The next battleground over abortion rights won’t be in front of abortion clinics but in the homes of women seeking to end unwanted pregnancies. Legislative efforts around the country seek to clamp down on home-administered, medication-induced abortions, an issue that generally didn’t exist in the days before Roe v. Wade was first decided in 1973. Anti-choice forces are floating ideas — including crackdowns on transport of medications and even attempts to outlaw information from pro-choice advocates — that stray well outside the abortion debate into areas of interstate commerce and the First Amendment.
The overturn of Roe this year in no way limits the federal government from reinforcing these and other rights against those who would erode them in their zeal to control women everywhere. Even in their own homes.
In the almost 50 years since U.S. states were last allowed to outlaw abortion at will, much has changed regarding abortion services. Contrary to the disinformation campaigns of the right, most abortions are performed early in pregnancies, and the most common (and safest) method of early-pregnancy abortion today is medical inducement. The Food and Drug Administration in 2000 approved the drug mifepristone to end pregnancies in the first 10 weeks, generally in conjunction with a second drug, misoprostol. The two drugs are used in more than half of all abortions.
But now Republican-controlled states are starting to outlaw abortion well before that point. In Missouri, it’s illegal from conception, even in cases of rape or incest. Since other states are keeping abortion legal, complex issues arise regarding these drugs.
While states may assert the right to ban the drugs within their borders, how will they enforce that prohibition once women arrive home with prescriptions? For now, anyway, the forced-birth movement is generally sticking with its public-relations-minded approach of punishing everyone except pregnant women for obtaining abortions.
The Washington Post reports that one approach some activists are suggesting is going after the prescribing doctors’ licenses in other states. This would seem to violate the concept of states setting their own laws and standards — the very concept the anti-choice movement has long touted in its quest to get the constitutional abortion rights guarantee lifted.
In theory, states can prohibit their citizens from bringing contraband items into their state or receiving them through the mail, even if those items are legal in the state of origin. But, again, how is that to be enforced? Will state police begin searching the cars and monitoring the mail of pregnant women?
If that sounds like dystopian paranoia, consider an idea that anti-choice legislators in some states are already pursuing: outlawing nonprofit organizations that provide information to women regarding self-induced abortion. Once state governments erase women’s right to control their own bodies, no one should be surprised if they’re willing to scuttle an array of other rights in service to that goal.
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