(LifeSiteNews) — Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, the battle lines in the abortion wars have dramatically changed. The American map has been redrawn; in some states, abortion is restricted; in others, it is legal until birth. Abortion activists refer to those states where children in the womb receive some legal protection as “abortion deserts,” and the new key battle no longer centers around clinics, but abortion pills sent by mail.
With some 60 percent of abortions in America now being perpetrated via pills, activists have created a mail-order network to ship abortifacients to states where abortion is restricted or banned. Indeed, after Trump’s election, Democrats in states like New Jersey began to stockpile abortion pills in case the Trump administration should reverse course (Trump has thus far indicated his support for the legality of the abortion pill).
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A number of recent high-profile studies have drawn attention to the dangers of the abortion pill, and state divisions have deepened as abortion pills mailed from pro-abortion states to pro-life states have resulted in public disputes; New York Governor Kathy Hochul, for example, refused to cooperate with Louisiana in extraditing an abortionist who mailed pills which were then given to a teen without her consent, resulting in injury to the girl and the death of her wanted baby. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised to investigate the harms of the abortion pill.
In response, the mainstream press is ramping up their pro-pill propaganda. On June 9, the New York Times published a lengthy “human interest” story titled “A Day With One Abortion Pill Prescriber,” portraying the abortion activists as heroic defenders of human rights rather than as dangerous dispensers of death. The story features Debra Lynch of Delaware, a nurse practitioner who runs an abortion pill prescription service, and begins by describing her conversation with a woman in Alabama:
“It’s completely valid to be scared,” she said from her desk in a home office filled with plants and shelves of medication. “And that’s why we want you to call us, even if you’re calling just to say: ‘I’m scared. I need to hear somebody tell me that what’s going on right now is normal, and it’s OK.’”
During the 25-minute conversation, Ms. Lynch asked the woman about her health history and pregnancy and assessed that she was medically eligible for abortion medications that can be taken in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy: mifepristone, which blocks a hormone necessary for pregnancy development, and misoprostol, taken 24 to 48 hours later, which causes contractions so pregnancy tissue can be expelled. She carefully explained how to take them and mentioned that after the second medication, there would be cramping and bleeding that could continue for days.
The language the New York Times uses here is deliberately dehumanizing, and thus objectively insidious. The pre-born child in the womb is not “pregnancy tissue,” and any survey of a pregnancy website featuring embryoscopy footage or photos of human beings developing in the womb clearly shows that. The Times is using the phrase “pregnancy tissue” to justify killing the pre-born child with pills. As the story glowingly puts it:
Ms. Lynch is one of about several dozen providers in the country taking legal risks by prescribing and sending pills to patients in states with abortion bans. Many providers are based in states with shield laws, intended to offer them protection by preventing authorities there from cooperating with out-of-state officials who try to prosecute or sue them for serving people in their states.
About 20 states have adopted some type of abortion shield law since the Supreme Court overturned the national right to abortion in 2022. Eight explicitly protect telemedicine abortion prescribers who send medication to patients in any state. Delaware’s shield law isn’t as explicit, and there are different views on the scope of its protection, some legal experts said. Ms. Lynch said lawyers advised her that Delaware’s laws appear to protect prescribers who mail pills to any state, but she recently decided to move to one of the eight states with the clearest protections.
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The Times noted that pro-life activists are seeking to put a stop to the deadly work of activists like Lynch; “three Republican state attorneys general are seeking to reinstate rules requiring patients to obtain pills from providers in person” and others “are pressing for other state and federal actions to curtail the sending of abortion medication into states with bans.” As John Seago of Texas Right to Life bluntly put it: “It is violating not only our pro-life laws but our homicide laws.”
“Shield laws have become a key abortion-rights strategy, and each month, prescribers are sending medication to about 10,000 patients in states with bans,” the Times reported. “But the laws are beginning to be tested as authorities in states that outlaw abortion bring legal action against such prescribers, a confrontation many expect to reach the Supreme Court.”
Lynch, for her part, coaches her abortion pill customers on how to lie to doctors if they need to visit the hospital after taking the pills she mails them and even “sends receipts with a medical code for a urinary tract infection consultation … along with written information about UTIs” for “plausible deniability.”
These abortion pill networks are a post-Roe reconstitution of the pre-Roe underground abortion networks, such as the infamous “Janes” in Chicago a half-century ago. Abortion activists are determined to ensure that provably dangerous abortion pills are available to every woman in America. Pro-life activists are determined to protect both women and their pre-born children. Once again, this life and death struggle is likely to end up at the Supreme Court.
