Jamie Corley, a former Republican press secretary in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, is warning his party to stay far away from banning abortion medications such as mifepristone.
Writing in Politico, Corley says a ban on abortion drugs will "steer Republicans straight into a political dead-end that could backfire spectacularly," despite the fact that anti-abortion activists believe that women who take the pills are committing acts of murder.
Essentially, Corley argues that prosecuting people for mailing abortion pills to women would be an incredibly messy process that would be an absolute mess from a legal perspective.
"Is the attorney general in Missouri going to bring charges against one civilian in California?" he asks. "That would be a gross misuse of government resources, not to mention legally questionable, particularly since many blue states have passed shield laws that protect providers. Perhaps the police in anti-abortion states will step in to stop an illegal underground drug ring. For Republicans’ sake, I sure hope not. The juxtaposition of using taxpayer money to raid women’s health care while the country faces a raging opioid and fentanyl crisis does not exactly scream 'tough on crime.'"
What's more, Corley believes that following this road will inevitably lead Republicans to conclude that women who take abortion pills should be jailed for terminating their own pregnancies, which he said would simply be disastrous politics.
"Even a year ago, the idea that a woman would be sent to prison over abortion care would have been brushed off as sensationalist," he writes. "But today, protections for women against punishment are threatened, and the establishment anti-abortion groups are stumbling in their efforts to shield them against a growing movement from the absolutist wing of the anti-abortion coalition that is calling for the prosecution of women who terminate a pregnancy."
