A new legal battleground in US abortion wars

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: A new legal battleground in US abortion wars

Jess Smith
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, June 29th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Access to mail order abortion pills is a new front in the US legal battle over abortion. In the UK, there’s a new call to ban live facial recognition technology in public areas. And the war in Ukraine has roiled another global industry, the timber trade. I’m Jess Smith in from Marc Filippino, and here’s the news you need to start your day.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

There was a stunning moment in Washington yesterday. At US congressional hearings into the January 6th attack on the Capitol, lawmakers heard testimony from a former White House aide. She said that former President Trump tried to commandeer the presidential limousine in an effort to join rioters who were attacking the Capitol. Secret Service stopped him. Here’s the former aide, Cassidy Hutchinson.

Cassidy Hutchinson
The president said something to the effect of, “I’m the effing president. Take me up to the Capitol now.” To which Bobby responded, “Sir, we have to go back to the West Wing.” The president reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr Engel grabbed his arm, said, “Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel.”

Jess Smith
Hutchinson also testified that Trump demanded that his armed supporters be led into his rally before marching to the Capitol. The goal of the hearings is to reconstruct what happened when a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol building last January to try and block the certification of presidential election winner Joe Biden.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In the UK today, an independent legal expert is issuing a study urging the government to ban live facial recognition in public spaces until there are laws to regulate its use. Here’s our European technology correspondent Madhumita Murgia.

Madhumita Murgia
So really there are two primary concerns. One is that it’s inaccurate. And in particular, experiments have shown that live facial recognition doesn’t work as well on female faces and darker skin faces. And partly, you know, this is a solvable technical problem, but also partly scientists don’t really know why this is the case. But while they’re trying to figure it out, the technology’s already being deployed and rolled out on the streets by people like the Metropolitan Police in London. So really the big concern there is not only that it can get it wrong, but also that it can be discriminatory and biased in the process.

Jess Smith
Madhu, what kind of laws could address these issues?

Madhumita Murgia
At the moment, we have privacy and data protection laws like the GDPR across Europe and the UK’s version. We also have human rights laws and laws around equality and non-discrimination. But this review found that when you look across the spectrum of these laws, none of them really address the primary issue here, which is whether facial recognition is fit for public use or not. Which is why he recommended that there need to really be completely new laws written and then a kind of patchwork of regulation put in around it.

Jess Smith
So compared to other countries, where does the UK stand in terms of regulating government use of facial recognition technology?

Madhumita Murgia
So in the US it’s happened on a sort of state by state level or city by city. So for example, San Francisco and Oakland have both said that they will do a temporary ban of the technology live facial recognition until there’s proper legislation or regulation in place. The EU is in the process of writing a brand new law called the AI act, which will look at kind of regulating lots of different parts of artificial intelligence. So it’s a good time for the UK to kind of be a pioneer in this area, because we are also rewriting here in the UK the data laws, because we’ve separated out from the European Union. And so the UK government is actually in the process of rewriting all its data protection laws. So it’d be kind of timing wise a good time to also look in parallel at biometrics.

Jess Smith
Madhumita Murgia is the FT’s European technology correspondent.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Another economic casualty of the war in Ukraine has been the global trade in timber. Western sanctions have disrupted not only Russian timber exports.

Madeleine Speed
Russia is the world’s largest softwood timber exporter, and together with Ukraine and Belarus, which is also subject to sanctions, the three countries make up about a quarter of the global trade. So it’s a really significant amount.

Jess Smith
That’s the FT’s Madeleine Speed. She reports that some countries plan to increase logging to make up for the shortfall, and that’s a worry to environmentalists.

Madeleine Speed
So in Ukraine, when the war broke out, there was basically a new law introduced, which was part of a kind of martial law, which basically said that they would lift restrictions on felling because usually they basically stop all felling during the spring and summer seasons to protect the kind of animal wildlife in the forests. And the idea is that they’ll be able to increase their supply, you know, for the war effort, but then also longer term in order to boost export earnings. But it means that the forests are going to be hit. And forests obviously are critical to storing and removing carbon from the atmosphere. A hundred world leaders pledged to halt deforestation by 2030. So there’s just not a lot of wriggle room for these countries to start increasing logging while kind of sticking to their obligations.

Jess Smith
That’s the FT’s Madeleine Speed.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In the US, demand for abortion pills has surged since the country’s highest court last week struck down the constitutional right to abortion. Now, access to these medications to telehealth is becoming a new legal battleground. Our US pharmaceutical correspondent Jamie Smyth joins me to talk more about this. Hi, Jamie.

Jamie Smyth
Oh, good morning.

Jess Smith
So how big is the increase in demand for abortion pills?

Jamie Smyth
So we spoke to three of these telehealth abortion providers Hey Jane, Just The Pill and Aid Access. And they said that they had received a twofold, a fourfold and a fivefold increase in inquiries and in some cases, patient demand and requests following the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday, which overturned Roe vs Wade. Because what that judgment did was it triggered laws banning or severely restricting abortion in at least 13 states across the US. So that’s left people looking for alternative ways to seek abortion care.

Jess Smith
So what are abortion opponents doing in response to this, or what are they planning to do?

Jamie Smyth
Now during the Covid pandemic US federal regulators authorised telehealth providers to post pills directly to women’s homes with no need to visit a doctor or a pharmacist in person. Now, because of the increase in the use of abortion pills, you’ve seen conservative anti-abortion campaigners and Republican lawmakers pass laws in Republican controlled legislatures across the US, which seek to severely restrict and in some cases completely ban access to these telehealth mail order style abortions.

Jess Smith
And how would they enforce these laws?

Jamie Smyth
It’s going to be extremely difficult to do that. It’s really difficult to search through the mail. In fact, it possibly could be illegal because in the US, mail between states is a federal responsibility and there’s probably far too much volume to check every package. And actually, one of the providers, Aid Access, has said that it will continue to post pills into these states where there are specific bans. So it’s in a sense saying it’s going to flout the existing rules. So I think that issue of enforcement will probably be really important as we go forward.

Jess Smith
Are there challenges to these efforts to block access to abortion pills? I mean, what have abortion rights supporters done legally?

Jamie Smyth
One of the makers of the abortion pill, it’s actually suing Mississippi over restrictions that it has attempted to introduce back in 2020 on medication abortion. This is looking like it’s going to be a real test case as to whether the US Food and Drug Administration rules on ensuring access to these abortion pills will be upheld. On the day that Roe vs Wade was overturned, the attorney-general, Merrick Garland, released a statement saying that regulators at the FDA have approved the use of and the abortion pill and that US states may not ban the medicine. But what we don’t know is exactly how they’re going to try and prevent these state bans from going ahead. But certainly what we’re going to see is a huge legal fight over this in the months and probably years to come.

Jess Smith
Jamie Smyth is our US pharmaceutical correspondent. Jamie, thanks so much.

Jamie Smyth
Thank you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Jess Smith
You can read more on all these stories at FT.com. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.

This transcript has been automatically generated. If by any chance there is an error please send the details for a correction to: typo@ft.com. We will do our best to make the amendment as soon as possible.