An unregulated abortion pipeline has replaced the concept of “safe abortion,” with some abortion pills even being stored on a “ping-pong table” and shipped from a makeshift home office in someone’s basement.
According to Washington Post. the group Aid Access has recruited a number of actors for their abortion pipeline and has allegedly shipped at least “3,500 doses” of these abortion drugs to “antiabortion states since mid-June.” The group, founded by Dutch physician Rebecca Gomperts, is hiding behind so-called ‘shield laws‘ which protect abortion providers from criminal charges they would otherwise face when they violate another state’s laws.
Aid Access recently told the Washington Post that the organization has “revamped its operation to let doctors in Democratic-led states with ‘shield laws’ … mail abortion pills to states where the medication is banned.”
“Previously, Aid Access allowed only Europe-based doctors to prescribe abortion pills to women in states where abortion is restricted and then shipped those pills internationally, leaving patients to wait weeks. The telemedicine shield laws, enacted over the past year in New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Vermont and Colorado, explicitly protect abortion providers who mail pills to restricted states from inside their borders,” the Washington Post noted.
A release recently published by Aid Access announced plans to use “USA abortion providers” now “registered in states that have adopted laws to protect them against legal action from the states where abortion has been banned, the so called shield law states” to illegally ship the deadly drugs into other states.
“Since June 18th, more than 15,000 people from all US states requested abortion services from Aid Access. And more than 3500 people living in states where abortion is banned, received a medical abortion treatment from US providers living in the shield law states. The cost of the service is 150 US dollars with a sliding scale for those who cannot afford to pay,” Aid Access claimed.
Referring to this abortion pipeline scheme as a “new pipeline of legally prescribed abortion pills flowing into states with abortion bans,” the Washington Post claimed, “In less than a month, seven U.S.-based providers affiliated with Aid Access… have mailed 3,500 doses of abortion pills to people in antiabortion states… putting just this small group alone on track to help facilitate at least 42,000 abortions in restricted states over the next year. If more doctors and nurses sign up, as current providers hope they will, the numbers could climb far higher.”
Doctor operates from makeshift office set up in the basement of home
In the Washington Post report from July 19, journalist Caroline Kitchener openly acknowledged that this kind of unregulated abortion pipeline scheme would “circumvent abortion laws.”
Still, the paper was more than willing to hide the identity of an abortion pipeline “doctor” Kitchener claimed worked from a “makeshift office set up in the basement of her home” in New York, allegedly “next to her grown children’s old bunk beds” with her “her family’s ping-pong table covered with abortion pills.”
“Everything I’m doing is completely legal,” the previously mentioned anonymous Hudson Valley abortionist told the Washington Post. “Texas might say I’m breaking their laws, but I don’t live in Texas,” she added.
“The Hudson Valley doctor said she’s not worried about her own legal risk. When she arrives at the post office with dozens of new packages every afternoon, she said, no one ever asks any questions,” reported Kitchener. “Nobody has any idea. I could be doing so many different mailer businesses from home. It could be beaded necklaces. It could be soaps. It could be candy.”
But candy doesn’t usually kill the intended target.
Aid Access abortion pill pipeline Images Washington Post 2 (Images: Washington Post)
Abortion Pipeline Grows
Linda Prine, an Aid Access provider and co-founder of the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline has also vowed to “mail pills,” as has Jillian Barovick, a midwife and co-founder of Juniper Midwifery.
“Right now, each of the Aid Access providers is sending approximately 50 packages a day,” claimed Prine according to The Guardian, which went on to report that “Prine said… They are prepared to scale, both in terms of infrastructure and in terms of the legal challenges their actions could invite.”
Lauren Jacobson, a nurse practitioner who operates out of Massachusetts where a shield law has already passed, is aware she could one day be prosecuted “for murder” in conservative Texas, which is why she claimed she no longer travels to protective states.
“At some point, someone will be testing it in court,” said Jacobson, according to a report by Barrons.com.
She acknowledged to the Post that an abortion pipeline across states could result in some abortion clients facing abortion pill complications unable to navigate emergency assistance, something the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s safety regulations (REMS) requires of prescribers.
Julie F. Kay, legal director of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine Access, told the Post that the unregulated abortion pipeline is using shield laws to “define the landscape.”
“One state can extradite if a person commits the crime in the state, then flees,” Kay said. “But no one is fleeing here. You are just sitting in your office in New York.”
But, attorney Jonathan F. Mitchell — whom the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) dubbed “principal architect of the private-enforcement provision” of the Texas Heartbeat law — told Live Action News, “Anyone who ships abortion pills into Texas can be charged with murder if the pills are used there.”
“They can also be prosecuted under the federal Comstock Act, which criminalizes the shipment of abortion pills. The Biden Administration won’t bring charges but the next Republican administration might, and the statute of limitations is five years,” Mitchell claimed.
