Of Course Dobbs Didn't Completely "Return Abortion to the States"

After a brief delay, the Supreme Court stayed (over dissents from Justices Thomas and Alito) the latest Fifth Circuit gambit to try and take mifepristone off the market. There's plenty to talk about, and plenty of others will talk about it. But I did want to flag one talking point in the dissent that stood out to me for its hackishness.Justice Alito described the Dobbs decision as having "restored the right of each State to decide how to regulate abortions within its borders." Allowing mifepristone to be sent through the mail, consequently, "undermine[s]" the Dobbs ruling insofar as it permits abortion medication to be sent to states that have sought to ban it. The immediate problem with this logic is obvious: Dobbs did not completely "return abortion to the states." Dobbs held that there was no federally-protected constitutional right to an abortion. But there could be myriad ways the federal government might pass regulations on abortion -- for example, via its power to regulate the…