The end goal has always been a complete national ban on abortion. The “return it to the states” nonsense is a dodge to make you think it won’t be that bad and the people claiming it’s about a national ban are just fearmongering. The actions and words of the forced-birth fanatics make it clear what is really happening.
Two top antiabortion groups have crafted and successfully lobbied for state legislation to ban or further restrict the predominant way pregnancies are ended in the United States — via drugs taken at home, often facilitated by a network of abortion rights groups.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, 14 states now ban or partially ban the use of those drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, which are used in more than half of all abortions.
But the drugs remain widely available, with multiple groups working to help provide them even to women in states with abortion bans. Students for Life of America and National Right to Life Committee, which have played leading roles in crafting antiabortion laws, hope to change that with new legislation.
The groups are pursuing a variety of tactics, from bills that would ban the abortion-inducing drugs altogether to others that would allow family members to sue medication providers or attempt to shut down the nonprofit groups that help women obtain and safely use the drugs.
Their strategy reflects the reality that abortion access today looks vastly different from that of the pre-Roe world, one without easy access to abortion medications from out-of-state or overseas pharmacies.
[…]
Students for Life is taking a different tack in efforts to limit or outlaw medication abortion — crafting and backing bills that restrict access to the drugs themselves.
Among the seven bills the group has successfully lobbied to pass, each requires women to see a physician in person to receive the medications rather than receiving them through the mail. The mandates vary from state-to-state, but most require a physical examination, a test to determine the blood type of the baby, an ultrasound to determine the stage of the pregnancy, a disclosure of safety risks and a follow-up examination after the procedure. In many of the states, the medications could only be used in a limited set of circumstances, like in Oklahoma where its use is restricted to ending early pregnancies that resulted from rape or incest — or if the woman’s life is in danger.
Telehealth appointments for the procedure are also prohibited under the bills.
In some cases, doctors are required to tell their patients that they can potentially reverse the effects of mifepristone and stop the abortion process — something that the American Medication Association has said is “a claim wholly unsupported by the best, most reliable scientific evidence.”
“So many states in the abortion arena have been playing with misinformation like this, relying on the antiabortion movement instead of medical professionals and what the science shows,” said Wendy E. Parmet, co-director of Northeastern University’s Center for Health Policy & Law. “Some states have required physicians say it causes breast cancer — which is also false.”
The ultimate goal of Students for Life is to block access to drugs entirely. The group is seeking criminal sanctions for the physicians and organizations that “manufacture, distribute, prescribe, dispense, sell or transfer” the drugs in the state.
If passed, the laws would be most effective in blocking prescriptions made by doctors in states where abortion is still legal — typically through telehealth appointments — to patients who reside in states where medication abortions are banned in all circumstances.
Experts say it is unlikely that law enforcement would be allowed to enter a state to arrest a doctor where they have no jurisdiction. However, state medical boards could penalize doctors — including revocation of their medical licenses — if they determined they are not licensed to practice medicine with someone who resides outside their state.
“It’s not as bad as going to prison, but it’s certainly something that no doctors want to have to do — be in a position where they are having to defend their license,” said Hearn, McCormack’s attorney, who is also a physician.
I’ve blogged about this in various forms before, and it’s important to keep in mind that this is where the forced birth fanatics want to go, and will go if they’re not stopped. Enforcing these kinds of laws will be extremely intrusive, wherever the exist. I have meant that in the past to mean that law enforcement will need to get all kinds of access to your mail, your phone logs, your browsing history, and so on, but there’s another way in which having such laws on the books will curtail everyone’s privacy. You will have to be extremely careful about what you say to whom, and you won’t be able to trust anyone you don’t know. That includes medical professionals and anyone who works for or with them.
If you are looking to end your own pregnancy, your own doctor may be your downfall.
Between 2000 and 2020, law enforcement in 26 states investigated or arrested at least 61 people for allegedly aborting their own pregnancy or helping someone else do so, according to a report released earlier this week by the legal advocacy group group If/When/How. And in 45 percent of those cases, it was healthcare providers or social workers who tipped off police.
In another 26 percent of the cases, people “entrusted with information”—like partners, parents, and friends—reported their ostensible loved one to police.
“The research really clearly confirms that the biggest threat to the privacy of abortion seekers is other people,” said Laura Huss, senior researcher for If/When/How. “That breakdown of trust and ethics and the patient-doctor relationship is really alarming.”
The report, which examined the criminalization of self-managed abortions while Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land, offers a stunning glimpse at how people who get abortions in this post-Roe era may be targeted and threatened by law enforcement. Although abortion opponents often insist that they do not want to punish pregnant people for abortions, abortion rights supporters have long pointed out that pregnant people have already faced criminal consequences—and there’s no way to ensure they’ll be kept out of an anti-abortion dragnet.
Gotta say, as a child of the 70s and 80s, all this gives me serious Soviet Union vibes. I’m old enough to remember when Republicans and conservatives thought that was a bad thing.