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Inside a medical practice sending abortion pills to states where they're banned
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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.
These boxes contain abortion pills.
"Welcome to modern abortion care," says Angel Foster, as she holds up a box for mailing. Foster, who has an M.D. degree, leads operations at what's known as the MAP, a Massachusetts telehealth provider sending pills to people who live in states that ban or restrict abortion.
The MAP is one of just four organizations in the U.S. operating under recently enacted state shield laws, which circumvent traditional telemedicine laws requiring out-of-state health providers to be licensed in the states where patients are located. Eight states have enacted these shield laws.
Pregnant patients can fill out an online form, connect with a doctor via email or text and, if approved, receive the pills within a week, no matter which state they live in.
Shield law practices account for about 10% of abortions nationwide. There were 9,200 abortions a month provided under shield laws from January to March of this year, according to fresh data from the Society of Family Planning's WeCount project. And some researchers estimate that this number has risen since then and could be as high as 12,000 per month.
The rise of telehealth is part of why the number of abortions in the U.S. has continued to go up since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 — even though 14 states have near-total abortion bans. In those states, shield law providers represent the only legal way people can access abortions within the established health care system.
Back in Massachusetts, Foster glances down at the list of today's patients. The practice's four OB-GYNs have signed off on prescriptions for nearly two dozen women — in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Most of today's patients are around six weeks along in their pregnancy. Many already have children.
"I really need an abortion pill. My state has banned it. My funds are really low," one patient wrote on the online form she filled out for the doctor.
"I'm a single mom with a kid under two," another wrote. "I can't afford a baby. I can't even afford this abortion."
Foster and her team serve patients who are up to 10 weeks pregnant and who are 16 or older. It costs $250 to get the two-drug regimen — mifepristone and misoprostol — in the mail, but there's a sliding scale and patients can pay as little as $5. The MAP is funded through abortion funds, individual donations and philanthropic gifts, and Foster has plans to apply for grants and state funding to help make the organization more sustainable. The MAP currently sends out about 500 prescriptions a month.
Yet to be tested in court, shield laws have some legal vulnerability
In the eight states with shield laws, abortion providers can treat out-of-state patients just as if they were in-state patients. The laws give abortion providers some protection from criminal prosecution, civil claims and extradition, among other threats. The laws have yet to be tested in court, but they certainly haven't gone unnoticed by lawmakers and groups looking to limit abortion.
"These websites are breaking the law … aiding and abetting crimes in Texas," says John Seago, the president of Texas Right to Life. "We want to use all the instruments that we have, all the tools available, to really fight against this new trend of abortion pills by mail."
Seago says providers should still be held responsible for committing a crime that is executed across state lines. "Mailing the abortion pill is a state jail felony according to our pro-life laws," he says, "but enforcement of those policies has been a real, real challenge."
His organization has been looking for the right individual or circumstance to challenge shield laws directly in court. Three Republican-led states recently tried to sue the Food and Drug Administration over regulations allowing doctors to send pills through the mail, but the Supreme Court threw out the case in June over issues of standing. Those plaintiffs say they'll fight on. And a Republican attorney general in Arkansas sent a cease-and-desist letter to a shield law provider.
Seago thinks many conservative prosecutors have been hesitant to take legal action, especially in an election year. But he says it's important to act quickly, before abortion by mail becomes pervasive.
The people who are sending these pills know that there's risk in what they're doing. Some providers say they won't travel to or through states with bans so that they can't be subpoenaed, be served legal papers or even be arrested if there's a warrant. That may mean avoiding layovers at Dallas Love Field airport or a detour around those places on a cross-country road trip. For Foster, it means she can't visit her mom and stepdad, who retired to South Carolina.
"The thing about shield laws is that they're new, so we don't have a precedent to go off of," says Lauren Jacobson, a nurse practitioner who prescribes abortion medication through Aid Access, the largest of the four shield law providers. She says she avoids large swaths of the United States. "We don't really know what will or won't happen. But I'm not going to Texas. I've been before though, so that's OK for me."
Shield laws don't offer blanket protection. The doctors and nurse practitioners who prescribe the pills have malpractice insurance in their states, but it's unclear whether those policies would cover suits from states with abortion restrictions. Patients use third-party payment services like Cash App or PayPal, which are also untested in how they would work under a shield law. Would they give up information on a provider or patient if requested to do so by law enforcement?
How the experience looks
Lauren, who is 33 and lives in Utah, got pregnant while on birth control and decided that she couldn't afford another child. (NPR is not using her last name because she's worried about professional repercussions.)
Abortion is legal in Utah until 18 weeks, but there are only a handful of clinics in the state. The closest one to Lauren was several hours away by car. Several years prior, she had an abortion at a clinic in Salt Lake City, and it hadn't been a pleasant experience — she had to walk through protesters. The guilt from her conservative Christian upbringing was overwhelming.
"I got in my car and I cried," she recalls. "I just never wanted to go through it again."
This time, Lauren got pills from Aid Access, a shield law provider similar to the MAP. "I was a little bit sketched out, I won't lie," she says. "Because like, well, where is this coming from? Who is this under? How are they prescribing this?"
She and her partner did research to try to figure out whether what they were doing was legal. She says ultimately she couldn't find anything that clearly stated that what she wanted to do — have pills sent from an out-of-state doctor — was illegal.
She filled out a form online with questions about how far along she was and her medical history and then connected with a doctor via email and text messages. She googled the doctor, who she found was legit and practicing out of New York.
A few days later, she received abortion medication in the mail and had her abortion at home.
"To do it in the privacy of your own home, where I felt more support as opposed to going through protesters," Lauren says. "Especially with a provider within the state of Utah. I feel like there's always a judgmental indication or undertone."
The online doctor also followed up to make sure everything had gone OK, which Lauren appreciated. "I felt it was a little bit more thorough," she says. "They're checking in on you, like, 'How did you respond? What symptoms? What's going on?'"
In Massachusetts, the folks who run the MAP hear much the same from their patients. Many emails and messages are logistical, like this email: "I took the first pill on Friday and all the other pills on Saturday. For how long should I be bleeding as I'm still bleeding this morning?"
Many others offer disbelief, relief and gratitude. "I just wanted to say thank you so much," wrote one woman. "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."
When Foster, who runs operations for the MAP, does a final tally of the patients who are ready to have their pills sent out, she notices a new note from a woman who just paid, bringing the day’s total number of patients from 20 to 21.
"I am a single mother on a fixed income, and I can not afford a kid right now."
It's 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.
By 3 p.m., the Alabama woman's package is scanned by the Postal Service worker.
It's expected to arrive by the week's end.
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