Despite their states severely restricting abortion or restricting abortion from being performed through telemedicine, about 8,000 women per month were receiving abortion pills in the mail tardy last year from states with legal protections for prescribers, a novel survey found.
Tuesday’s release of the #WeCount report is the first time a number has been given on how often the medical system’s workaround is used. The research was conducted for the Society of Family Planning, which supports abortion rights.
The group found that by December 2023, providers in states with shelter-in-place orders were prescribing pills to about 6,000 women a month, in states that allow abortions at all stages of pregnancy or as soon as cardiac activity can be detected – about six weeks, often before women notice it – were forbidden they are pregnant. The prescriptions also went to about 2,000 women per month in states where local laws restrict prescribing abortion pills via telemedicine.
“People … use the various mechanisms to get the pills that are available,” said David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University. This “is not surprising given what we know throughout human history and around the world: people will find a way to terminate pregnancies they don’t want.”
Medication-induced abortions typically involve a combination of two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol. The rise of these pills, now used for most abortions in the U.S., is one reason the total number of abortions rose even after the Supreme Court ruled in 2022 Roe v the previous year.
After Roe was overturned, abortion bans went into effect in most Republican-controlled states. Fourteen states now ban its apply with a few exceptions, while three additional states ban its apply after about six weeks of pregnancy.
But many democratically controlled states took the opposite approach. They have passed laws designed to protect people in their states from investigations into abortion crimes by authorities in other states. As of tardy last year, five of those states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont and Washington — had such protections specifically covering prescribing abortion pills via telemedicine.
“If a Colorado provider provides telehealth care to a patient in Texas, Colorado will not participate in any criminal or civil lawsuits in Texas,” Cohen said. “Colorado says, ‘The care provided in our state was legal.’ It follows our laws because the provider was located in our state.’”
Wendy Stark, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, called the shield law there “a critical victory for abortion access in our state.”
James Bopp Jr., general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee, said that when abortions occur via telemedicine, the law should apply where the abortion occurs — not where the prescriber is located. This is the case with other laws, he said.
But unlike many other aspects of abortion policy, this issue has not yet been tested in court.
Bopp said the only way a shield law could be challenged in court would be if a prosecutor in a state had a ban on charging a foreign prescriber with performing an illegal abortion.
“It’s probably going to happen and we’re going to get a legal challenge,” Bopp said.
Researchers note that before shield laws took effect, people obtained abortion pills from sources outside the official health system, but it is not clear exactly how many.
Alison Norris, an epidemiologist at Ohio State University and lead researcher on the #WeCount report, said the group does not break down how many pills were delivered to each state with a ban “in order to maintain the highest level of protection for individuals receiving this care.” receive”. and providers who provide this care.”
Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, director of Aid Access, an abortion pill provider that works with U.S. providers, said more protective laws would make the health care system more resilient.
“They are extremely important because they make physicians and providers … feel safe and protected,” said Gomperts, whose organization figures were included in the #WeCount report. “I hope that in the end we will see that all states that do not ban abortion will pass protective laws.”
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Science and Educational Media Group of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
