- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
The last time lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom argued before the Supreme Court, their case was entirely hypothetical. The conservative Christian legal advocacy group—the force behind some of the most important anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ litigation in recent history—was representing a Colorado graphic designer who claimed to be starting a wedding website business, and wanted the right to deny service to same-sex couples. The designer had never before made a wedding website, and the only evidence that a queer couple wanted her to do so, it was later revealed, appeared to be faked. None of that mattered. The Court gave her a guarantee that she wouldn’t be punished—creating a new loophole in anti-discrimination laws across the country.
On Tuesday, another ADF lawsuit will be heard at the Supreme Court. And once again, the case rests on a hypothetical: That a member of a small anti-abortion doctors’ coalition might one day have to care for a patient suffering a rare and severe complication from an FDA-approved abortion pill that the American Medical Association considers as safe as Tylenol. Perhaps, the case speculates, that doctor might be forced to administer that patient an emergency abortion, violating their anti-abortion convictions.