A national pro-life group is challenging a recent Washington Post story for claiming that abortion drugs can be mailed legally to women in pro-life states that restrict abortion.
“Mailing abortion pills into pro-life states is not legal, no matter how the Democrats and their media cheerleaders want it to be,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser responded in a press release.
The release linked to letters signed by a coalition of 20 attorneys general informing CVS and Walgreens about the law regarding the distribution of abortion pills by mail. In addition to various state laws, federal law “expressly prohibits using the mail to send or receive any drug that will ‘be used or applied for producing abortion,'” the attorneys general wrote in February.
Their letters came after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the mailing of abortion pills in 2021 ahead of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973. The following year, the U.S. Department of Justice advised that the U.S. Postal Service could deliver the drugs by mail if the sender does not intend for them to be used unlawfully.
According to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of SBA Pro-Life America, 19 states prohibit abortion by mail and another three have laws, dependent on legal action, to do the same.
Dangers of the abortion pill
In her remarks, Dannnfelser also emphasized the dangers of abortion by pill.
“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,” she cautioned.
The FDA first approved mifepristone, which is paired with another drug called misoprostol, for earlier abortions in 2000. Permitted for use up to 10 weeks of gestation, this type of abortion is also known as the abortion pill, chemical abortion, medication abortion or telemedicine abortion.
Today, it accounts for more than half of all U.S. abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive research organization once associated with Planned Parenthood.
“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,” Dannenfelser added, referring to a pregnancy where an embryo implants outside the uterus or womb, usually in one of the fallopian tubes.
Several life-affirming obstetrician-gynecologists have also warned that women are not fully informed about abortion by pill, from how it works to the risks associated with it.
The Washington Post story referred to abortion drugs as “medication,” using terminology that SBA Pro-Life America condemned.
“Abortion is not health care. It doesn’t treat any disease. Its object is to produce a dead baby,” Vice President of Communications E.V. Osment told Our Sunday Visitor before citing a poll from April. “When Americans learn the FDA manipulated the approval process by calling pregnancy a ‘life-threatening illness’ in order to fast-track the abortion pill, the majority of them say the FDA is untrustworthy.”
The Washington Post story
The Washington Post story, “Blue-state doctors launch abortion pill pipeline into states with bans,” appeared online July 19 and in print July 21. The piece focused on an international abortion pill supplier that supports the shipment of thousands of abortion pills into pro-life states that restrict abortion.
“A new procedure adopted in mid-June by one of the largest abortion pill suppliers, Europe-based Aid Access, allows U.S. medical professionals in certain Democratic-led states that have passed abortion ‘shield’ laws to prescribe and mail pills directly to patients in antiabortion states,” reporter Caroline Kitchener wrote.
New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Vermont and Colorado enforce new laws that protect abortion providers in those states who mail abortion pills to women in pro-life states, she added.
The word “legal” appeared while, at the same time, the piece anticipated a court battle.
“The result is a new pipeline of legally prescribed abortion pills flowing into states with abortion bans,” the piece read. At another point, Kitchener wrote that a doctor in New York now “can legally mail” abortion pills to women in pro-life states herself.
