Mail-Order Abortion Company Quietly Begins Shipping to US
Abortion by mail has now become a reality in America.
A new website called Aid Access now ships abortion pills to American women. The site, operated by Dutch doctor Rebecca Gomperts, mirrors one called Women on Web that had been shipping pills worldwide for several years.
Women on Web required that its customers live in a country where abortion is restricted. Although abortion in the U.S. is legal, Gomperts told The Guardian that she recently decided to tap the American market.
“I decided that, as a doctor, I have a moral obligation to help women that are in need of a very safe medical procedure,” Gomperts said, according to The Guardian.
The pills, which cost about $95, come after an online consultation, and are routed through a pharmacy in India, The Atlantic reported. Women who suffer complications from the pills are encouraged to go to a hospital and tell health care workers they have had a miscarriage.
Gomperts said that the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict abortion on demand were the catalyst that changed her mind.
About 600 women have received pills in the website’s first six months of activity.
Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins issued a statement decrying abortion drugs by mail.
“Just as our Students for Life of America team stood for women and unborn children in successfully opposing the distributionof those deadly drugs on California college and university campuses, we will stand for women soon to be victimized by this negligent business,” she said in a statement posted on the Students for Life website.
“Handing out deadly drugs through the mail is a disaster waiting to happen. We know that women have died using chemical abortion drugs, and that how far along a woman’s pregnancy is or where it is can be a life or death issue. Women later in pregnancy or women experiencing an ectopic pregnancy in particular are in great risk — two things that must be determined by examination and not by some on-line questionnaire,” she said.
The site bases its claims that the pills it ships women are safe on studies that some professionals believe are not good science, LifeSite News reported.
“The main problem with this study is that of the 1,600 women who self-induced medical abortions without medical supervision, — 600 (over 30 percent) did not respond to a follow-up survey,” said Michael J. New, a visiting assistant professor at the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America, according to LifeSite News.
“There is a good chance that women who did not follow up were more likely to experience medical complications than those women who were happy to participate,” he said.
Gomperts said that anyone who does not like the fact that she ships pills to American women should work for greater access to abortion, according to The Guardian.
“I don’t think this service should be necessary in the first place,” she told the newspaper.
Gomperts was asked by The Atlantic if she could be overwhelmed by demand from the United States.
“I have no idea,” she said. “I really don’t know. That’s probably something that in principle … I don’t know. I wish I had a better answer to that.
“I hope I will be the first of many others so I won’t be in a situation where I can’t deal with the amount of requests,” she added.
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