A report from NPR is giving an inside look at the business of online abortion pill sales — and it proves how dangerous the online abortion market is.
NPR visited the hub of MAP, a Massachusetts telehealth abortion business outside of Boston that sends abortion pills across the country, even to women who live in pro-life states. “The packages, no bigger than a hardcover book, line the walls of the nondescript office near Boston. It’s not an Etsy retailer or a Poshmark seller or, as the nearby post office workers believe, a thriving jewelry business,” reports NPR. But inside these “jewelry” boxes are the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol.
Angel Foster, who leads operations at MAP, calls online abortion sales “modern abortion care.” Pregnant women who want an abortion simply fill out an online form, talk with an abortionist via email or text, and then, once approved, receive the abortion pills in the mail within the week.
Foster’s list of patients for the day of the NPR visit includes about two dozen women from Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. Though NPR says “most” of these women are “around six weeks” pregnant, there appears to be no solid proof of this as no exam is carried out by MAP’s abortionists. Still, four of them have signed off on the abortion pill for these out-of-state women. They will do this for 500 women each month, each assumed to be no more than 10 weeks pregnant, and many paying as little as $5. MAP receives funding from abortion funds, individual donations, and philanthropic gifts. Foster has plans to apply for grants and state funding as well.
Five states — Massachusetts, New York, Washington, Vermont, and Colorado — have shield laws protecting abortionists who carry out abortions on women from other states through telehealth, like MAP does. This is all possible because the Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge to the expanded use of the abortion drug mifepristone in June, writing that the doctors who filed the suit against the FDA lacked standing.
The doctors had asked the Court to reinstate the FDA’s safety standards on mifepristone that had been in effect for over 15 years but were removed by Biden’s FDA during the pandemic. The lawsuit challenged the FDA’s expansion of abortion pill access to mifepristone, which included the removal of the required in-person visits to obtain the drug and the approval of the dispensing of abortion drugs virtually, by mail, or at the pharmacy. The court’s June 2024 decision allowed abortion pills to continue being sent through the mail.
However, the decision left open the possibility for other court challenges to be brought by plaintiffs with standing.
A profitable, dangerous, hands-off abortion business
NPR shares the story of one woman’s process of getting the abortion pill through MAP. It wrote, “[A new note is] from a woman in Alabama who is six weeks pregnant and filled out her form around lunchtime. Within an hour, a MAP doctor had reviewed her case and prescribed her the medication. She paid the fee as soon as she was approved. All in all, the whole process took about three hours. Foster is able to pack up those pills and add them to the batch headed to the post office (emphasis added).”
NPR noted that by 3 p.m., the Alabama woman’s abortion pills package was scanned by the Postal Service worker and was expected to arrive by the end of the week. No counseling, no exam required, and no knowledge if the woman was dealing with any health factors that might contribute to an increased risk of complications.
The business of telehealth abortions is dangerous for women, and the FDA’s previous safety regulations were in place in order to protect women from the known risks. Studies have shown the abortion pill to be four times more dangerous than a first-trimester surgical abortion — and that research took place before telehealth abortions were introduced. Though frequently touted as “safer than Tylenol,” the abortion pill actually puts women at risk of many complications including severe cramping, heavy bleeding, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and headaches. Certain risk factors increase the chances of complications.
Under the “no-test” protocol used by MAP, there is no way to properly assess a woman’s health or pregnancy. Without an exam, doctors do not know how far along a woman is, if she is Rh negative (which, if unaddressed, could affect future pregnancies) or if she is experiencing an ectopic pregnancy. Taking the abortion pill after 10 weeks increases the risk of failed abortion, and taking it with an ectopic pregnancy adds to the dangers already associated with the abortion pill, and can lead to death. Taking the abortion pill when Rh-negative can lead to difficulty carrying babies in the future, including the loss of future preborn children. The FDA’s own 2023 mifepristone label acknowledges that 2.9 to 4.6 percent of women who take abortion drugs end up in the emergency room. In addition, six percent (6%) of women who took the abortion pill as part of a study required emergency care.
The doctors behind the lawsuit said:
On that label, FDA estimates that 2.9 to 4.6 percent of women will visit the emergency room after taking mifepristone… And FDA’s medication guide acknowledges that as many as 7 percent of women will need surgery after taking mifepristone ‘to stop bleeding’ or to complete the abortion…
The label also warns that a prescriber must ‘[e]xclude [ectopic pregnancy] before treatment,’…’because some of the expected symptoms experienced with a medical abortion (abdominal pain, uterine bleeding) may be similar to those of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.’
MAP has no way of knowing if it is sending the abortion pill to a woman who is experiencing an ectopic pregnancy. But telehealth abortionists may be hundreds of miles away from women experiencing abortion pill-related complications. When women report to ERs after taking the abortion pill, it will be those ER doctors who are tasked with caring for women in the aftermath of the injuries telehealth abortionists have caused. And sometimes, these women will have been coached by abortionists to lie and tell ER doctors they are experiencing complications from natural miscarriage, potentially changing the course of their treatment.
The elite is funding the abortions of the poor
NPR also stated that of the women who contact MAP for the abortion pill, there are many who can’t afford to pay for the drugs, which cost $250. It’s because of this that MAP offers a sliding scale so that patients can pay as little as $5 for the abortion pill regimen. MAP is funded through abortion funds, individual donations, and philanthropic gifts — a sign that the elite are paying for the abortions of disadvantaged women who are deprived of counseling and a proper medical exam.
One woman wrote on her online form, “I really need an abortion pill. My state has banned it. My funds are really low. I’m a single mom with a kid under two. I can’t afford a baby. I can’t even afford this abortion.”
Rather than raise money to help this woman keep her baby, MAP will pay for her abortion with money from donors earmarked to pay to kill the preborn children of disadvantaged women. Women should be helped out of the situations that are pushing them towards abortion under the false idea that it is their ‘only’ option, but the abortion industry financially profits off of the killing of their children.
Another woman wrote, “I just wanted to say thank you so much. I was terrified of this process. It goes against everything I believe in. I’m just not in a place where I can have a child. Thank you for making the pills easily accessible to me (emphasis added).” This ignores the reasons that women are seeking telehealth abortions and the fact that many of them don’t want the abortion but are driven by fear and may suffer from abortion trauma as a result.
Foster said she also wants to apply for grants and state funding for MAP, which would allow babies of disadvantaged women to be targeted for death, paid for by the government under the guise of helping women. Polling has consistently found that most Americans do not support taxpayer-funded abortion.
