Scottsdale's Alliance Defending Freedom is behind the effort to curb abortion pill access

The legal advocacy group trying to limit women’s access to the most commonly used abortion pill was thrilled to learn this week that the U.S. Supreme Court would be taking the case.

You actually might have heard the cheering, since the high-powered, conservative Christian-affiliated Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is headquartered in Scottsdale.

And while its mailing address is just off Loop 101, the alliance is a legal juggernaut that has been doing very well since Donald Trump stacked the Supreme Court, where a couple of judges have connections to ADF.

The group was behind the overturning of Roe v. Wade and other cases. It also has spent a tremendous amount of money, court time and legislative arm twisting to attack the rights of the LGBTQ community.

Is this about women's health or religion?

The ADF’s media guide calls itself “an alliance of more than 3,700 attorneys and 1,000 allied organizations worldwide — including family policy councils, Christian ministries, student campus organizations, and others — to defend religious liberty, marriage and the family, and the sanctity of life.”

In a press release after the Supreme Court announcement on the abortion pill issue, ADF said in part, “The FDA has harmed the health of women and undermined the rule of law by illegally removing every meaningful safeguard from the chemical abortion drug regimen.”

It would be nice if an organization that professes Christian values were a little more straightforward.

ADF’s motives are not primarily concerned with women’s health. They’re religious.

Many studies show abortion pill is safe

The focus of the case is mifepristone, a drug used in more than half of pregnancy terminations in the U.S. as part of a two-pharmaceutical regimen that includes misoprostol. They’re used as well in miscarriage treatment.

The case is meant to determine if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration changes that allow for shipping the pill by mail were “arbitrary and capricious.”

A CNN investigation of data concerning mifepristone showed it to be safer than drugs like Viagra and penicillin.

The New York Times plowed through 100 scientific studies that examined the effectiveness and safety of mifepristone and misoprostol and found that all of the studies concluded the medications are safe.

The regimen has been used for more than 20 years.

ADF wants to erase church-state barriers

So, what’s really going on here?

In describing ADF during an interview with National Public Radio, New Yorker writer David Kirkpatrick, who has written about the organization, said that ADF “looked at a world where there was a constitutional right to abortion, where there were significant barriers between church and state, and they set out to undo both of those things.”

Kirkpatrick quoted a recording of Jeffrey Ventrella, senior counsel and senior vice president of academic affairs and training at ADF in which he says in part, “Every earthly sovereignty is subordinate to the sovereignty of Jesus Christ, and therefore, we must cultivate a faithful presence in the courts, in the judiciary and in the academy … .”

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The organization’s reach in government and the courts is growing.

It has connections in Congress, Supreme Court

The new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, worked for more than a decade at ADF.

While there, he would write occasional opinion pieces saying, for instance, that if same-sex marriage was legalized “polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are.

“There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet.”

He said, “Homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.”

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barret has taught lectures supported by ADF.

Alumni of ADF’s training program for law students also have clerked for Barrett and Justice Samuel Alito.

The underlying philosophy of the organization seems to oppose the notion of a separation of church and state to a degree that seems more like a nod to church AS state.

Or, as ADF’s senior counsel Jeffrey Ventrella said, “In other words, as another guy put it once, something like, to ask Christianity to stay out of certain territory is to ask God not to be God, if he, in fact, is the sovereign Lord. We must champion these things.”

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Scottsdale's ADF is behind the case to curb abortion pill access