Slate News Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - Return of the Abortion Pill Wars
May 16, 2026
Ilyse Hogue, writer, activist, and former NARAL president, offers strategic perspective on reproductive-rights fights and messaging. Madiba Dennie, deputy editor and author, explains conservative legal strategy and courtroom maneuvers. They unpack recent mifepristone litigation, furious Supreme Court dissents, links between abortion and voting-rights fights, movement pivots to preserve access, and a key free-speech legal win.
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Conservative Strategy To Curtail Abortion Via Regulation
- The conservative legal movement is using regulatory challenges to create a nationwide backdoor to restrict abortion access.
- Louisiana sued to undo the FDA's telehealth/mail rule for mifepristone to cut off cross-state medication abortion pipelines from free states to restrictive ones.
Why The Court Paused The Fifth Circuit's Ruling
- The Supreme Court's emergency stay likely balanced ideological aims against disrupting pharmaceutical markets and precedent about nationwide injunctions.
- Justices wary of upending FDA authority and biopharma operations may have restrained more radical remedies despite ideological pressure.
Thomas And Alito's Criminalization Rhetoric
- Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito framed telehealth abortion providers as criminal enterprises in dissents, signaling aggressive doctrinal moves.
- Thomas invoked the Comstock Act and Alito decried blue states 'undermining' Dobbs by enabling mail-order abortions.
