Anti-abortion group’s studies retracted before Supreme Court mifepristone case

[thewayne]

Mifepristone is a home abortion drug that is widely regarded as safe to use. Unless you're a Texas judge or any number of people who really like to control women and want to use safe abortion methods as a tool to do so.

A case will be going before the Supreme Court for them to decide whether or not mifepristone is safe. The contention is that the FDA did not go through a proper study and trial to determine whether or not the drug was safe before authorizing it to be used as an abortificant. The Texas judge ruled that the FDA was derelict in this and that the drug could not be prescribed for this purpose. It was immediately appealed and bounced up to the SCOTUS and the judge's ruling put on hold pending this review.

At least there's a few women on the Supreme Court (thank you Sandra!), and not just a bunch of old white guys, though there's several of those there too.

So today's news!

Publisher of scientific journals, Sage, has retracted three papers that question the safety of mifepristone, two of which are kind of key to the case about to come up in the Supreme Court - Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA. Multiple problems were cited, amongst which: flawed statistics, the authors claiming to have no bias when they worked for the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America organization, etc. Two of the three papers, by the same primary researcher, pulled from the same study pool which was not well-organized. When the statistics were re-evaluated, it was found that the morbidity rate was 0.3%, about the same as studies evaluating the safety of the drug that are of an unbiased nature.

The hearing before the Supreme Court is scheduled for March 26. It'll be interesting to see if they can make much of an argument with three major papers knocked out from under them.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/anti-abortion-groups-studies-retracted-before-supreme-court-mifepristone-case/

Comments

[richardf8]

Remember that this is a Supreme Court that ruled against a plaintiff who never brought a case or claimed any damages or had even ordered the cake for the wedding he never had so that they could set a precedent for discrimination against gay people by bakeries.

[thewayne]

Yeah, setting a precedent on a hypothetical.  A real high-water mark.  Anything can happen, we shall find out in a couple of months.  I ain't holding my breath.

[disneydream06]

I can't wait to hear the bizarre excuse they come up with for this decision. :o :o :o
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

Yeah, next month's hearing and the later SCOTUS decision are going to be interesting.  The court has swung against popular conservative trends several times, hard to say where they'll go with this one.  RBG said that Roe was not decided correctly: it should have been decided FOR women to have the right to have abortions, but not on the Amendment that it was decided on.

[disneydream06]

I don't trust them to make the correct decision. :o :o :o

[thewayne]

I don't trust them to either, but we might end up pleasantly surprised.

[disneydream06]

I sure hope so. :o

[moxie_man]

Ditto. I have no faith in this court and I'm quickly losing faith that we'll remain a democracy after November.

[thewayne]

Our best hope is if a certain someone is convicted and becomes a felon.  Of course the appeals process will drag on ad infinitum.  Innocent until proven broke.

[moxie_man]

If I'm going to hope, I'll root for brain aneurysm at a live rally. The problem with locking him up is his rabid followers. Locking him up will just whip them into a worse situation then we currently have.

[thewayne]

People surveyed indicate an awful lot of people who would vote for him will not if he's convicted of felonies.  They did not explore the appeals process, so that's an unknown.  Yeah, I'd prefer he exit the planet ASAP, but only the good die young so he'll probably see a century.

[disneydream06]

That's a sad and scary fact. :o :o :o

[kraig]

I don't think Judge TradWife is likely to vote on the side of pro-women.

[thewayne]

She's on a knife's edge, though.  If she votes on their side too often, she's going to invite an awful lot of flack,  Going to be interesting to see how the votes break down.  Which we won't see until, IIRC, August.  Still, the arguments will be something.

[silveradept]

I can't say that I'm inclined to believe a person claiming to have done good research who refers to doctors who perform abortions as "abortionists," mirroring the rhetoric of many of the most virulent and violent forced-birth and assassination-friendly groups.

The affiliations of the people claiming to have done good research should always invite greater scrutiny. But someone who says "well, we stated who we worked for, and therefore we did our diligence on disclosure and can claim we have no bias in our data or methodology" is not playing honestly.

It remains to be seen whether the justices of the court will actually give a care about using retracted studies as justification for the conclusion they likely desperately want to come to.

[thewayne]

If the conservative justices force the issue through, the dissenting opinions will be interesting.  Actually, even the concurring opinions should be interesting reads, just to see what knots they tie themselves into.

[silveradept]

I don't think they'll need much for knots. They can choose whatever standard they want to use to say the FDA was wrong, never mind all the science that says they're right, or they can say "well, states have the right to do whatever they want, regardless of what the federal government says, unless Congress specifically says what they can or can't do in legislation."

The justices have already shown they don't care about law or logic if it gets in the way of their desired conclusion.