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French scientist Etienne-Emile Baulieu, known as the father of the abortion pill, said it was "scandalous" and "a setback for women's freedom" that the US state of Wyoming has banned the drug.
Baulieu, who at the age of 96 is still working on treatments for depression and Alzheimer's, did not mince his words about the ban.
"It is a setback for women's freedom, particularly for those in the most precarious position who do not have the means to go to another state" to get an abortion, he told AFP in an interview.
Last week Wyoming became the first US state to outlaw the use of the abortion pill.
It was the latest point marked for conservative anti-abortion activists in the United States after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to the procedure last year, leaving the policy to individual states.
Baulieu said he had dedicated a large part of his life to "increasing the freedom of women," and the ban was a step in the opposite direction.
Born in Strasbourg in 1926 to Jewish parents, Baulieu was raised by his feminist mother after his father, a doctor, died when he was a boy. At the age of 15, Baulieu joined the French resistance against Nazi occupation.
He went on to become a self-described "doctor who does science," specializing in the field of steroid hormones.
Invited to work in the United States, Baulieu was noticed in 1961 by Gregory Pincus, known as the father of the contraceptive pill, who convinced him to focus on sex hormones.
Back in France, Baulieu designed a way to block the effect of the hormone progesterone, which is essential for the egg to implant in the uterus after fertilization.
"I wanted to make a contragestive," which stops gestation, he told AFP.
Partnering with the French Roussel-Uclaf laboratory, the oral drug RU-486, also known as mifepristone, was developed in 1982, providing a safe and inexpensive alternative to surgical abortion.
But there was a long battle for the drug to become authorized in the United States, where anti-abortion activists dubbed it the "death pill".
'Fanaticism and ignorance'
In early March, French President Emmanuel Macron praised Baulieu's resilience when he presented the scientist with the Grand-Croix de la Legion d'Honneur, the top rank in France's honors system.
"You, a Jew and a resistance fighter, you were overwhelmed with the most atrocious insults and even compared to Nazi scientists," Macron said.
"But you held on, for the love of freedom and science."
Baulieu's wife Simone Harari Baulieu, a media producer in France, said "adversity slides off him like water off a duck's back".
She added that the recent "step backwards" in the United States was propelled by "fanaticism and ignorance".
Even at age 96, Baulieu heads into his office at the Kremlin-Bicetre University Hospital in the southern suburbs of Paris three times a week.
Stacks of photos, diplomas and binders contain "the work of a lifetime," the scientist said, adding that he still wants to "be useful".
His latest award is pinned to his blue suit, but Baulieu said he "never seriously hoped to receive such honors".
"It was a pleasure, but what interests me is improving people's health."
'Driving force'
The team in his lab are continuing research he began years ago aiming to prevent the development of Alzheimer's disease, as well as treatment for severe depression, for which clinical trials begin in the coming months.
Baulieu said "there is no reason we cannot find treatments" for both illnesses, which have stubbornly evaded many previous attempts.
Julien Giustiniani, the team leader at the Baulieu Institute, which was created to finance research into dementia, said Baulieu was "always enthusiastic".
"He is a driving force for us," Giustiniani said.
Though Baulieu now uses a cane to walk, he exudes a tireless energy.
He partly credits using DHEA, a natural hormone produced by the adrenal gland, which Baulieu first described in the 1960s and has been touted as an anti-ageing supplement.
The causes that have dominated his life were "women, brain health and longevity," Baulieu said.
"I would be bored if I did not work anymore," he added.
© Agence France-Presse
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Ahead of a possible indictment of Donald Trump, law enforcement agencies are investigating "chilling" threats, including against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, according to top Washington Post investigative reporter Carol Leonnig.
Leonnig was careful to say she is not aware of any of the threats being deemed credible, but also noted that "all sorts of law enforcement agencies" seem to be taking much more interest than some agencies did in the weeks before the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
"I have received copies and screenshots and internal documents and emails flagging concerns about specific protests, investigations into specific online threats that have been made that are not yet determined to be 'credible and likely to occur' but have been chilling nonetheless in terms of the threats that have been made about killing certain people," Leonning, a Pulitzer-Prize winning author, said Tuesday on MSNBC's "Deadline" White House."
"Claims of, you know, 'Alvin Bragg needs to needs to die,' and claims online that could just be, you know, bravado, but are being seriously investigated and checked into this time around, ones that were not checked into as clearly at all in the weeks before January 6, despite significant warnings to the FBI about what these threats meant."
Mirroring Leonnig's reporting, Rolling Stone, citing law enforcement reports, on Tuesday noted: "Violent extremists are advocating lethal attacks and proclaiming their willingness to die for the cause."
"U.S. Capitol Police, the D.C. Fusion Center, and the Federal Highway Administration have all circulated warnings about the uptick in online threats over the past 48 hours. The bulletins and threat assessments detail some of the online threats and discussions about the use of specific tactics and methods for carrying out attacks — including online discussions about lethal attacks if Trump is arrested."
On Saturday in an explosive series of social media posts Donald Trump urged his supporters to "protest" and "take our nation back."
That “announcement was met with an immediate increase in violent online rhetoric and expressed threats toward government and law enforcement targets perceived as participating in a political persecution of the former president, as well as calls for ‘Civil War’ more generally.”
The DC Fusion Center, which analyzes threats, in a report stated it “assesses that potential criminal justice actions taken toward a former US president — or actions perceived to be taken toward the former president — remain a ‘line in the sand’ for [Domestic Violent Extremist] communities and thus have the potential to manifest in violence toward government targets or political officials,” Rolling Stone added.
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Most Republicans have rallied around the criminal former president who may or may not face criminal indictment today (it’s anyone’s guess) in connection with a hush-money investigation led by the Manhattan district attorney’s office involving payments to actress Stormy Daniels in 2016 to keep quiet about his affair with her.
The Republicans say, as they have said for years, that anything that doesn’t kill Donald Trump only makes him stronger. They tell us an indictment will incite the Republican base. According to Lindsay Graham, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg did “more to help Donald Trump get elected president than any single person in America today.”
Naturally, this gets pushback. The Post’s Jennifer Rubin said “an indictment’s long-term impact might be anything but positive.”
Politico’s Alexander Burns said an indictment would magnify Trump’s current weaknesses : “His base of support is too small, his political imagination too depleted and his instinct for self-absorption too overwhelming for him to marshal a broad, lasting backlash.”
Both are wrong, but not for the reasons you think.
An indictment would probably hurt Trump in terms of general election voters. The same can’t be said for the base of his party.
A problem for the GOP
I’m reminded of Jason Sattler’s recent piece in which he knocked down the idea that the 2022 midterms proved the Maga movement had run out of gas. Sure, he said, Trump’s hand-picked candidates failed after securing nominations and entering the general election.
Jason’s point, however, is that this point is beside the point.
The point is that each candidate, Jason said, burned through their primary opponents. In that sense, Trump’s power was clear. That, Jason said, is how we should measure his imprint on the Republicans, not whether his acolytes defeat Democratic opponents. Trump is still the Republican Party’s center of gravity. That’s not a problem for him.
That’s a problem for the Republican Party.
The primary is the thing
I agree with Rubin, Burns and others.
An indictment is going to alienate respectable white people – which is to say, “swing voters” – who care about appearing respectable among other white people who themselves care about appearing respectable. Respectable people always side with law and order.
Respectable white people constitute that great globular middle of American politics, and as such, they determine which of the political parties prevails most of the time during any given historical period. If you don’t win over respectable white people, you don’t win at all.
But while respectable white people do make or break candidates in general elections, they do not have the same or similar influence on the internal process of nominating a party’s presidential candidate.
That’s up to the party, especially the base voters of the party, who appear to believe that the covid is a Chinese bioweapon, that the J6 insurrection was an inside job and that Trump was robbed in 2020.
Burns said that candidates can’t tell voters that he’s a warrior for their cause when he’s “consumed with narrow, personal complaints and crackpot conspiracy theories” to which I can only respond:
Yesterday did happen.
What Trump does best
The Republican base has been primed for years to believe in the existence of a deep state trying to bring Trump down, in the weaponization of the government against “conservatives” and the waves of wokeness cascading from George Soros’ penthouse.
That’s why things like the following, from Burns, are baffling.
“Plenty of Americans can see themselves in an older white man scorned by liberals and the media for his crude manner and bigoted ideas. Fewer are likely to see themselves in a wealthy husband paying hush money to conceal his debauched sex life and whining about the unfairness of his circumstances in every public outing.”
Like yesterday never happened.
Trump must expand support, Burns said, “not merely rev up people who already care deeply about his every utterance and obsession.” Yes, he does – for the general election. As for the race for the GOP’s nominaton, revving up “people who already care deeply about his every utterance and obsession” is what Donald Trump does best.
Are we going to say that supporters who will do anything, like storm the US Capitol on an attempted takeover of the US government, are going to be put off by a criminal indictment? They will carry him over unless Republican elites mount a hostile couteroffensive to stop him.
So far, I don’t see that happening.
Conditions are set
It’s true, as Jennifer Rubin wrote, that beyond a few sycophants in the House, many elected Republicans are quiet. But let’s not take that as a sign of disapproval or, much less, that the party is ready to abandon him. Why? Because none of us, as far as I know, was born yesterday.
Over and over, during Trump’s presidency, he would say something that only a dictator would say. The newsspeakers would race over to the party elders, what I call the Stern Fathers of the Party, such as Senate leader Mitch McConnell, for comment. McConnell would say something bland, just enough to provide cover to the GOP’s craycray but not enough to upend the power of Trump’s personality cult.
I would take silence by the Stern Fathers of the Party less as evidence of Trump’s declining influence and more as another gambit in which they wait to see the distance Trump is capable of going while anticipating the opportunties that arise from his having gone there.
None of us was born yesterday. None of us should be saying, as if we knew for a fact, that an indictment is going to hurt Trump. That no candidate in our history has ever run for president under indictment does not mean it won’t happen. The conditions are already set.
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