N.Y. Times, Washington Post, CNN Quote Professor Ziegler on Mifepristone Battle

Professor Mary Ziegler has weighed in for top media outlets in recent weeks regarding high-profile court battles over the abortion pill mifepristone and other aspects of the ongoing debate over reproductive rights in the United States post-Roe v. Wade.

On May 16, Ziegler spoke to the New York Times and to the Washington Post about how abortion opponents are citing the 150-year-old Comstock Act in a bid to bolster their case against mifepristone. In a CNN interview that aired the next day, Ziegler explained various aspects of the mifepristone case.

Ziegler also spoke to the Post for a May 20 article about efforts by Republican lawmakers in some states to push for 12-week bans on abortion rather than near-total bans, after what some Republicans said has been sustained political backlash against more extreme plans.

“There are Republicans who are looking at this and saying ‘we can’t just cater to the antiabortion and the primary voter because there’s a lot of voters now who care about abortion,'” Ziegler told the Post. “'It may actually backfire on us.'”

In a May 12 opinion piece for the Boston Globe, Ziegler wrote about how a win for animal welfare in the U.S. Supreme Court case National Pork Producers Council v. Ross could pose a threat to reproductive rights.

“The logic of the ruling could make it easier for anti-abortion states to apply criminal or civil penalties on abortion to people beyond state lines,” Ziegler wrote.

Mary Ziegler is an expert on the law, history, and politics of reproduction, health care, and conservatism in the United States from 1945 to the present. She is one of the world’s leading historians of the U.S. abortion debate.