Future of mifepristone at issue as rightwing groups seek to roll back measures taken by the FDA to expand drug’s availability
Abortion is back at the US supreme court, with arguments on Tuesday in the first major case on the issue since a 6-3 majority ruled in 2022 to overturn Roe v Wade and end the national right to abortion – a decision that unleashed abortion bans throughout the country as well as a political backlash that Democrats hope will serve them in the coming presidential election.
At issue in the case is the future of mifepristone, a drug typically used in US medication abortions. The rightwing groups that brought the case are seeking to roll back measures taken by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to expand the drug’s availability in recent years.
A decision in their favor would apply nationwide, including to states that protect abortion access, and would likely make the drug more difficult to acquire. The loosening of restrictions on mifepristone have helped mitigate the impact of post-Roe abortion bans; if those restrictions are reimposed, abortion rights groups anticipate it will become significantly more difficult to access abortions in the US.
“More than 60% of abortions in the US are medication abortions, so that would impact a substantial number of people, whether you live in a protective state or a restricted state,” said Nicole Huberfeld, a health law professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health.
Between 1870 and 1900 there were 12,000,000 people who came to the US. That’s an average of 400,000 per year
In December of 2023 we had 249,735 that showed up to the Texas /Mexico border.
249,735 x 12 = 2,996,820 that kind of influx would be absolutely unsustainable.
Even if we went with (what looks like an average) for 2023 at the border… 150,000 per month
That would come to be 1,800,000 per year… And that is just the Mexico border. That would still be unsustainable.
Nah, we could sustain way higher rates of population growth than we have now. Right now, we’re historically low.
Here’s a history of the US showing population growth by decade:
https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html
Every census up until 1860, we grew at a rate of over 30% every ten years.
The last decade, we did 7.4%, our lowest rate in the history of the country.
The decade before, 9.7%.
The US has consistently seen population growth outpacing that of other developed countries.
That sustained, explosive growth is a very large part part of how the US became a hell of a lot richer and more powerful in a short period of time than other countries did. At the time of the American Revolution, we had a population about a fifth the size of France’s. Today, we have a population about five times that of France’s. Current UN projections are that we’ll be larger than the European Union as a whole before the end of the century (well, though the EU stands to maybe gain a few new joining members, so no guarantee).
There were 38 million people in the US in 1870. 400k people coming in is a hell of a lot higher proportion of the total population of 40 million than it is to 340 million.
Why would it be unsustainable? Immigration is pretty much always a net contributor to GDP, even if you only consider the fact that the consumption of calories is economic activity, and completely disregard any additional labor contribution.