Bobby Kennedy to “do his own research” on medication abortions
By 
While not surprising, this is still extremely bad:
While the country is distracted by Donald Trump’s obscene lie that Tylenol during pregnancy causes autism, the administration is making their next major move against abortion pills. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) says it will conduct its own study of mifepristone to determine whether to roll back access to the medication—under the guise of “protecting the health and safety of pregnant women.”
In a letter to Republican attorneys general, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Martin Makary write that they’re being driven to act by “recent studies raising concerns about the safety of mifepristone”—citing a junk science report from the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC). The pair also claim the Biden administration “significantly reduced” safeguards for women, in part by allowing patients to get abortion medication using telehealth.
The short version? They’re coming after providers’ ability to mail abortion pills.
Right now, one in four abortions are provided by telehealth, and shipping medication is largely what allows women living under state bans to obtain care. Thanks to abortion pills—and the shield laws that protect the providers who mail them—bans haven’t been able to put a dent in the abortion rate. In fact, the number of abortions in the U.S. has increased since Roe was overturned.
That’s why anti-abortion activists and legislators have been pressuring Kennedy and Makary to restore pre-2016 rules on mifepristone: if they can take out telehealth, they’ll finally be able to stop large swaths of women from getting the care they need. (And, they hope, stop looking like such abject failures.)
Taking away rights from women under the phony guise of protecting their health is a longstanding staple of reactionary politics, and the misogynist failson whose worldview consists of superstitions from the Dark Ages is particularly well-equipped to carry out the agenda.