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Washington D.C. – Today, new Accountable.US research, first reported by HuffPost, revealed that two of President Donald Trump’s initial judicial nominees, Joshua Divine and Maria Lanahan, are at the center of the extreme crusade to resurrect a court case banning medication abortion. 

Last summer, the Supreme Court ruled against a far-right effort to strip the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, deciding that the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine did not have standing to sue the federal government over its decades-old approval of the abortion pill. But that hasn’t stopped states, including Missouri, from trying to revive the case with an amended complaint submitted by Trump judicial nominees Joshua Divine and Maria Lanahan. Even more alarming, Divine and Lanahan’s arguments for restricting the FDA’s independent approval of mifepristone rest on the state being harmed by fewer teen pregnancies, arguing the loss of potential population caused “diminishment of political representation” and “loss of federal funds.” The ongoing lawsuit also relies on unfounded and unscientific claims that mifepristone and mail access are unsafe for patients, despite over 100 scientific studies confirming the safety of the pills. 

As Huff Post writes: “The suit makes other bizarre claims including that abortion pills by mail should be banned because one study they cited shows that access to mifepristone via telehealth has lowered the birth rates for teen mothers. Another outlandish claim in the complaint is that medication abortion is so terrifying that the sight of blood in a toilet will give women post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“Donald Trump is picking up right where he left off using the courts to impose an agenda that takes away our rights and control of our lives,” said Accountable.US President Caroline Ciccone. “His first judicial nominees, Joshua Divine and Maria Lanahan, whose record of eliminating Americans’ freedoms is out of step with the vast majority of the public and calls into question their ability to rule impartially. Senators should know that a vote for these judicial nominees is a rubber stamp for Trump’s out-of-touch ideological judicial agenda.”

Divine and Lanahan’s case has also been criticized as a “nakedly political and judge-shopping ploy,” as Missouri, Idaho, and Kansas refiled the lawsuit in Amarillo, Texas – ensuring the case will be heard again by a more favorable court than in the states’ own districts. As Trump’s judicial nominee hearings are set to begin on June 4, Divine and Lanahan’s record raises serious concerns about their track record of judge shopping to push an extreme, fringe ideological agenda.

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