They're Coming for Birth Control

And anti-discrimination laws, and gay rights, and the First Amendment.

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

If you want just a little taste of where the conservative movement is headed, look at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing legal organization that has spearheaded the fight against abortion rights. The ADF is the group that overturned Roe v. Wade, and ended the era of legal abortion in the United States. And they’re clear on what they’re coming for next: Trans rights. Gay rights. The separation of church and state. Secularism. Anti-discrimination laws. And contraception.

Earlier this month, the New Yorker published an incisive profile of the group. “In the past dozen years, its lawyers had won fourteen Supreme Court victories, including overturning Roe v. Wade; allowing employer-sponsored health insurance to exclude birth control; rolling back limits on government support for religious organizations; protecting the anonymity of donors to advocacy groups; blocking pandemic-related public-health rules; and establishing the right of a baker to refuse to make a cake for a same-sex wedding,” David Kirkpatrick writes. They are currently trying to get the Supreme Court to overturn the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, a drug that has been on the market for decades and is safer than aspirin, because, they say, it’s dangerous — when in reality, they oppose it because mifepristone is an abortion drug.

The ADF is only one of many right-wing groups agitating against women’s rights. But they’re a particularly powerful one. And understanding their agenda, which is an explicitly Christian one, is crucial to understanding where US law may go in the next few years.