Architect of Texas Anti-Abortion Law Targets HIV Preventative Drugs

Anyone who believes that radical Christofascists and the extremist majority on the U.S. Supreme Court intend to cease erasing the right to privacy in one's personal and intimate life now that Roe v. Wade has been reversed is, in my view, delusional and/or extremely gullible at best.  Some have argued with me that the Dobbs ruling said it did not signal that contraception, same sex marriage and a revival of the sodomy laws were the next issues the Court would rewrite back to the 1950's and, therefore, I should believve the majority, three of who openly lied in their Senate interviews when they said Roe was "settled law."  Now, activists - including the architect of Texas' horrific anti-abortion law that makes ordinary citizens vigilantes - are aiming to restrict access to HIV preventative drugs commomly referred to as PrEP and Texas' batshit crazy Attorney General has stated he would defend legislation reimposing the sodomy laws in Texas.  The extremism of these people - and the Majority on the Supreme Court - must not be underestimated and in coming elections it is critical that Republicans be defeated at all levels if a right to privacy is to be preserved.  A piece in The Advocate looks at the Christofascists agenda.  Here are highlights:

With the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last month, the architect of a controversial Texas abortion law has already aimed at marriage equality, and his next target could leave Texans without access to lifesaving preventive care.

Jonathan Mitchell, the former solicitor general who helped write Senate Bill 8, the restrictive abortion law, opened a private law firm in Texas in 2018 to go after decades of the High Court's rulings, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Since the beginning of his career, Mitchell has been vocal about his desire to dismantle decades of decisions he believes depart from the Constitution’s language or recognize constitutional rights that do not have a textual foundation. Due to the Supreme Court’s continued shift in his direction, his cases will likely serve as a bellwether of the country’s legal system.

Mitchell, who once clerked under Justice Antonin Scalia, has spent years advocating for the Supreme Court to reverse Roe vs. Wade. His legal theories and court cases laid the groundwork for the ruling to fall.

Mitchell has litigated on a wide range of issues, including affirmative action, marriage equality, and contraception mandates.

Mitchell now has set his sights on Descovy and Truvada, two medications that help prevent HIV transmission when taken as PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, because those medications enable homosexual behavior, the suit states.

In the case Kelley v. the United States of America, filed in federal court in 2020, Mitchell represents several clients who object to the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that insurance providers cover, among other things, preventive medications specifically for PrEP.

“The PrEP mandate forces religious employers to provide coverage for drugs that facilitate and encourage homosexual behavior, prostitution, sexual promiscuity, and intravenous drug use,” the lawsuit states. “It also compels religious employers and religious individuals who purchase health insurance to subsidize these behaviors as a condition of purchasing health insurance.”

University of Texas constitutional studies director Richard Albert warns that after the reversal of Roe, states are being encouraged to turn back the clock on individual rights, therefore posing a grave threat to intimate relationships. 

His concern is that abortion was just the first domino in a long chain of events.

“The PrEP cases recently filed should alarm us all,” Albert tells The Advocate. “They suggest that LGBTQ+ rights will come under more intense and more frequent attack now that the court has telegraphed its willingness to revisit hard-won constitutional protections against sexual orientation discrimination.”

At UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dr. M. Brett Cooper is an assistant professor specializing in young adult and adolescent medicine. . . . . . He prescribes PrEP medications to a wide range of patients, including straight women and girls as well as heterosexual boys and young men, he tells The Advocate, and a carve-out for men who have sex with men, he believes, would be unsound not only medically but also constitutionally.

But he warns that LGBTQ+ Americans and Texans, in particular, ought to pay attention to proposed laws.

In 2021, a physician in the Texas legislature introduced a bill that would give health care providers the right to refuse patients treatment based on their personal beliefs, Cooper notes.

“I could certainly see with an exception for emergency care or trauma care they could say if I’m a physician and I think having sex outside of marriage is immoral or unethical or whatever I choose, and I do not want to give you PrEP, even though you’re in my office and you’re asking for it, that I could see passing muster and making headway,” Cooper says.

This would include contraception or “fill in the blank” or whatever medical intervention someone disagreed with, he says.

The Supreme Court, has opened the way to measures such as these, Albert says. 

“When the Supreme Court erased the fundamental right to abortion from the Constitution, it put the country on notice that everything is on the table,” he says. “From the right to contraception to the right to be free from sexual orientation discrimination to the right to marry—each of these fundamental rights and so many others are under threat of erosion or outright evisceration by the court’s new conservative supermajority.”

As a result of the activist conservative justices initiating a constitutional revolution, he says the country and the Constitution are about to undergo a fundamental change.

Recently, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that he was "willing and able" to defend a law outlawing same-sex intimacy in the state if such a law were passed.

“If you believe in equality, dignity, and humanity, you have a responsibility to do anything and everything within your lawful means to get the right people elected across the country — both in Congress and in state legislatures,” Albert says.

Once again, I am left believing that "conservative Christianity" - which should not bear the name Christian since the teachings of Christ have nothing to do with the far right's agenda - is one of the great evils in the world.