes Miffy Pristone has already asked the Supreme Court to step in and reverse the appeals court ruling on an emergency basis.

1 minute, 18 seconds

But for now, it is in effect,

1 minute, 20 seconds

which means medication abortion is less accessible to everyone in America who might need it,

1 minute, 25 seconds

and particularly to those women who cannot go in person to a doctor to get it because their state bans abortion.

1 minute, 31 seconds

The end of Roe was always the beginning and not the end of the anti-abortion movement's agenda,

1 minute, 36 seconds

and it's not going to stop until abortion is unavailable, inaccessible or illegal everywhere.

1 minute, 42 seconds

And here's the thing, it doesn't stop with abortion.

1 minute, 46 seconds

The very same radical movement to control women's bodies is also going after birth control and it's getting no small amount of help from the Trump administration,

1 minute, 54 seconds

which is quietly rewriting the rules of a decades-old federal program that gave access to birth control to millions of Americans.

2 minutes, 1 second

In 1970, Congress created Title 10,

2 minutes, 4 seconds

which expanded access to contraception and reproductive health care for low-income families.

2 minutes, 10 seconds

As of 2023, roughly 2 .8 million people received services through Title 10, 85 % were women, 48

2 minutes, 19 seconds

% were people of color. 72 of those who got care through Title 10 say they used the contraception they

2 minutes, 27 seconds

received for family planning. But now they could lose that access because the Trump administration is shifting the program to focus on so-called natural family planning.

2 minutes, 37 seconds

I'm going to say that again, natural family planning.

2 minutes, 40 seconds

That pushes tracking menstrual cycles as a form of pregnancy prevention instead of using birth control. In its new guidelines for funding,

2 minutes, 49 seconds

Title X grants in 2027, the Department of Human Services, Health and Human Services writes, quote,

2 minutes, 54 seconds

we expect applicants to demonstrate how their Title X projects will integrate non-invasive evidence-based practices that promote health, literacy,

3 minutes, 5 seconds

fertility awareness and reproductive health without unnecessary medicalization or symptom suppression, end quote.

3 minutes, 12 seconds

Unnecessary medicalization or symptom suppression.

3 minutes, 16 seconds

In plain terms that means less birth control more cycle tracking these new guidelines could affect the funding that a clinic gets when it reapplies for funding in 2027.

3 minutes, 27 seconds

The shift comes even as the overwhelming majority of Americans support access to contraception.

3 minutes, 32 seconds

We don't talk about this a lot because it's not even close. 91 % of Americans say they believe birth, they support birth control.

3 minutes, 40 seconds

We're talking, we're not talking about abortion. We're talking about contraception. 91 % of Americans say it should be legal.

3 minutes, 47 seconds

% of Americans probably don't agree that it's Sunday today. So why are we rolling back access to contraception? University of California, Davis law professor,

3 minutes, 55 seconds

Mary Ziegler has an idea.

3 minutes, 57 seconds

She says that as Trump's approval ratings continue to drop,

4 minutes

he's become eager to appeal to social conservatives at the fringe of his base.

4 minutes, 4 seconds

She writes, quote, without the pill, contraception,

4 minutes, 8 seconds

conservatives seem convinced that women would be more likely to prioritize marriage and child rearing.

4 minutes, 13 seconds

And if that happened, these advocates suggest we'd all be better off.

4 minutes, 16 seconds

Then there is the rising influence of pro natalists who want to see more babies being born and blame contraception in part for declining birth rates.

4 minutes, 25 seconds

Mary Ziegler joins me now.

4 minutes, 27 seconds

She's a professor at the University of California Davis Law School. She's the author of many books, including Personhood, The New Civil War Over Reproduction. Mary, it's great to see you again.

4 minutes, 35 seconds

Thank you for being with us.

4 minutes, 37 seconds

Thanks for having me. I want to touch that last point.

4 minutes, 40 seconds

The THE IDEA THAT IF YOU DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO CONTRACEPTION, PEOPLE WILL HAVE MORE CHILDREN. ALL ACROSS THE DEVELOPED WORLD,

4 minutes, 48 seconds

PEOPLE ARE HAVING LESS CHILDREN.

4 minutes, 50 seconds

AND THERE ARE A MULTITUDE OF FACTORS INVOLVED IN THAT.

4 minutes, 52 seconds

THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN, THE ACCESS that women have to the workforce,

4 minutes, 56 seconds

the economy's needs, the cost of rearing children, the availability of child care.

5 minutes, 1 second

Condorception is but one part of a very large equation that we need to consider. Yeah, absolutely.

5 minutes, 9 seconds

And I think the other thing that makes the contraception point obviously wrong is that Americans have had access to contraceptives for decades now.

5 minutes, 17 seconds

Right.

5 minutes, 18 seconds

And And we've seen a steady decline in birth rates,

5 minutes, 19 seconds

not because we've had more access or different access to contraceptives.

5 minutes, 24 seconds

There haven't been particularly new effective contraceptives on the market in the United States since the early 2000s, right?

5 minutes, 31 seconds

So, if we're seeing a change in birth rates in the United States,

5 minutes, 34 seconds

it's not because we're seeing a change in contraceptives.

5 minutes, 37 seconds

So this is, in some ways, I think more of an excuse to focus on birth control than it is an actual change produced by birth control.

5 minutes, 45 seconds

So what, why, why you write that contraception has gone from politically untouchable to a real target on the right? What's, what is that shift about?

5 minutes, 53 seconds

Well, I think it's, it's two things, right? So, you mentioned earlier, Ali,

5 minutes, 58 seconds

that the Trump administration has not really done as much as social conservatives want on abortion.

6 minutes, 3 seconds

It's strange, right, that the abortion case headed to the Supreme Court is Louisiana suing the Trump administration.

6 minutes, 9 seconds

So, in part, the Trump administration is looking for a way to appease social conservatives because it hasn't known how to approach the abortion issue.

6 minutes, 16 seconds

At the same time, we've seen a lot of different Trump constituencies who are unhappy with him on many other things unite on birth control, right?

6 minutes, 25 seconds

So there's become a kind of new coalition politics of opposing contraception.

6 minutes, 29 seconds

And the president is looking for a way to reach those social conservative voters who are angry with him about other things when

6 minutes, 37 seconds

the administration still doesn't know how to approach the abortion issue. Let's turn to this ruling on the abortion pill, Miffy Pristow.

6 minutes, 44 seconds

And the court didn't ban it outright,

6 minutes, 46 seconds

but it did restrict access through telemedicine and mail delivery, which is the way in which many, many people get Miffy-Pristone.

6 minutes, 54 seconds

Talk to me about how significant this change is in the practice of how women will access as abortions? Liz, it's really going to be, I think,

7 minutes, 2 seconds

a bombshell in states where abortion is a crime because there's lots of data to suggest that abortion rates have not really decreased in states with bans.

7 minutes, 10 seconds

And the reason for that is a network of what have been called shield laws, right?

7 minutes, 14 seconds

Where doctors in states like California have been able to mail pills into states like Louisiana.

7 minutes, 19 seconds

But that whole system is predicated on the availability of telehealth. And that's going to go away, at least with respect to mifepristone.

7 minutes, 27 seconds

There's some sign that some providers may pivot to other methods of medication abortion, but that remains to be seen.

7 minutes, 34 seconds

At the moment, though, we may see people in these states be forced to travel out of state,

7 minutes, 42 seconds

to rely on less-proven medication abortion protocols or get surgical procedures. And that's just in banned states, right?

7 minutes, 49 seconds

I mean, people in other states who don't live near an abortion clinic are now going to have to go in person, right? There are almost half of counties in California,

7 minutes, 57 seconds

which has the most clinics in the United States. Half of those counties don't have a clinic, right?

8 minutes, 2 seconds

So the ripple effects are going to be felt everywhere.

8 minutes, 5 seconds

So public health experts say that this could have consequences that go beyond abortion access if you start restricting telemedicine,

8 minutes, 13 seconds

you know, in the uses of Miphypristone.

8 minutes, 16 seconds

There's also an effect on miscarriage care or frankly, pregnancy care in general. Talk to me about patient safety.

8 minutes, 24 seconds

Telemedicine was a very big advance for patient safety. Yeah, absolutely. So telemedicine, this sets a precedent.

8 minutes, 33 seconds

Essentially, the argument is that telemedicine is more suspect and the FDA has to be more careful in authorizing telemedicine treatments involving key drugs.

8 minutes, 42 seconds

And that's an argument that could

8 minutes, 57 seconds

I believe, at least with respect to mifepristone and probably with other treatments that we'd be looking at particularly significant impacts with teenagers.

9 minutes, 3 seconds

We have seen data that teenagers are especially likely to use telehealth in some contexts. So, So we're thinking about patient safety,

9 minutes, 12 seconds

but also remembering that there are particular communities of patients who are going to be especially affected.

9 minutes, 17 seconds

Well, in your book, you examine personhood laws and the push to expand rights to the unborn.

9 minutes, 23 seconds

Talk to me about the connection between restricting contraception and the anti-abortion agenda in that sense.

9 minutes, 30 seconds

Yeah, well, so the anti-abortion movement,

9 minutes, 32 seconds

in addition to believing that Americans have kind of abandoned traditional family formations that we need to flourish,

9 minutes, 40 seconds

also believes that a lot of common contraceptives are in fact abortifacients, right? So they believe that the birth control pill,

9 minutes, 48 seconds

IUDs, that these are drugs or devices that actually prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg.

9 minutes, 54 seconds

And they believe that constitutional rights begin the moment an egg is fertilized.

9 minutes, 59 seconds

So if that's right, then contraception is something that violates human rights, that is tantamount to murder the same way that abortion would be.

10 minutes, 9 seconds

So that's part of what's driving this fight,

10 minutes, 11 seconds

both against abortion and contraception and kind of what the through line is between the two. Mary, always great to talk to you. Thank you for being with us this morning.

10 minutes, 19 seconds

Mary Ziegler is an historian and law professor at UC Davis Law School. She's the author of the book Personhood, The New Civil War Over Reproduction.

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