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On Friday evening, a federal judge in Texas ruled to block access to the abortion drug mifepristone; this afternoon, the Justice Department appealed the decision. This case is about more than abortion pills: It also signals a potential new strategy for anti-abortion activists across the country.

But first, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

The pornography paradox The problem with weather apps The ruling that threatens the future of libraries The three biggest misconceptions about Israel’s upheaval Capturing the Courts

For those keeping up with the abortion fight in America, the news of recent days has felt like watching a game of ping-pong with very serious stakes. On Friday, two federal judges released contradicting opinions on mifepristone, one of two drugs used to induce a medication abortion. Texas district-court Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk ruled that the FDA erred when it first approved mifepristone in 2000. Mere minutes later, news broke that Judge Thomas O. Rice of the Eastern District of Washington State had ordered the FDA to preserve access to the medication in a suit filed by 17 states and Washington, D.C.

Kacsmaryk’s ruling, which would have blocked mifepristone access nationwide, was set to go into effect within seven days barring an appeal—but an appeal came just this afternoon from the Justice Department. The department has asked Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judges to keep the Texas order on hold until the appeal is decided. However these next stages play out, it is very likely that the Supreme Court will eventually step in to adjudicate between Friday’s two conflicting federal rulings.

Beyond all of this complicated legal volleying is a simpler story: The future of abortion in America is being decided in the country’s courtrooms. As I noted in February, abortion policy is at something of a standstill in Washington; a nationwide abortion ban would have no chance of passing the majority-Democrat Senate, and there isn’t much Congress can do to restore an ironclad federal right to abortion either. But in America’s courts, the fight is escalating—and recent developments are signaling a possible new strategy for the anti-abortion movement, which consists of reinterpreting a 19th-century law to influence abortion access nationwide.

The Texas ruling “is not just a bid to block access to abortion pills,” the legal scholar Mary Ziegler explained in an article yesterday. “It is an open invitation to anti-abortion-rights groups to use the Comstock Act—a law passed 150 years ago and rarely enforced in the past century—to seek a nationwide federal ban on all abortions.”

The federal Comstock Act of 1873 is an anti-vice law that prohibited the mailing of “every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion,” as well as anything “advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion.” The FDA has long followed a consensus interpretation of the Comstock Act, allowing the mailing of abortion drugs when the seller doesn’t intend for them to be used unlawfully. But reinterpreting this act would essentially ban even lawful abortion procedures. As Ziegler puts it:

No abortion method exists in the United States that does not use something “designed, adapted, or intended for abortion” and sent through the mail or via another carrier. Abortion clinics do not make their own drugs or devices; they order these items from pharmaceutical-distribution companies and medical-equipment suppliers. Taken to its logical conclusion, Kacsmaryk’s ruling means that all abortions already violate criminal law.

Abortion opponents are aware of the consequences of reinterpreting the Comstock Act, Ziegler writes—and they’re also aware that doing so “is the only realistic way to force through a national ban” in a country where strict anti-abortion policies repel a majority of voters.

“That’s because it has nothing to do with what the American people want or what the Constitution means,” Ziegler argues in her article. “Anti-abortion-rights activists have made the same bet that Judge Kacsmaryk has: They have not captured the hearts or minds of the American people, but they may have captured the courts.”

I called Ziegler today, after the Justice Department’s appeal, to get her take on what happens next. She told me that if the conflicting mifepristone rulings make their way to the Supreme Court, which they’re likely to do, it’s worth noting that the Texas decision that would block the abortion medication was “designed to appeal to these conservative justices, not just because of their views on abortion but also because they’re hostile to the administrative state”—in other words, agencies such as the EPA and the FDA.

“I don’t think you can rule anything out,” Ziegler told me. “We’re in a world where the Supreme Court is not behaving in a way we’re used to.”

Related:

The Texas abortion-pill ruling signals pro-lifers’ next push. I’m pro-life. I worry that the abortion-pill ruling could backfire. Today’s News A gunman killed four people and injured nine others at a bank in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. Authorities report that the shooter, an employee at the bank, was shot to death by police on the scene. At today’s annual White House Easter Egg Roll, President Joe Biden told the Today show co-host Al Roker that he plans on running for reelection in 2024 but is not yet ready to officially announce his campaign. The U.S. State Department officially designated the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich as wrongfully detained in Russia, a spokesperson announced in a statement. Dispatches Up for Debate: Readers weigh in on Donald Trump’s legal woes. I Have Notes: Nicole Chung reflects on the release of her new book and the act of writing a memoir.

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Evening Read Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Chen Yong / Getty; H. Armstrong Roberts / Getty

Quit Your Bucket List

By Richard A. Friedman

Years ago, just after I finished my psychiatry residency, a beloved supervisor called to say she had some bad news. At a routine checkup, she had glanced at her chest X-ray up on the viewing box while waiting for her doctor to come into the room. She was a trauma surgeon before becoming a psychiatrist and had spent years reading chest X-rays, so she knew that the coin-size lesion she saw in her lung was almost certainly cancer, given her long history of smoking.

We had dinner soon after. She was still more than two years away from the end of her life and felt physically fine—vital, even. That’s why I was so surprised when she said she had no desire to spend whatever time she had left on exotic travel or other new adventures. She wanted her husband, her friends, her family, dinner parties, and the great outdoors. “Just more Long Island sunsets. I don’t need Bali,” she told me.

Read the full article.

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Read. “Sailing to Italy,” a poem by Mark Strand, published in The Atlantic in 1963.

“We sway this way and that / In makeshift stances / Until, in rougher water, / We doubt our sense / Of balance will ever set us / Straight again.”

Watch. In Beef, on Netflix, Ali Wong is the antiheroine TV deserves.

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P.S.

For further reading on this moment in anti-abortion activism, I recommend my colleague Elaine Godfrey’s article ahead of the March for Life protest this past January. “Overturning Roe was only the first step. The next isn’t exactly obvious,” Elaine wrote. She spoke with different factions within the anti-abortion movement about what they believe this next step should be.

— Isabel

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Former President Donald Trump is expected to be back in New York City to face another legal battle Thursday -- this time in a civil lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James, multiple sources told CNN.

Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Last week, I asked readers for their thoughts on Donald Trump’s legal troubles in New York.

Diana is tired of hearing about Trump:

I was so happy when there was a short period where that guy wasn’t on the front page. Now with all the other investigations he might be indicted for, he’ll be top of the news forever. I can’t stand it. I want it all to go away.

Fred objects to Trump’s indictment:

The hatred for Donald Trump by the Democrats and the media is becoming an embarrassment internationally for America. We are now a nation divided in every way possible. We have lost our sense of humor and our ability to communicate and govern in a civilized manner. If we continue down this path, the America that most of us were raised in and some of us defended will be lost forever. This is a sad time for our country.

Rob disagrees:

I view Trump as the most consequential traitor to our democracy of any individual citizen in American history. Given this jaundiced outlook, I am less concerned that the Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg’s case is airtight than that a legitimate and justifiable criminal case—any case––has finally been brought against the heretofore Teflon Trump. I am also heartened that there are potentially other Trump indictments out there. Bragg’s case breaks the ice of precedent when it comes to charging ex-presidents: We are now on the other side.

When likely faced with even more indictments, Trump will be spewing the most toxic of his demagogic rhetoric—this will be Trump mania on amphetamines and will remind voters what kind of a person he is, and, if reelected president, what damage he will wreak. His nonstop delusional, rabid, and depraved blatherings on the campaign trail may be sufficient once again to persuade enough voters to keep this scourge away from the White House.

Dave voted for Trump in 2016 and wants to see him tried:

I’ve been a lifelong Republican, and I voted for Trump in 2016, as I bought into all the “crooked Hillary” rhetoric. In hindsight, it was Trump who abused his power. I’m fed up with Trump and his hijacking of the party to try to destroy our democracy. First and foremost, I think it’s important that our legal system proves that no one, including ex-presidents, is above the law. Even though I have my doubts that this will result in any guilty verdicts if it does make it to trial this year or next, it’s important that the effort is made if a grand jury finds there’s enough evidence to warrant the indictment and subsequent trial.

Trump’s arrogance, negligence, and contempt for his fellow humans should be what he’s on trial for, but I’ll settle for this indictment for now, while other cases continue to develop. I think it’s more likely that one (or more) of those will offer a clearer path to a guilty verdict. I also find it very telling that so many Republicans have lined up to defend Trump rather than use his indictment as an opportunity to distance themselves.  

Jaleelah is untroubled by the charges against Trump:

I think it’s fine that Trump was brought in on mundane charges. If prosecuting his more outlandish actions had some viable path to conviction, someone would’ve done it already. I also think that prosecuting him for common crimes is a better way to show that no one is above the law than going after him for an unprecedented illegal act. Waiting two or three more years on the chance that some charge from the January 6 insurrection materializes sends the following message: “No one is above all laws, but some people are above some laws, and presidents can get away with crimes as long as they aren’t too brazen.” That is not a healthy message to send to future (and current) rulers.

I think it will be hard to find 12 unbiased jurors. I don’t think it will be impossible. Pundits, influenced by the media they consume and the friends they surround themselves with, overestimate the number of people who know anything about politics. Some people truly do not have Twitter accounts or Fox News subscriptions. Lots of people are so focused on their jobs and their families that they consume almost no news at all. Lawyers have the right to reject potential jurors. If there are 12 citizens who live under rocks in New York (and I’m sure there are), the court will find them and the trial will be fair.

John objects to all the media coverage:

He deserves indictment because he appears to have committed a crime, according to the evidence presented to a grand jury. He does not deserve all the oxygen you and the rest of the press are giving him. Everyone except his supporters would be overjoyed to not hear or see anything beyond “Trump Indicted.”

Magdalene argues that he is being treated unfairly:

Prior to 9/11, the American consciousness was focused on Columbine, the Bush-Gore election, and Enron's accounting scandal. When our leaders decided to declare a War on Terror, they simply forgot about problems at home. So now we have a nation where Columbines are commonplace, the 2020 election divided the country, and corporate malpractice is the norm.

Trump is a scapegoat. He is simply the cup into which our country has poured the sum of its nihilism. Trump is not responsible for January 6. This honor belongs to every politician who forgets small-town America until election years.

I grew up in a rural area. I watched corruption trickle down from the state and federal level to rot our communities from the inside out. Our towns are continually deprived of medical care, education, and employment. Drugs, crime, and violence take their place. Trump just read the room. This trait made him a celebrity, then a president. He has never been shy about telling us who he is. But the people who put him up there have struck bargains with chaos for power.

Our nation is broken. We can all feel it like a second skin, this creeping disquiet of the spirit. My concern about Trump’s indictment has more to do with the reckoning that is surely coming. Because chaos has no allegiance to anyone.

Chadd complains that “all this about the prosecution being ‘political’ to me is nonsense.” He explains:

Every prosecution is political. In one area of the U.S. you can buy and sell marijuana in a store. In another, you can go to prison for decades for just having the stuff.

That's politics.

America is sick and tired of the rich and powerful being let off because of politics, money, fame, or their popularity. The fact that the rich and powerful get away with everything and face no consequences is what got Trump elected in the first place. And now here we are: a man with zero morals is faced with his crimes, and everyone balks! The comparison with Al Capone and his tax-dodging charges is as accurate as can be made.

And Russell favors bringing more charges against Trump:

The other cases that are winding more slowly through the judicial system are the ones that really matter. I hope this indictment emboldens the grand juries in the other cases Trump is facing to indict him now. I hope the side that favors the ideal that no man is above the law wins. But that is far from guaranteed.

Former President Donald Trump has appealed a judge's order that former Vice President Mike Pence must testify to a federal grand jury investigating the 2020 election aftermath but hasn't gotten a court's intervention to block Pence from testifying, according to a person familiar with the case.