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Abortions by mail are now available in the United States. As a result, women can easily evade anti-abortion laws and court with mail-order abortions.
A group called Aid Access is shipping pills that end pregnancies to American women for $95, The Atlantic reports. So, abortions by mail are now a reality in America.
Moreover, Aid Access provides free abortions by mail to women who cannot afford $95. The abortions by mail consist of three pills that will terminate 97% of pregnancies within the first trimester. Yet, the mail-order abortions will be less effective after 90 days.
How Abortions By Mail Work
Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch physician who heads Aid Access and Women on Web, is offering the abortions by mail.
Notably, Women on Web has been shipping abortion pills for years. However, it could not ship abortion pills to America until now.
To get a mail-order abortion, all a woman has to do is contact Gomperts through Aid Access. Gomperts gets the pills by filling prescriptions with pharmacies in India. Then, the pharmacy ships the pills to American women.
The abortion by mail kits come with pills and instructions for use. Nevertheless, Dr. Daniel Grossman claims the pills are not safe.
Grossman estimates three percent of women suffer serious complications from mail-order abortion pills. Significantly, Grossman is a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California San Francisco. UC San Francisco is one of America’s top medical schools.
Are Abortions By Mail Legal?
Gomperts thinks she can get around American laws because she lives in the Netherlands. In particular, Gomperts is mailing two pills, mifepristone and misoprostol, to women.
“Mifepristone for termination of pregnancy is not legally available over the Internet,” the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) states. At the present time, the FDA requires a doctor to administer abortion pills at a hospital or clinic.
Furthermore, it is illegal for pharmacies to sell mifepristone and misoprostol for abortions in the United States. Consequently, abortions by mail are unlawful in America.
Can Uncle Sam Stop Abortions By Mail?
Stopping abortions by mail could be hard because Gomperts is operating outside the United States.
For example, U.S. authorities will have to convince Dutch or European Union (EU) authorities to extradite Gomperts to America to prosecute her. Additionally, the Justice Department will need to convince Indian authorities to shut down the pharmacies that are shipping the pills.
Moreover, Dutch, Indian, and EU authorities will face strong political pressure to allow abortions by mail. For this reason, there may not be any legal way to stop mail-order abortions.
There is also no way to check every package mailed to an American address from overseas for abortion pills. Meanwhile, locking Aid Access’s website could be impossible because of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.
Under these circumstances, the number of abortions in America could increase even with Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Supreme Court. Protecting life will be far harder because of abortions by mail.
