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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) – She spent weeks in bed before her daughter was born. Another difficult pregnancy would get worse as she tried to look after her toddler.
Faced with this possibility, the 28-year-old Texas woman did what more and more people were considering: she had a friend in another state send her the pills she needed to end her pregnancy. She took the pills, went to bed early, and described the experience as “calm” and “peaceful”.
“If people can give birth in birthing centers or at home, why shouldn’t people be able to have an abortion in their own four walls?” Said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was concerned about legal reprisals as Texas is concerned joins several other states to ban the delivery of abortion drugs by mail. “It’s a matter of comfort.”
The COVID-19 pandemic and near-ban abortion in Texas have increased interest in abortion medication by mail. But since legality is in doubt in several states, some people looking to circumvent restrictions may not see it as worth the risk. The matter gains new urgency as the Supreme Court hears arguments next month about Mississippi’s attempt to undermine Roe v Wade’s decision to guarantee the right to abortion.
Some abortion law advocates fear that whatever state officials and anti-abortion groups promise, people who terminate their pregnancies at home will be prosecuted.
“We don’t think people are doing anything wrong ordering medication through an online site,” said Elisa Wells, co-founder and co-director of Plan C, which provides information on medical abortion. “I mean, this is how men get Viagra. You order it online and nobody talks about it asking if it’s illegal? ”
Drug abortions have grown in popularity since regulators approved them two decades ago and now account for about 40% of abortions in the United States. Shipping the drug can cost as little as $ 110, compared to at least $ 300 for a surgical abortion.
However, people seeking abortion pills often have to go through various state laws, including prohibitions on dispensing the medication and telemedicine consultations to discuss the medication with a health care provider. And until Democrat Joe Biden became president, US government policy banned mail delivery nationwide.
“We just didn’t want women taking these drugs and having no protection, guidance, or advice,” said Republican Senator Julie Daniels, a Republican who is a major sponsor of her state’s law that bans the mailing of abortion drugs. which is on hold amid a legal challenge.
Plan C had around 135,000 hits on its website in September, about nine times as many as before the Texas law banning abortions after just six weeks of pregnancy went into effect on September 1, Wells said.
Aid Access, which helps women get abortion pills and pays the costs for those who can’t afford them, says it hasn’t been able to provide any data from the past few months. According to a study by the University of Texas, the number of people seeking abortion pills in the US rose 27% as states put restrictions in place at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The biggest surge was in Texas, which had limited access to clinics and said there was a need to control the spread of the coronavirus.
Aid Access has a Europe-based doctor, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, who writes prescriptions only to doctors in 32 states. The pills are sent from India.
“I don’t think government regulation will stop Dr. Gompert from doing what she does,” said Christie Pitney, a California midwife who oversees aid access for that state and Massachusetts.
In fact, Aid Access defied a 2019 order by the Food and Drug Administration to stop selling drugs in the United States.
The divide between Democratic-minded and Republican-minded states is wide in the St. Louis area. On the Illinois side, Planned Parenthood offers telemedical counseling and prescriptions by mail. However, Missouri bans telemedicine and requires a pre-abortion pelvic exam, which providers consider unnecessary and invasive.
“In Missouri, we don’t offer drug abortion due to government requirements,” said Dr. Colleen McNicholas, regional subsidiary’s chief medical officer.
Anti-abortionists don’t expect the FDA’s restriction on abortion drugs to be reintroduced under Biden. GOP lawmakers in Arkansas, Arizona, Montana, and Oklahoma were already working on new laws to ban mail delivery when the FDA acted. The Texas shipping ban goes into effect December 2nd. The GOP government of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, issued an executive order in September.
Even some anti-abortionists believe it will be difficult for states to take action against vendors and suppliers outside their borders, especially outside of the United States
“Of course, it would be a lot easier if we had the federal government,” said John Seago, legislative director of Texas Right to Life. “There is still no solution as to how we will approach this type of next frontier of struggle.”
Still, Seago says harsh sentences give prosecutors an incentive to prosecute violations. For example, Montana law mandates a 20-year jail sentence, a $ 50,000 fine, or both for anyone who mails pills to a citizen.
Pregnant women seek telemedical advice and abortion pills in the mail because they don’t want to or can’t travel or can’t arrange time off or childcare, said proponents of abortion law.
“Just because someone doesn’t have access to an abortion doesn’t mean they suddenly want to have a pregnancy that wasn’t originally wanted, does it?” Meera Shah, chief medical officer of the Planned Parenthood subsidiary outside of New York City, which also performs abortions in Indiana.
A person in Ohio who identifies as non-binary said she used a herbal remedy in 2016 to manage an abortion alone in her college dorm room before Aid Access launched its website and told her roommate that she had the stomach flu. They said they didn’t have a car and didn’t know they could get financial help and called the Aid Access model “fantastic”.
“Any way to help pregnant people facilitate their own abortions and have that experience in the way that is most suitable for them is a great way to restore physical autonomy to a wider range of patients,” they said, speaking below on condition of anonymity because they feared harassment from anti-abortion protesters.
The new laws in Montana, Oklahoma, and Texas state that people cannot face criminal penalties for drug abortions. But these provisions – and the assurances of anti-abortionists that their goal is not to prosecute people who have terminated pregnancies – do not comfort some abortion law advocates.
They say that since 2000, about two dozen women have been prosecuted for self-administered abortions. An Indiana woman convicted of 20 years in prison for a self-inflicted abortion in 2015 spent more than a year behind bars before her conviction was overturned.
Some abortion rights advocates said prosecutors can also bring child endangerment or manslaughter charges against those who have had abortions – or who have had miscarriages that authorities consider suspicious. They fear that the poor and colored are particularly at risk.
“You can’t get medication where you are, so you can buy pills from informal networks or online sites,” said Melissa Grant, chief operating officer of carafem, which operates clinics in four states and offers abortion drugs in nine states. “But that’s riskier in this country than actually taking the medication.”
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Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna
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