Blue State Doctors Are Using ‘Shield Laws’ To Flood The Country With Abortion Pills
Mia Hernandez on July 21, 2023
A Europe-based organization that ships chemical abortion pills to the U.S. is allowing American medical professionals in certain blue states to mail the drugs directly to patients in localities where abortion is restricted, thanks to recent legal maneuvering from Democrats, according to The Washington Post.
Aid Access, a major abortion pill vendor, relaxed its policies in June after several blue states enacted “shield laws” protecting medical providers from out-of-state legal penalties for offering telemedicine services that are legal in their own states, according to the Post. The Food and Drug Administration has been relaxing regulations on the abortion pill since 2020, and in January allowed pharmacies to sell the drug rather than requiring medical professionals to administer it directly.
“Everything I’m doing is completely legal,” one doctor who is mailing abortion pills to red states told the Post. “Texas might say I’m breaking their laws, but I don’t live in Texas.”
Aid Access previously only allowed Europe-based providers to mail abortion pills to Americans in states with abortion restrictions, according to the Post. Under its updated policy, seven U.S.-based providers have mailed 3,500 chemical abortion doses to states with restrictions, and the group plans to facilitate about 42,000 more abortions in those states over the next year.
Massachusetts, Washington, Vermont, Colorado and New York have all passed laws protecting medical providers who mail abortion pills to individuals from within their state borders, according to the Post, though it remains unclear the extent to which these laws will protect doctors from penalties in the red states they ship pills to. Some attorneys have warned that doctors may have to avoid entering the states they ship pills into, and that red states could potentially extradite offending doctors.
Aid Access has been mailing abortion pills to the U.S. since before the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Buying abortion pills through the organization costs around $150, while surgical abortions typically cost between $500 and $800, the Post reported.
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