The attorneys general of Missouri, Idaho, and Kansas have sued over their right to pregnant teens and the funding that comes with them.
This is as creepy as creepy gets. Three Republican Attorneys General have sued the FDA that mifepristone is robbing them of valuable funding issued in a per womb or perhaps per capita count of pregnant teens. Allowing teens not to be pregnant if they do not want to be pregnant would reduce funding intended to help pregnant teens who no longer need it, but let us not dwell on that. The Republicans also declare themselves the parents of pregnant teens to make decisions for them and intend to restrict the right to leave their backward states.
"Remote dispensing of abortion drugs by mail, common carrier, and interactive computer service is depressing expected birth rates for teenaged mothers in Plaintiff States," the attorneys allege in the complaint, which was filed before forced birth enthusiast Judge Matt Kacsmaryk in the Northern District of Texas's Amarillo Division. They claim that decreased births constitute "a sovereign injury to the state in itself," and causes downstream injuries like "losing a seat in Congress or qualifying for less federal funding if their populations are reduced." In other words, uteri are state slush funds, and girls owe the state reproduction once they are capable of it.
States exist to serve people, not the other way around. But in order for courts to hear a case, would-be plaintiffs need to show that they experienced an actual injury that the party they're suing caused, and that a court can fix. A personal dislike of somebody else taking medicine is not a legitimate grievance. So the states are trying to show that they are entitled to the population growth and accompanying funds that pregnant minors would produce, and the FDA is getting in the way of that. In my expert legal opinion, this is deeply gross and weird.
The ick factor only intensifies in some of the other arguments the Attorneys General make. The complaint also says that each of the states is "the legal parent or guardian of many minor girls of reproductive age"—a reference to girls in state custody, like foster care or juvenile detention. For those girls, they argue, the state is a stand-in for parents. And as parents, they claim, they have a right to consent to their children's medical care, which is apparently nullified if teen girls in foster care can "obtain abortion drugs online by mail all on their own." Under the state's theory, it can separate children from their actual parents, declare itself their father now, and deem a daughter's pregnancy her daddy's prerogative.
Balls and Strikes
Previously:
• Margaret Atwood says the Supreme Court is making The Handmaid's Tale a reality in the U.S.
