We should howl

 When the Supreme Court overruled Roe v Wade last June I was heartbroken. My daughter was graduating high school and the rage I felt had to hide under a smile. As the day and the formalities went on the silence felt suffocating.

Not a word was mentioned at the commencement that a ruling had been announced that had the potential to upend the lives of more than half of the graduating class.

We all knew it was coming, but the fight was more like a surrender. And though I'd believed Governor Hochul when she campaigned on a commitment to securing the rights of women, her immediate choice of a conservative jurist for the state's chief justice was an unfathomable shock.

So recently when as a theocratic ideologue, appointed to the federal bench in Texas by a twice impeached former President now under criminal indictment, unilaterally announced he would rescind the FDA approval of mifepristone, a drug in a two-part protocol for early non-surgical abortion, I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me that the game plan coming out of the Governor's office is once again painfully insufficient.

After all, The Justice Department maintains that the FDA's approval of the drug was proper and the pill has proven safe for two decades. And a near-simultaneous decision by a U.S. District Judge barred authorities from restricting access to mifepristone in the 17 states where Democrats had sued to protect its availability, New York was evidently not among them.

Specifically, the governor's announcement that the state would stockpile misoprostol instead of the drug being threatened, mifepristone, sends a dangerous message to all who believed New York meant its promise, that it would ALWAYS protect a woman's right to healthcare choice.

For those who don't know: Mifepristone is a drug that blocks progestin and the further development of a fetus, and when used in combination with misoprostol, reduces the pain and bleeding associated with evacuating tissue from the uterus thereby reducing the likelihood of surgical intervention.

In short, the two-drug protocol is the safest and least invasive treatment available to women in early pregnancy. 

Accepting this incendiary decision as even potentially legitimate does real harm, especially when legal uncertainty continues to erode not only choice but also their access to the most appropriate treatment.

The miso-only method is more painful, and less effective and could increase the likelihood that physicians will be overwhelmed.

With this plan, New York, which has promised to do everything possible to protect all women who need abortion care regardless of which state they reside, is instead legitimizing the GOP's bad-faith argument that the drug isn't safe while simultaneously ensuring the healthcare for New York's women is substandard. 

But what did it do when Walgreens announced it wouldn't dispense abortion medication at its stores, even in states where abortion was still legal?

And what will it do when theocratic lawmakers come, as predicted for Plan B, Contraception, and IVF treatments? My guess is it will tell us they will always fight … as long as we pledge another three dollars.

Because despite what anyone says, what this ultimately shows is that we will always throw women to the wolves.