Report: Outside Groups Send Abortion Pills to Pro-Life States

Outside pro-abortion groups are sending abortion pills to states with laws protecting unborn babies.

Despite abortion restrictions in states like Idaho and Texas, women are allegedly able to obtain abortion pills through the mail with the complicity of the U.S. Postal Service and the help of various pro-abortion organizations that benefit from shield laws in other states, reports from OPB and the Dallas Morning News reveal.

“The reality is that most Idahoans are getting access to abortion pills online, and many are managing their abortions safely at home,” said abortion activist Kimra Luna, speaking on behalf of Idaho Abortion Rights.

Luna added that Idaho Abortion Rights has allegedly provided abortion pills to 600 Idahoans in the last year, abortions which were not tracked by the Department of Health and Welfare. 

“We sometimes see claims that these abortion bans have been successful in reducing the numbers of abortions in this country, and we do not believe that,” said Elisa Wells, a public health researcher and co-founder of the nonprofit website Plan C, which details 25 websites that sell pills — organized by price and delivery time — and refers users to a network of domestic and international abortion groups, like Aid Access and Las Libres. 

In Texas, requests for abortion pills from Aid Access “nearly tripled in the three months following the enactment of the Texas Heartbeat Act, from 11 requests a day to almost 30,” a UT Austin study found. Nationally, Aid Access has allegedly seen a 160 percent increase in abortion pill requests, from 83 per day to 214 per day after the Dobbs decision. 

Aid Access, which relocated its operations from Europe to the U.S. this summer because of shield laws, is the only U.S.-based telehealth abortion pill provider currently working in Texas. Las Libres, based out of Mexico, sends generic abortion pills to volunteers in the U.S., according to the Morning News. 

Those within the online abortion pill market “fear” states passing “increasingly aggressive anti-abortion legislation could bring the system to a halt,” the report states.

President of the Idaho Family Policy Center Blaine Conzatti told OPB that the mutual aid societies are “treading on pretty thin ice by making available illegal abortion pills” in pro-life states, specifically Idaho. He added that states shielding abortionists and unlawful actors “would be negligent in their responsibilities under our reciprocal agreements with those states.” 

Conzatti noted that in Idaho, specifically, homicide laws and abortion laws give immunity to mothers who self-induce abortions. 

“There is no cause of action under any of those statutes that would allow a criminal prosecutor to bring a criminal action against such a mother,” he said.

“Going forward, I think we need to build a culture of life. And once we do that, we can come back to the question of to what extent mothers should be held liable when they induce abortions and end the lives of their pre-born babies,” Conzatti concluded.