The Post-Roe Battleground for Abortion Pills Will Be Your Mailbox

The Supreme Court will return authority to the people and their elected representatives if it overturns the right to abortion in the United States, according to a leaked legal opinion. Legal experts warn that it's a recipe for chaos since pills cross state lines via the US Mail.

It has already been a target for red-state legislatures when it comes to medication abortion. It accounts for more than half of the abortions in the US, and so anti-abortion activists think it's an end run around restrictions on surgical abortions. During the Pandemic, the FDA allowed women who wanted to make their own appointments to do so, rather than having to go to the doctor's office. The policy was made permanent in December.

The situation will change if the case is nullified. 26 states have indicated that they will either ban abortion entirely or restrict it to so early in the pregnancies that it becomes difficult to get the procedure. There are 13 states that have enacted laws that would ban or restrict things if the abortion law is overturned. Seven have banned the use of telehealth. Criminal penalties have been passed in Tennessee for providing abortion medication by mail.

It's devastating to lose access to abortion in half of the US. Legal scholars say worse could be on the way. In their zeal to prevent abortion, states may try to extend the reach of their laws outside of their borders, bringing them into conflict with other states and the federal government. The lower courts of the US were stocked with conservative judges during the Trump administration, which could result in even further restrictions on the availability of abortion pills nationwide.

According to Seema Mahopatra, a professor of health law at Southern Methodist University, Judge Alito suggested that leaving abortion to the states would make the issue simpler.

To be clear, we are talking about a few definitions. In a medication abortion, a two-drug regimen is approved by the FDA and the World Health Organization and is used to end a pregnant woman's life. Mifeprex has been available in the US since 2000. It has been available for almost 50 years to prevent stomach ulcers when taking certain types of painkillers and also to help with the aftermath of miscarriages. Both drugs are only available in the US, but how they can be obtained has changed.