The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) released a report Friday asserting that women seeking abortion pills illegally from Aid Access dramatically increased after the Texas Heartbeat Act took effect on September 1, 2021. Aid Access is an anti-Life organization located outside the United States that ships abortion-inducing drugs to women who request them online.
Before the law took effect, Aid Access received an average of 10.8 requests for illegal abortion pills per day. After September 1, the average requests to Aid Access rose to 61 per day for the month. The anti-Life organization received 1,831 requests from Texas during the month of September. Demand then decreased through the rest of 2021 with 29.5 requests per month on average.
However, the authors themselves acknowledge there is no way to know how many of these requests actually ended in abortion because anti-Life advocates told women to order the drugs to keep on-hand. The data also show that the other 49 states mirrored the exact same pattern of increased requests. This spike in requests isn’t surprising. The abortion industry’s push toward chemical and self-managed abortions is the future of the Pro-Life fight in the rapidly approaching post-Roe v. Wade world.
Texas Right to Life is already aware of and preparing to protect preborn children from this push toward illegal chemical abortions. We will continue to work to hold out-of-country actors, such as Aid Access, accountable to our life-saving laws and educate women on the dangers of self-managed abortion.
Self-managed abortion is incredibly dangerous to women and deadly to preborn children. Abortion-inducing drugs can lead to serious, life-threatening side effects, are increasingly dangerous the further into pregnancy a woman uses them, and are contraindicated for some women.
Aid Access has been warned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the past to stop illegally shipping abortion-inducing drugs into the United States. The drugs are dispensed from a pharmacy in India, without any U.S. government oversight. If the abortion industry is truly against illegal abortions, they should denounce all organizations sending abortion pills from outside the U.S.
Our hearts break for the women who were convinced by anti-Life advocates that seeking illegal abortion-inducing drugs was their only option. We mourn the loss of these preborn children and are gravely concerned for the health and safety of women being given dangerous drugs without the supervision of a medical professional. Both women and their children are innocent victims of the law-breaking organization Aid Access. We believe every woman and child is made in the image and likeness of God and deserves protection. The fact remains that despite the best efforts of the global abortion industry, thousands of lives are still being saved by the historic Texas Heartbeat Act. Furthermore, Texas Right to Life will continue to fight the forces of death no matter how hard they try to circumvent our Pro-Life policies or evade accountability. We are prepared to be bolder than ever to protect all Texas women and their children from these types of illegal and reckless attacks on Life.
Meanwhile, Texas Right to Life promotes free pregnancy resources in communities across Texas to empower women to choose Life.