How Courts Nationwide Are Using Junk Science to Restrict Abortion Access

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/how-courts-nationwide-are-using-junk-science-restrict-abortion-access

When Justice Samuel Alito authored the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion on the recent Hobby Lobby case allowing privately owned businesses to exclude birth control in their employee health plans, he explained: “The owners of the businesses have religious objections to abortion, and according to their religious beliefs the four contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients.”

The banned methods include emergency contraception, which does not cause abortion. That’s proven. By science. But across the judiciary and in state legislatures—especially in red states—that fact hardly matters. Instead, judges and politicians are relying on junk science when making decisions or writing laws that affect reproductive health options and outcomes. Like Hobby Lobby, many of these court rulings end up restricting women’s options.

This pattern of dubious information, which anti-choice activists peddle to judges and lawmakers, is what RH Reality Check found in its newly released investigation on the influence of anti-choice “experts” on law.

“Oftentimes the court themselves, even at the level of the Supreme Court, neither understand the evidence nor the public health implications of some of the decisions they’re making,” said Sharona Coutts of RH Reality Check. “The anti-choice movement depends on that in creating this confusion.”