Lawmakers in Arizona are joining a growing trend of state legislatures moving to regulate or outlaw the mailing of abortion drugs, especially from out of state. State Rep. Rachel Keshel (R), joined by fellow Republicans Lisa Fink, John Gillette, Ralph Heap, David Marshall, and Michael Way, introduced a bill earlier this year that would make “providing an abortion-inducing drug via courier, delivery, or mail service” a class five felony, carrying a maximum sentence of two-and-a-half years in prison for first-time offenses. Subsequent offenses can increase the sentence to nearly eight years in prison.

Licensed health care providers, pharmacists, manufacturers, suppliers, or carriers who ship abortion drugs “while acting in the course and scope of [their] employment” will be charged with a class four felony, which carries a maximum penalty of up to four years in prison for first-time offenses. The bill would also make ordering abortion drugs — not just fulfilling those orders — a class one misdemeanor, which carries a penalty of up to six months in jail or fines of up to $2,500.

The legislation passed Arizona’s House of Representatives in February and was advanced by the Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee to the full Senate last week. Grand Canyon State Republicans faced a major setback in January when Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Greg Como ruled that a number of pro-life statutes approved by the legislature conflicted with an amendment to the Arizona constitution establishing a “right” to abortion, passed via referendum in 2024. Como argued that the statutes, which included a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion and mandatory prior medical examinations, violated the amendment’s “autonomous decision making” guarantee, indicating that any pro-life laws or regulations would likely be struck down under the same reasoning. Republicans vowed to appeal the decision.

In comments to The Washington Stand, Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, hailed Arizona’s new legislation as a needed measure to address a surging problem. “It is wonderful to see Arizona working to ensure that abortion drug traffickers and those who seek to abuse pregnant women will not have the ability to obtain abortion-inducing drugs through the mail,” she said. “These drugs take the lives of unborn children and devastate the lives of women while often ravaging their bodies.” 

“While the Comstock Act makes it illegal to mail abortion inducing drugs, the Biden administration’s opinion on this law still guides the course of the federal government, and abortion drugs are sent through the mail and put in the hands of abusers,” Szoch continued. “In states where women’s lives and unborn children’s lives are valued, we’ve seen state governments take action to try to protect the vulnerable from abortion-inducing drugs. I look forward to the federal government doing the same.”

Arizona is not alone in its efforts to regulate the shipping of the abortion drug. In fact, the state’s legislation is modeled after similar legislation in Texas, which supplemented its pro-life laws with further legislation empowering Texans to sue out-of-state abortionists who violate Texas’s pro-life laws by shipping abortion drugs into the state. West Virginia has also advanced legislation classifying the mailing of abortion drugs as a felony and equipping mothers and other family members of an unborn child killed by abortion drugs to sue the abortionist responsible for sending those drugs. Legislation working its way through Florida’s legislature would do the same.

The use of lawsuits has become a means of circumventing blue state “shield laws,” which protect abortionists from being prosecuted for violating pro-life laws in other states. Both California and New York, for example, have refused to extradite abortionists to Texas and Louisiana to face prosecution for violating the red states’ laws protecting unborn life by shipping abortion drugs across state lines. Under then-President Joe Biden in 2021, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) eliminated safeguards around the abortion drug mifepristone, allowing the drug to be prescribed and dispensed remotely. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 2022, blue state-based abortionists began shipping the abortion drug into red states with pro-life laws on the books, accounting for a significant increase in the use of the abortion drug.

According to multiple reports, mifepristone accounts for roughly two-thirds of abortions in the U.S., and the use of mifepristone has increased by more than 25% over the past year, with much of the increase driven by traffic to pro-life states. While President Donald Trump and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary pledged to conduct a review of mifepristone and to adjust safeguards accordingly, the review has yet to be completed, and the drug is still shipped across the country.

Some states, like Iowa, have attempted to restore the stricken FDA safeguards on a smaller scale, advancing legislation to require that the abortion drug be prescribed or dispensed in-person, since the federal government has not moved to restore the regulations.