A national pro-life group is shaming Democrats for encouraging abortionists to mail dangerous abortion-inducing drugs into pro-life states after The Washington Post touted such actions are legal.
“Mailing abortion pills into pro-life states is not legal, no matter how the Democrats and their media cheerleaders want it to be,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony (SBA) Pro-Life America, in a statement sent to The Star News Network. “And the strong majority of Americans agree it is not safe.”
“What women aren’t told about the risks of DIY abortion pills can seriously harm them, including complications like hemorrhage, infection, need for surgery or even death,” the pro-life leader said.
The group referenced an article published Wednesday at The Post with the headline: “Blue-state doctors launch abortion pill pipeline into states with bans: At least 3,500 doses have been shipped to antiabortion states since mid-June, a process enabled by new shield laws.”
According to a press statement dated February 1, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey wrote to both CVS and Walgreens, “informing them that their announced plan to use the mail to distribute abortion pills is both unsafe and illegal”:
Federal law expressly prohibits using the mail to send or receive any drug that will “be used or applied for producing abortion”… the text could not be clearer: “every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion … shall not be conveyed in the mails.” And anyone who “knowingly takes any such thing from the mails for the purpose of circulating’ is guilty of a federal crime.”
As The Post reported, Europe-based Aid Access, one of the largest suppliers of abortion-inducing drugs, is now allowing abortion providers in anti-life states that have passed telehealth “shield” laws to prescribe and distribute the abortion drugs to women and girls seeking abortions in pro-life states.
Aid Access previously had only permitted European abortionists to prescribe the drugs and ship them abroad to pro-life states in America, a practice that meant the pills would arrive weeks later.
“Shield” laws in New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Vermont, and Colorado, now “explicitly protect abortion providers who mail pills to restricted states from inside their borders,” The Post reported, adding:
The result is a new pipeline of legally prescribed abortion pills flowing into states with abortion bans. In less than a month, seven U.S.-based providers affiliated with Aid Access … have mailed 3,500 doses of abortion pills to people in antiabortion states, according to Aid Access, putting just this small group alone on track to help facilitate at least 42,000 abortions in restricted states over the next year. If more doctors and nurses sign up, as current providers hope they will, the numbers could climb far higher.
“Everything I’m doing is completely legal,” an anonymous Hudson Valley, New York doctor told The Post. “Texas might say I’m breaking their laws, but I don’t live in Texas.”
Even The Post noted, however, that abortion lobby giants Planned Parenthood and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) have not publicly supported the move.
“Several Aid Access providers say the groups have expressed concern about backing the approach, worried that providers could put themselves at risk,” The Post reported.
“There absolutely is a world in which they could get in trouble for it,” former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell, who authored the Texas abortion ban, said. “Someone in Texas could do a sting operation and charge them with attempted murder.”
Katie Glenn Daniel, state policy director at SBA Pro-Life America, raised the issue of accountability if a woman or girl suffers complications from a DIY abortion.
“If Aid Access mails abortion pills to a woman who suffers complications & delayed care bc she can’t reach the doc, would NY bar her from a medical malpractice suit?” Daniel tweeted, in response to The Post’s article. “Dem approach is: ‘Your body, your DIY abortion, your complications, your crippling medical bills, your problem.'”
If Aid Access mails abortion pills to a woman who suffers complications & delayed care bc she can't reach the doc, would NY bar her from a medical malpractice suit? Dem approach is: "Your body, your DIY abortion, your complications, your crippling medical bills, your problem." https://t.co/hybtfKi3mv
— Katie Glenn Daniel (@KatieGlenn_) July 20, 2023
Dannenfelser further highlighted the potential dangers of abortion-inducing drugs when a woman or girl is left on her own to attempt her own abortion:
With no doctor in the room or even in the same state, there is no way to be sure how far along a woman’s pregnancy is, or screen for ectopic pregnancy that puts her at 30% greater risk of dying than if she had not undergone abortion. Biden and the Democrats show no concern for women’s safety or respect for the law and the will of the people. They are determined to impose their extreme abortion agenda at all costs, with no protections for women or children.
Anti-life activist group Aid Access, SBA Pro-Life America, adds, “has a long history of flouting U.S. law,” including a lawsuit in 2019 challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) enforcement of regulation of abortion drugs shipped from overseas.
“More than ever, we need a national defender of life and a pro-life administration who will enforce pro-life state protections to serve moms and save children and ultimately hold reckless sellers of dangerous abortion pills accountable,” Dannenfelser said.
– – –
Susan Berry, PhD is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
Photo “Abortion Pills” by Robin Marty. CC BY 2.0.
