Allowing abortion pill prescriptions to be shipped without a patient’s name will contribute to safety risks.
T he Clinton-era slogan for the pro-abortion movement was that the practice should be “safe, legal, and rare.” But nowadays, abortion advocates don’t want it to be rare, and they aren’t exactly married to safety. To circumvent pro-life states’ laws, abortion advocates are cutting corners, with women’s health sacrificed at the altar of access. Their latest effort: allowing mifepristone, the abortion pill, to be shipped without a patient’s name on the prescription.
The New York Times has reported on a wave of new abortion “shield laws” coming to blue states, dubbing New York’s version “Shield Law 2.0.” Beyond the 1.0 versions, which prohibited state law enforcement and judicial systems from cooperating with pro-life states enforcing laws against abortion, the new wave of shield laws is focused on insulating doctors and others involved in abortion from scrutiny and identification for interstate mifepristone shipments.
The new legislation allows prescriptions of abortion pills to be shipped without identifying information: no prescriber name, no information about the pharmacist or pharmacy. Several states, including New York, have already adopted such laws to anonymize the prescribing physician. After a last-minute amendment to include this language, the California Legislature passed AB 260 last week, at the very end of the year’s legislative session. But California is going beyond New York by eliminating the requirement to list the distributing pharmacy or even the patient’s name on mifepristone prescriptions. This proposal could have a nationwide effect, as many of the persons and pharmacies prescribing and shipping abortion pills into abortion-restricting states are located in California, and because of how California influences other blue states’ abortion legislation.
Taking the patient’s name off a prescription obviously leads to increased safety risks. There is a reason why the FDA requires the patient’s name on the bottle for controlled substances, and why it’s standard practice to put a patient’s name on prescription drugs even when they aren’t controlled substances: You don’t want to give the wrong drug to the wrong person. Removing accountability for the prescribing physicians and distributing pharmacy could also increase safety risks, as doctors with less liability risk could become more reckless in prescribing abortion pills to women later in pregnancy with more risk of complications.
While Louisiana is the only state to give mifepristone the designation of a “controlled substance,” the abortion pill is nonetheless a prescription drug with a serious impact: It kills a baby growing in the womb, ending a pregnancy. It cuts off a pregnant woman’s supply of progesterone, leading to the embryo or fetus detaching from the uterine wall. This cuts the baby off from nutrition and oxygen and leads to his or her death. A second drug, misoprostol, is used to induce labor and expel the baby from the woman’s body.
As mifepristone has grown in popularity, cases of abortion pills being given to unwilling and unknowing women have multiplied. This June, a Texas man was charged with capital murder for putting mifepristone into his girlfriend’s drink. The legal fight between Louisiana and New York to challenge New York’s abortion shield law was prompted by a case where a Louisiana mother gave her minor daughter mifepristone against the daughter’s will. Melanie Israel, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, has chronicled 17 reported stories of women being given the abortion pill against their will in clandestine or coercive ways. Without a patient’s name on a label, the risk for women to accidentally receive or deceptively be given the abortion pill will surely increase.
“Access” has long since passed “safe, legal, and rare” as the dominant buzzword for all abortion advocacy. By the new mantra, any barrier that impedes a woman’s ability to have an abortion must be knocked down or circumvented: money, distance from a clinic, lack of insurance coverage, the ethical commitments of physicians or institutions, or (in this case) a fear of civil or criminal liability for violating state laws.
Invariably, this desire to eliminate barriers leads to a weakening of health safeguards for women. Eliminating the prescribing information on mifepristone shipments is just the latest example. When there was a dearth of doctors to perform surgical abortions, states like California let nurse practitioners or even physician assistants perform them. When there still aren’t enough providers for surgical abortion, the industry turned to mifepristone, even though it’s less safe. As brick-and-mortar abortion clinics closed, the Biden administration allowed mifepristone to be prescribed through telemedicine and shipped through the mail, without any personal interaction with a doctor, even though it’s less safe. Again and again, access trumps safety.
The growing clashes around mifepristone continue to demand a federal response. The FDA must restore health and safety restrictions on the abortion pill to end telemedicine prescriptions and shipping mifepristone through the mail, and should explore mechanisms to counteract the new shield laws’ removal of prescribing information. Enforcement of the Comstock Act or other federal action is necessary to stop the interstate and international flow of illegal abortion pills. The Supreme Court must resolve the interstate and constitutional tension created by pro-abortion states that allow doctors and activists to undermine pro-life states’ laws. If these issues aren’t addressed, mifepristone will continue to be the chief driver of the alarming, increasing number of American abortions.