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Abortion to be ‘major plank’ of Harris’s midterms pitch

Before Vice President Harris wrapped up remarks last week about the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade, she offered a warning: “This is not over.”    

In the coming weeks, Harris will be ratcheting up the contrast between Democrats and Republicans on the heels of the high court overturning the decades-old opinion that said abortion was a constitutional right, as she hits the road to try to help Democrats ahead of the midterms.  

The effort was in the works before the Supreme Court decision, but the message on Roe will be a big part of Harris’s effort, sources tell The Hill.   

“That will be a major plank,” said one source familiar with Harris’s strategy on the high court’s ruling, adding that the vice president will offer contrasts on other big policy issues too.   

Harris sat for a one-on-one interview with CNN on Monday — her first since the ruling came down — during which she expressed shock and outrage at the decision and said she believed the Supreme Court was on a path to reverse decisions on same-sex marriage and contraception.  

“I definitely believe this is not over,” she said of Justice Clarence Thomas’s opinion suggesting the court should revisit those decisions. “I think he just said the quiet part out loud.” 

The amplified messaging from Harris comes as Democrats are deeply worried about Republicans winning back both chambers of Congress amid President Biden’s anemic approval ratings. Talk that Biden might not choose to run for reelection has also picked up among Democrats.   

Harris would be a major White House contender if Biden chose not to run, so the new effort also serves as an opportunity for the vice president to improve her own political stock.  

“If she steps out there between now and the midterm elections and there are significant victories that Democrats claim, she can certainly take credit for it and it would be a great boon for her national standing,” said Basil Smikle, a political strategist and the director of the public policy program at Hunter College.   

Harris has already begun trying out the strategy in recent appearances, including at a dinner earlier this month for the South Carolina Democratic Party.   

“As Democrats, we fight for a future where anyone can start and grow a business and where workers can earn a fair wage and are treated with respect; a future where all Americans can live and love without government interference, and yes, where every woman has the liberty and freedom to make decisions about her own body,” she said to applause from the Palmetto State crowd. “These are the values Democrats stand for. And let’s be clear: And so much of this is what the Republican Party stands against. Think about it.”  

At the dinner, Harris ticked off a list of policy issues from pandemic relief to the extension of the child tax credit, highlighting that “not one Republican” voted for those measures.  

The vice president publicly rebuked the leaked draft ruling suggesting the Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe.   

During a speech at an EMILY’s List convention the day after Politico reported on the leaked draft in early May, Harris accused Republicans of weaponizing the law to restrict women’s rights.   

“How dare they!” Harris told the crowd, a line that The Hill previously reported was personally added to the speech by the vice president.   

The vice president is expected to continue to highlight what Democrats stand for and the values they stand for, a source familiar with her strategy said. And she’ll discuss how the values manifest themselves.   

Harris has also headlined a handful of listening sessions with Democratic attorneys general, abortion providers and other stakeholders in advance of the ruling.  

Still, the White House has been focused on other crises, like soaring gas and food prices and Russia’s war in Ukraine, and also made a point to avoid discussing plans to respond publicly to the Supreme Court opinion before the final document was issued.   

Behind the scenes, administration officials have conferred with state lawmakers, abortion groups and others to gain a better understanding of the laws on the books in various states. The White House has offered few concrete actions thus far that it plans to take to help access to abortion despite the flurry of state restrictions going into effect. 

Democratic strategists, donors and lawmakers say they have wanted to hear more of the message that Harris delivered on Friday.  

“Why wasn’t there more of that?” one Democratic strategist questioned on Monday. “Why didn’t she continue to pound the drum? Imagine how powerful that would have been coming from her.”   

Smikle said that the White House could have done more to publicly lay out the implications of the ruling during the time between the leaked draft and the final opinion, though he noted that the behind-the-scenes work gearing up for the ruling was also important.   

Smikle said that Harris would be an effective messenger for Democrats to talk about the urgency of the upcoming elections as they relate to abortion rights. But he also called on the White House to empower new and younger Democratic voices to speak out on the issue in Congress and at the state level.   

“There has to be a steady drumbeat, a steady and protracted sense of urgency going into the midterms,” he said.

Source: TEST FEED1

McConnell moves to center ahead of midterms

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is moving to the center ahead of the midterm elections, backing a gun safety measure and insisting he is willing to work with President Biden on middle-of-the-road proposals if Republicans win back the Senate majority in November.  

McConnell’s message is aimed squarely at suburban voters, whom he believes will make the difference in battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

Such voters moved away from the GOP under former President Trump, but McConnell and Republicans feel they can make inroads in a year where the public is frustrated with high inflation and gas prices. 

The push for such voters explains why McConnell risked his A-plus rating with the National Rifle Association (NRA) to back a gun safety measure last week that was opposed by a majority of his conference. 

It also was reflected in some of the remarks he made Monday at a Rotary Club lunch in Florence, Ky., where he emphasized that if Biden is willing to come toward him, he is willing to make a deal. 

“We have pretty big differences,” McConnell acknowledged. “Whether Joe Biden has the dexterity, shall I say, to pull off a pivot or not, I don’t know, but he won’t have any choice. Because if he wants to be able to function the next few years with divided government, he’ll need to come to the middle.” 

Republicans feel increasingly confident they will control the Senate and House next year, given the president’s low approval rating, which has dipped below 40 percent in recent polls. But they are also wary of Democratic arguments that their party is too extreme to govern. 

Democrats have sought to make this message through both the hearings of the Jan. 6 committee in the House, which has focused on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, and in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Friday ruling overturning the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion.

McConnell appears to be doing everything he can to make independent and swing voters as comfortable as possible with the GOP, despite the noise coming from Trump — who is often at odds with McConnell — and the huge social upheaval coming from a court that McConnell had a strong hand in putting together. 

On Monday, he shut down speculation that Republicans would push a law restricting abortion nationwide if they win control of Congress. Instead, he said state governments would decide future limits on abortion.  

“Neither side of this issue has come anywhere close to having 60 votes, so I think this is likely to all be litigated out, dealt with by the various states around the country,” he said.    

The GOP leader has pointed out several times in recent weeks that he has worked with Democrats to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, postal reform and legislation to help the United States compete with China, in addition to a $40 billion Ukraine aid bill and the gun safety measure signed into law this weekend.  

“I’ve already indicated to you I’m not always opposed to doing bipartisan deals. I’ve done infrastructure, I voted for postal reform and I was one of a minority of my party who voted for this school safety, mental health bill, just last week,” he said Monday.  

In backing the gun safety bill, McConnell underscored the need for the GOP to win back suburban voters who left the party under Trump. 

“It’s no secret that we lost ground in suburban areas. We pretty much own rural and small-town America, and I think this is a sensible solution to the problem before us, which is school safety and mental health,” he told reporters before voting with 14 other Senate Republicans on Thursday for the gun safety bill. 

“I hope it will be viewed favorably by voters in the suburbs we need to regain in order to hopefully be in the majority next year,” he said.

McConnell isn’t going too far in saying he’ll work with Biden, warning the GOP will block more Biden nominees if they take back the Senate.

“If I’m the majority leader, we’ll be really picky on appointees,” he said. “There are 1,200 executive branch appointments that come to us. They’re not all as important as the Supreme Court, but many of them are quite important and [need] to be confirmed by the Senate.” 

McConnell also warned Monday that large spending packages will be dead on arrival in a GOP-controlled Senate. Biden spearheaded a $1.9 trillion relief measure in early 2021, and the GOP Senate also backed large spending measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic under Trump in 2020.

And he questioned the conventional wisdom that the president is a moderate politician.  

“I know Joe Biden really well. We served together for years. He was never a moderate. He called himself a moderate while he ran for president because he was running against [Sens.] Bernie Sanders [I-Vt.] and Elizabeth Warren [D-Mass.]. Almost everybody is moderate compared to them,” he said.  

Scott Jennings, a Kentucky-based GOP strategist who has advised McConnell’s past campaigns, said McConnell has “been pretty clear since the beginning he viewed the 2020 election verdict … as a message to the people to operate between the 40-yard lines.” 

“Biden somehow read 2020 as a mandate for a sweeping liberal lurch and look at him now. I think McConnell read it right and Biden wrong,” he said.  

The gun safety law McConnell highlighted will enhance background checks for gun buyers younger than 21, give money to states to administer red flag laws and provide billions of dollars for mental health treatment.  

It was a remarkable vote, considering the NRA’s opposition. McConnell told reporters last week that he was more concerned about making progress for the country than losing his A-plus rating from the NRA, a somewhat surprising remark from a senator whom Democrats have painted over the past decade as the biggest obstructionist in Washington.  

The GOP leader gave the bipartisan negotiations over the bill a boost when he tapped Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), a member of his leadership team, to lead the talks for Republicans.  

Senate colleagues viewed that move as a clear sign that McConnell wanted to pass a bill to respond to the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. 

Shortly before the bill passed the Senate, McConnell revealed that he played a bigger behind-the-scenes role than many people realized. He spoke several times to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), one of the lead Democratic negotiators, and also worked with Cornyn to get the NRA’s input.   

While the NRA ultimately released a statement opposing the bill, it did not go on a lobbying blitz to kill the legislation. 

Source: TEST FEED1

After Roe: A messy state of play

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was a culture-altering event for the United States, ending almost five decades of precedent that allowed people across the country the right to an abortion. But the ruling will affect people in drastically different ways, depending on where they live.Because the high court did not ban the procedure outright, all abortion-related policies will be left to the individual states, creating a motley regional legal system running a range from full access to all-out bans with few, if any, exceptions.

There’s nothing uniform about the resulting map. Instead, huge swaths of the country — the South, Midwest and Mountain West — have already enacted restrictions or are poised to do so, while other regional clusters — the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic and the West Coast — are protective zones where abortion is expected to remain legal.

As the focus shifts to the states, the activism is following. Both sides have been reenergized by the court’s ruling. For anti-abortion activists, that means using the momentum of their recent victory to fight for a total ban on the procedure across all states. 

“Honestly, the movement has just begun,” said A.J. Hurley, head of Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust. “The fight now is at the local level.” 

Abortion rights defenders, meanwhile, are seeking ways to maximize access for abortion services — including a push to have President Biden act unilaterally — particularly in those states where they are newly illegal. As part of that effort, pro-abortion rights states are already eying strategies to welcome people from states that prohibit the procedure.

“We’re going to have to fight at every level to make sure that we are protecting people,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), “and particularly low-income people and people of color who will be most impacted by this decision.” 

If it weren’t confusing enough already, the legal landscape is also being muddied by new lawsuits challenging some of the state restrictions that were implemented since Roe was eliminated. On Monday, for instance, a Louisiana judge blocked the state’s newly installed abortion ban, which was triggered by the court’s ruling just three days earlier. And advocates have already sued over similar restrictions in Utah, Idaho, Kentucky and Mississippi. 

In the aftermath of the monumental ruling, here’s a primer outlining what the states have done, or what they’re expected to do, on abortion access. 

‘Trigger’ states

Thirteen conservative-leaning states had adopted abortion restrictions prior to Friday’s ruling with the idea that they would take effect when Roe was overturned, or shortly thereafter: Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming. 

The restrictions within those states vary by degree, from blanket bans beginning with fertilization to bans that begin a certain number of weeks after conception. Five of those states have exceptions for rape and incest, while the others do not. 

When the new restrictions launch also varies by location. In three states — Kentucky, South Dakota and Louisiana — the ban was immediate, kicking in when Roe was repealed on Friday, according to researchers at the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. 

In three others — Texas, Idaho and Tennessee — the ban will take effect automatically 30 days from the court ruling. An additional state, Oklahoma, had installed a ban in May, even with Roe still in place. And a number of other conservative strongholds — including Florida, Montana, Nebraska and Indiana — are expected to adopt bans, according to Guttmacher. 

Blanket bans 

A number of states have, or will soon have, blanket bans on abortion, with exceptions when the life of the mother is at risk but not in cases of rape or incest. Those include Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas. 

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) defended the fact that rape and incest victims are now prohibited from terminating their unwanted pregnancies, arguing that “every life is precious.” 

“I just have never believed that having a tragedy or tragic situation happen to someone is a reason to have another tragedy occur,” Noem said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” 

Bans with exceptions

A number of states poised to adopt abortion bans are expected to carve out exceptions, most typically in cases of rape or incest. That list includes Idaho, Mississippi, North Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.

In Idaho, victims of rape or incest who want to get an abortion must file a police report and submit a copy to the physician before the procedure takes place.

Other states have adopted bans but allow a short window for legal abortions before the prohibitions kick in. Montana and North Carolina, for instance, have both approved bans after 20 weeks. Arizona and Florida have passed bans at 15 weeks. Ohio and South Carolina have put the figure at six weeks. And Georgia and Iowa also enacted six-week bans, but they hit a wall in the courts, where a judge blocked them.

Elsewhere, GOP lawmakers are pressing for new restrictions, though they’re unlikely to be enacted anytime soon due to Democratic opposition elsewhere in their respective state government. 

In Virginia, for instance, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has proposed a 15-week ban, which is almost certain to fail while Democrats control the state Senate. Similarly, Wisconsin has an age-old abortion ban on the books that the state’s Democratic governor is vowing not to enforce.

Pro-abortion rights states

While the middle of the country eyes tough new restrictions in a post-Roe America, the more liberal coastal states are rushing in the other direction, vowing to install new protections that not only codify abortion rights into law, but also create new tools for helping people in the states that prohibit the procedure access abortion services across borders. 

“We have grants going to them to help them come to New York,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.). “We are opening up our homes, our clinics — everything to help everyone through this crisis period.” 

On the West Coast, abortion services will remain available in California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Nevada. Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom, Kate Brown and Jay Inslee — who lead California, Oregon and Washington, respectively — signed a multistate commitment on Friday vowing to defend access to abortion, contraceptives and other reproductive healthcare.

The same is true along the Northeastern seaboard, where Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maryland and Virginia are poised to retain or strengthen abortion services.

As outliers in the middle of the country, Minnesota, Illinois and Colorado are also fighting to protect the services previously guaranteed by Roe. 

The state-based efforts will be crucial to the preservation of abortion services in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, since the Democratic abortion rights supporters in Congress don’t have the numbers to enact new federal protections. 

It’s a dynamic they know only too well.

“It is clear that the path forward will depend on the outcome of the upcoming midterm elections,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wrote Friday to her fellow Democrats.

Source: TEST FEED1

Former Meadows aide to testify at last-minute Jan. 6 hearing

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former special assistant to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, is the mystery guest that will speak at a last-minute hearing organized by the Jan. 6 committee, according to multiple reports.

Hutchinson has already provided a wealth of information to the committee, sitting with its investigators over the course of three separate interviews.

It was a taped deposition with Hutchinson that the committee used to detail which Republican lawmakers had sought pardons from Trump. It was her testimony that indicated that Meadows had been warned about the potential for violence on Jan. 6. And Hutchinson also told investigators White House lawyers had advised against the Trump campaign alternate elector scheme.

Hutchinson would be the first White House employee to testify publicly before the committee. Her appearance was first reported by Punchbowl News.

While Meadows proved an elusive subject for the committee, Hutchinson has been able to detail many of the goings on at the White House in the days leading up to Jan. 6.

She detailed numerous meetings Meadows organized with lawmakers,  and was in the West Wing on Jan. 6.

Her appearance comes after the committee reversed course in announcing it would suspend hearings until July, announcing a hearing with exactly 24 hours notice and without providing any other details as to the identity of its new witness.

Instead, the committee only said it would convene to “present recently obtained evidence.”

The move left speculation over who would appear, particularly after its Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) made a public plea for former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone to appear for testimony. The committee had also recently interviewed a British documentarian after subpoenaing footage from his interviews with former President Trump, his children, and Vice President Mike Pence.

Hutchinson’s appearance comes after she recently changed representation, replacing Trump-linked attorney Stefan Passantino with Jody Hunt of Alston and Bird.

Hunt did not respond to request for comment on Hutchinson’s appearance, nor did the committee.

Footage from Hutchinson’s interviews with the committee appeared as recently as Thursday. 

“I guess Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Brooks, I know, have both advocated for there to be a blanket pardon for members involved in that meeting…. Mr. Gaetz was personally pushing for a pardon, and he was doing so since early December,” Hutchinson was shown saying via video clip.

“Mr. Biggs did. Mr. Jordan talked about Congressional pardons, but he never asked me for one.”

CNN also previously reported it was Hutchinson who informed the committee of Trump’s indifference to chants of “Hang Mike Pence,” suggesting the supporters “have the right idea.”

But other snippets of Hutchinson’s insights into Jan. 6 have come though the committee’s court battle to try and get Meadows to turn over remaining documents.

“We had intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th,” Hutchinson told the panel in a portion of a transcript shared in court documents in April.

“And Mr. Meadows said: ‘All right. Let’s talk about it.’”

In that same batch they also released another portion indicating White House counsel was pushing back against the fake elector scheme as early as the first or second week of December.

“Hey, this isn’t legally sound, we have fleshed this out internally, it’s fine that you think this but we’re not going to entertain this in an official White House capacity on behalf of the President, we’re putting a stop to this,” Hutchinson characterized the White House Counsel’s Office as saying.

Source: TEST FEED1

More than 40 migrants found dead in tractor-trailer near San Antonio

At least 42 migrants were found dead in a tractor-trailer near San Antonio on Monday night, according to local media reports.

Another 16 migrants were taken to the hospital in various conditions, local news channel KSAT 12 reported.

Police and emergency vehicles gathered on a major road near San Antonio around 8 p.m. to respond to the incident, according to the news outlet.

Crews are surrounding a parked 18-wheeler next to a set of railroad tracks.

The Hill has reached out to the San Antonio Police Department for more information.

DEVELOPING

Source: TEST FEED1

Judge rules noncitizens cannot vote in local NYC elections

A New York Supreme Court justice ruled on Monday that noncitizens cannot vote in local elections in New York City, striking down a law that would have allowed for such votes.

The law allowing noncitizens to vote went into effect in January after being passed by the New York City Council in December.

But on Monday, Justice Ralph Porzio ruled that the law violated the New York Constitution, which he claims gives the right to vote to eligible citizens, according to The New York Times.

“There is no statutory ability for the City of New York to issue inconsistent laws permitting noncitizens to vote and exceed the authority granted to it by the New York State Constitution,” wrote Porzio in his decision, saying that the only way noncitizens could be given the right to vote is through a referendum.

The law, which was set to go into effect in January 2023, would have expanded the right to vote in municipal elections to 800,000 more people.

If implemented, the law would have made New York City the largest city in the U.S. to allow noncitizens to vote, joining 11 towns in Maryland and two in Vermont that already grant voting rights to noncitizens.

The New York City law would have applied noncitizen voting rights only to municipal elections, continuing to limit voters in state and federal elections only to U.S. citizens.

Source: TEST FEED1

'We were standing on the windows': Passenger recounts Amtrak train derailing in Missouri

MENDON, Mo. (WDAF) – An Amtrak train derailed Monday afternoon, leaving three dead, dozens injured and even more temporarily stranded in a small Missouri town.

Diane Couture was a passenger on that train when it hit a dump truck at a rural railroad crossing and derailed near Mendon, Missouri, about 100 miles east of Kansas City.

She and her husband had been celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary with a trip to the Grand Canyon and were headed home to New Hampshire. The train, an Amtrak Southwest Chief, left Kansas City en route to Chicago earlier in the day Monday. In full, the Southwest Chief route runs from Los Angeles to Chicago.

Couture said she never imagined their anniversary trip would end like this. She was in the dining car when she heard a loud noise.

“We thought the car was just going to wobble a bit and then keep going — but then it stopped and turned on its side,” Couture told Nexstar’s WDAF Monday night.

SLIDESHOW: Amtrak train derailment in Missouri

“The people on our left-hand side flew across and hit us, and then we were standing on the windows on the right-hand side of the car.”

The Missouri State Highway Patrol said the train was eight cars long, and seven of them derailed.

“Two gentlemen in the front came up, stacked a bunch of things and popped out the window and literally pulled us out by our hands,” Couture said. “So then we were all sitting on top of the train.”

Soon, Couture said two other men came and helped people get down off the train cars and onto the tracks below.

Videos from the scene show dozens of passengers sitting on the side of overturned cars and walking around the tracks.

Couture said first responders were there within minutes to help those who were injured.

MSHP said three people were killed in the crash; two were on the train and another was in the dump truck. The Chariton County ambulance service confirmed to WDAF that at least 50 were injured.

Amtrak said there were 243 passengers and 12 crew members on the train at the time.

Officials brought school buses to the scene, and Couture said they took everyone who wasn’t injured to the local high school in Mendon.

“Tons of volunteers and anything you could imagine, they had for us,” she said.

Hours later, dozens of passengers remain at the high school, getting help from community volunteers and waiting for news of what’s next.

Couture admits it was a scary experience to cap off their trip, especially knowing there were passengers and crew around her who suffered injuries. But she’s grateful she and her husband are safe.

Source: TEST FEED1

James Corden blasts abortion ruling that 'endangers millions'

Late-night television host James Corden said on Monday he feels “utter disgust and anger” over the Supreme Court’s Friday decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, arguing that basic human rights were “wiped out in a moment” by politically motivated justices.

In a promo video uploaded to the YouTube account for his CBS show “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” the British television host, speaking from his hometown of London, blasted the conservative justices, accusing them a decision that “endangers millions upon millions” of women’s lives.

“A woman’s right to choose what happens to her own body, wiped out in a moment,” Corden said, standing in front of Parliament to compare British abortion rights laws to the new restrictions in the U.S. allowed by the reversal of Roe.

“In the land of the American dream — the land of the free, a country which prides itself on the protection of an individual’s liberties — we move instantly back to a dark age where a court has imposed a minority political view on a country for decades to come,” the talk show host said.

The Supreme Court’s stunning reversal of the landmark case precedent that enshrined abortion rights into law has sent shockwaves through America and around the world.

Around half the states in the U.S. are expected to ban or severely limit abortion access, while others are moving to protect abortion rights more firmly.

Roe’s reversal was expected after Politico published a leaked draft opinion earlier this year showing the court’s conservative majority was prepared to overturn Roe.

After the leak, Corden said he was “gobsmacked” by the court’s pending decision and pointed to the fact most Americans do not want the constitutional right to abortion overturned.

“It’s mystifying, it’s baffling,” said Corden in May. “Make no mistake, this is the biggest rollback in modern human rights in U.S. history.”

On Monday, Corden, who is raising his family in the U.S., said he was still “struggling to get his head around this.”

“To say that I’m outraged and devastated would be an understatement,” he said. “It’s incomprehensible that in 2022, we should even have to say out loud that women should be entitled to control their own lives and bodies, let alone live in a country that won’t allow it.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Uncertainty surrounds 'abortion pill' access and legality after SCOTUS ruling

(NewsNation) — The pills used to perform medically induced abortions are shaping up to be at the center of the next fight in the U.S.

Several states have already banned and criminalized abortion following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling Friday that overturned Roe v. Wade. The landmark case had previously secured abortion as a constitutional right.

Now, as the decision falls back to the individual states, some worry about future access to the FDA-approved pills that can be used to induce abortion in a private setting.

“This is a very viable option,” said Monica Skoko, a former nurse for Planned Parenthood. “It is an incredibly safe option.”

Some opposed to abortion, however, want to see it outlawed.

“It’s no different than a surgical abortion,” said Florida Family Policy Council President John Stemberger. “It ends that unborn child’s life and we think that’s morally wrong, we think it should be legally wrong.”

A medical abortion requires taking two FDA-approved pills: mifepristone and misoprostol, according to the Mayo Clinic. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and keeps the embryo from staying implanted in the uterus. Misoprostol rids the embryo from the body.

The procedure is most effective during the first trimester of pregnancy, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The option has become increasingly more common in the U.S. and accounted for more than half of all abortions in 2020, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a group that researches and supports abortion access.

“You get to have that in the privacy of your own home,” Skoko said. “You get to kind of dictate and have that power.”

In 2020, the FDA lifted a requirement to get the pills in person. People in some states now can have the drugs mailed to them.

But other states are trying to restrict access to the medication.

Kentucky, Tennessee and South Dakota limit access to abortion medication by specifying that the pill cannot be mailed or requiring specific qualifications of the doctor providing the service.

Healthcare attorney Harry Nelson said it would be “almost impossible” for states to stop people from accessing abortion pills through telehealth or doctors in other states.

“We’ve been fighting a losing battle for over a decade trying to stop opioids and fentanyl from being mailed into the country and other places,” Nelson said. “There’s absolutely no way that these states are going to be able to do anything about medication being mailed from overseas or outside of the country, or frankly even from in the country, from advocacy groups.”

“States may not ban mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement last week. He added that the Justice Department “will work tirelessly to protect and advance reproductive freedom.”

Garland also said that in addition to protecting providers and those seeking abortions in states where it remains legal, “we stand ready to work with other arms of the federal government that seek to use their lawful authorities to protect and preserve access to reproductive care.”

Some states, including Texas and Oklahoma, are taking a new approach by allowing bans to be enforced through private lawsuits. Under those laws, private citizens can sue abortion providers and anyone who aids an individual in obtaining an abortion.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: TEST FEED1