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Supreme Court Green Lights Texas’ Near-Total Abortion Ban
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As the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in the abortion pill challenge next week, government watchdog Accountable.US is exposing the far-right forces behind the landmark case. In a new memo, Accountable.US highlights the role far-right judicial activist Leonard Leo’s network has played in bankrolling the plaintiff in the mifepristone challenge — the biggest reproductive rights case at the high court since Dobbs.

Accountable.US research previously unraveled Alliance Defending Freedom’s alarming tactics behind the case — from the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a contrived coalition of disgraced pseudo-medical groups acting as the plaintiff to its flawed legal complaint.

On the heels of these revelations, experts at Alliance for Justice and The Lawyering Project joined Accountable.US today to discuss how Leo and Alliance Defending Freedom worked to orchestrate a legal challenge to safe, effective, and widely-used medication abortion care. In a press call, Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone discussed how efforts to restrict access to the abortion pill represent the latest conservative assault on reproductive rights and a broader right-wing strategy to undermine our judicial system.

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This case reaching the Supreme Court is another example of the growing legitimacy crisis of the courts, far-right funders and influencers like Leo have corrupted the judicial process as a whole. These figures play both sides of the court acting as billionaire matchmakers for conservative justices, funding right-wing groups, bringing countless cases to the high court and helping to manufacture cases aligned with their far-right agenda, which are then heard by the same conflicted justices.”

Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone

“The 5th Circuit is the most receptive circuit if you’re a far-right ideologue who doesn’t care a whole lot about facts,” said Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, Senior Fellow & Aron Senior Justice Counsel at Alliance for Justice. “The Northern District of Texas has really turned into a conservative legal complaint cottage industry.”

“At its core, the 5th Circuit ruling ignores science and medicine and – if upheld – will further exacerbate the abortion access crisis nationwide. And we know that these impacts will fall hardest on people of color, people with low incomes, and people who already face challenges accessing healthcare,” said Amanda Allen, Deputy Executive Director for Legal Programs at The Lawyering Project. “This lawsuit is not just about access to mifepristone, it also seeks to undermine the FDA’s authority to approve drugs overall and could have far reaching implications for drug development in the US.”

A full recording of the call can be found here.

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