Was That Good News I Read?

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A few weeks ago I got a news notification on my phone that I had to reread twice: 

The Trump administration asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit that sought to restrict access to abortion pills. 

Yep. I did a literal double take. You might remember my article months ago detailing just why this exact lawsuit was so scary as a woman in America. And my personal hypothesis that when it comes to reproductive rights, we are more likely to see continual erosion of access rather than a blanket ban. So the news that the administration was directing the judge to throw the case out was, to say the least, a welcome balm of good news in the midst of a barrage of seemingly endless rage bait headlines. 

But I also promised you all that reproductive rights was the area that I would commit to looking past the headlines and digging into the deeper implications. So here goes. 

Yes, this case is going to go away. And that’s great. But the big question is why? This administration has been toeing an interesting line between catering to hard-line conservatives and Project 2025 fanatics who want to see black and white restrictions on reproductive care while also trying not to alienate the suburban women it worked so hard to engage and move over to their camp. And a lot of those women have used IVF to have children. Or want to feel confident that when they need specific, exception-based care (e.g. for an ectopic pregnancy), they won’t have an issue accessing it. 

Dropping this lawsuit is a big win for that second camp of supporters who want to see access relatively maintained. So what about the hardliners? Are they finally making a real stance on supporting some reproductive care? Or genuinely saying that it will be left up to the states? 

I certainly don’t think so. 

One of the points I made in that previous article is that the reason this particular lawsuit was so egregious was because it was brought forth by a group of doctors who weren’t even remotely relevant to the suit itself. The doctors who sued the FDA were from the recently formed Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine — which openly states in their mission statement that they “will not help a woman obtain an abortion” — but they were not doctors who even practiced reproductive care in the first place. The courts had already ruled that this group could not demonstrate that they were legitimately harmed by the FDA’s approval of mifepristone because…they didn’t even prescribe mifepristone in the first place.

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And we’re back…

So this is basically just an easy win for the administration. Drop a lawsuit that had already been demonstrated was clearly a loser. Let the right people read the headlines and hope for the best (it’s okay for us to hope!). And continue the same work behind the scenes. 

What’s happening behind the scenes then? Maybe this action wasn’t simply a ploy or a cop out. Maybe it did truly represent a shift in the ostensible priorities to curtail women’s access to reproductive care. Maybe it’s no longer something they want to focus on. Or maybe they really do want to let each state decide what’s best for their constituents. Let’s explore. 

Just last week, The Department of Health & Human Services rescinded previous guidance that stated that doctors and frontline workers could provide emergency medical care to pregnant patients without fear of repercussions. The now-rescinded letter stated that it “protects [frontline healthcare providers’] clinical judgment and the action that [they] take to provide stabilizing medical treatment to [their] pregnant patients.” 

What exactly does this mean? Well, when Roe was overturned and decisions about reproductive care were handed over to the states, there was understandably some confusion about execution, culpability, and of course legal liability. You might remember the headlines about doctors being scared that they would now be prosecuted for providing the necessary care for their pregnant patients if they were, for example, to come in and exhibit signs of experiencing a miscarriage. In the state of Texas, for example, doctors were told they could not provide care to a woman who showed up with signs of a miscarriage unless her life was at risk. But what constitutes a life at risk? This is how we ended up with stories of women bleeding out, waiting for the moment that their death was sufficiently imminent that doctors felt comfortable providing care without fear of legal reprisals. 

What if it wasn’t a “real” miscarriage, and she had actually intentionally ended the pregnancy? Perhaps state legislators believed that by making this hurdle so great, they would prevent women from choosing an abortion. This ridiculous (and consistently refuted) statement aside, what about the women who are experiencing much-desired pregnancies but are suddenly faced with complications? The forty weeks of a pregnancy are hardly smooth sailing for every woman, and many are heartbroken when they lose the pregnancy they’d been trying for months — or even years — to conceive. 

The above letter was an attempt to calm the fears of doctors, assuring them that they could use their medical knowledge to treat pregnant women in distress. It was not an advocacy for intentionally terminated pregnancies — doctors often have no way of knowing what led to a pregnant woman arriving at their office in distress. The same way they have no way of knowing how you really broke your arm unless you tell them. This was simply intended to assure doctors that they could treat patients based on what their expertise dictated, rather than out of fear that they might be flouting new rules and restrictions that are frankly convoluted and unclear. 

This letter and its guidance were rescinded on June 3, 2025. So I guess all of this is to ask you, do you believe that the administration dropping the lawsuit challenging the FDA approval of mifepristone (on May 5, 2025) was indicative of their overall stance towards reproductive care? 

Personally — and probably obviously — I don’t. I still see this administration as working to continuously chip away at women’s rights to access necessary healthcare. But I also choose to maintain hope. So I will continue to breakdown the various actions and decisions taken to help illuminate what’s happening. And to hopefully give us more insight into how we as individuals can take action to protect our own rights and our own interests. 

Are there other actions taken recently that you want me to break down? Or that would further the above discussion? I’d love to hear about them.