Another piece of crap from the special session.
A new law limiting the use of abortion-inducing medication in Texas goes into effect Thursday.
The law makes it a felony to provide the medication after seven weeks of pregnancy, putting Texas at odds with federal regulations. It also makes it a crime to send the medication through the mail.
Medical abortion is the most common way women in Texas terminate their pregnancies, according to state data.
These new restrictions reflect a growing concern among abortion opponents about the rise of “self-managed” abortions, in which pregnant people obtain the medications from out-of-state or international providers, with or without a prescription.
There’s evidence that more women turn to self-managed abortions when legal abortion is restricted. Texans have been unable to access abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy since Sept. 1, when a controversial new ban went into effect.
“Texas is looking at the ways that people are navigating around restrictions and trying to essentially make that as unsafe and as frightening for people as possible in order to deter them,” said Farah Diaz-Tello, senior legal counsel for If/When/How, a reproductive justice legal group.
Diaz-Tello and other advocates worry that the new criminal penalties may make pregnant Texans fearful of seeking medical care after a self-managed abortion.
[…]
Texas’ new law also specifies that no one may provide abortion medication “by courier, delivery or mail service.”
Texas already required the medication to be provided by a physician in person. But this specific clause addresses a growing concern among abortion opponents that patients are trying to circumvent the required doctor visit by getting the drugs by mail, especially with the state’s new restrictions that bans abortions after around six weeks.
Called a “self-managed abortion,” this usually entails ordering abortion-inducing drugs online, with or without a prescription, from doctors, pharmacies and other providers out of state or overseas.
The FDA has attempted to crack down on some providers, including AidAccess, a group founded in 2018 by Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, a European doctor. AidAccess provides abortion-inducing medications to women in areas that have restricted access to the procedure.
Gomperts has said she will continue prescribing to patients in Texas. She told CBS News in September that she believes she is on solid legal ground since it is legal to prescribe this medication where she is based.
See here for the backgroun; I didn’t blog it at the time for whatever the reason. A bit more than half of all abortions in Texas are medical abortions, which the FDA says are safe up to ten weeks. I suspect Dr. Gomperts and others like her if they exist will get more business now, despite the prohibition on sending the medication via mail. It’s really a matter of enforcement, and it’s not clear to me how Texas will be able to do that. That FDA action against her was from 2019, by the way. It would be nice for the current FDA to maybe revisit that now. I don’t have anything positive to end with. This is where we are right now.
I have girl friends who are having a really hard time accessing their long-term birth control of choice (things like Nuvaring especially) because insurers are deciding to not offer these medications in light of these new regulations. Forced birth from every direction.