Last year, Divine and Lanahan represented Missouri in the state’s bogus lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration that sought to frame the abortion pill mifepristone as too dangerous, and demanded that the FDA reimpose a range of medically unnecessary restrictions on it—including a ban on telemedicine access. HuffPost’s Alanna Vagianos points out that Divine and Lanahan are the authors of a 200-page complaint in which they baselessly claim that medication abortion “starves the baby to death in the womb.” The same complaint laughably claims that the sight of blood in the toilet from the completed medication abortion will cause post-traumatic stress disorder. (Forced pregnancy, meanwhile, is supposedly not traumatic at all!)
“Women who choose chemical abortion are more likely to continue associating their homes, or the bathroom, with abortion,” the complaint by Divine and Lanahan says. “The home may become a trigger for uncomfortable emotions rather than a refuge.” On the one hand, this is gross, psychotic, and (I hope this goes without saying) utterly removed from reality. On the other… I almost have to tip my hat to this level of creative thinking!
Missouri led Kansas and Idaho in filing the suit FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine to try to ban telehealth access to medication abortion, bringing it before judges in the notoriously far-right Northern District of Texas last year. In April, Trump’s Justice Department directed the Texas court to throw out the case on the grounds that Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho lacked standing to sue the FDA.
Now, proving what reproductive rights advocates have long emphasized (that Trump asking that FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine be dropped has nothing to do with abortion access at all), the nuts behind the lawsuit have been nominated for cushy lifetime gigs.
“This whole slate of judicial nominees is really bad, especially on abortion and reproductive rights,” Katie O’Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy at National Women’s Law Center, told HuffPost of Divine and Lanahan’s appointments. “We’re obviously very concerned that this administration is coming out of the gates on judicial nominees aimed at further deterioration of abortion access. We’re very concerned about what this says for the next three and a half years.”
Divine and Lanahan’s appointments come at an especially worrisome time for access to medication abortion, which has served as a lifeline for pregnant people in abortion-banned states. Anti-abortion leaders are continuing to push junk science that misleadingly frames medication abortion (which is very safe) as dangerous, calling for the medication to be further policed. Some anti-abortion state attorneys general are targeting and even trying to extradite a New York-based doctor for mailing abortion pills into their states. So, it’s clearly intentional and incredibly concerning that Trump has tapped two leaders in pushing lies about the abortion pill to key judgeships.
