An eye-popping 84% of chemical abortion pills shipped through the mail are sent into states with strong protections for unborn babies, according to a peer-reviewed study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). “This is circumventing and breaking the law,” protested FRC Senior Fellow and former U.S. Congressman Jody Hice. “I can’t help but think this is a strategic plan.” Now that abortion activists have found a successful counter to post-Dobbs state laws protecting unborn lives, it is up to the Trump administration to stop them.

The JAMA study shows a new pattern of interstate commerce in abortion pills following the Dobbs decision. It analyzed data from Aid Access, the largest mail-order chemical abortion supplier, on 118,000 chemical abortion pill packs shipped between July 1, 2023 and September 30, 2024. The company uses shield laws in states like New York to protect itself from criminal prosecution by pro-life states.

“Prior to 2021, if a woman wanted to have a chemical abortion, she had to have an in-person medical exam with the health care professional, and then the drug was prescribed,” explained Catholic University professor Michael New on “Washington Watch.” “During the pandemic, the FDA changed its rules. They said that women could now do a consultation by telehealth without in-person medical exam, and then the drug would be mailed. Even after the pandemic ended, the Biden administration FDA continued this very unwise policy of allowing for telehealth abortions.”

For nearly all cases in which abortion pills are mailed across state lines for legal reasons (for instance, from New York to Louisiana), the pregnant woman’s only contact with the prescribing physician is via telehealth. This means that neither the prescribing physician nor any other medical staff have physically examined the pregnant woman (such as with an ultrasound) to confirm the gestational age of the unborn baby or to screen for an ectopic pregnancy.

In the case of an ectopic pregnancy, or once the child reaches a certain gestational age, a chemical abortion presents a much greater risk to the mother. (Of course, all forms of abortion definitionally aim to end the life of the unborn child.)

A physician who prescribes abortion pills without screening for factors that could create potentially life-threatening complications shows reckless disregard for the life of the pregnant woman (not to mention the life of her baby).

The dramatic increase in abortion drugs shipped across state lines since the Dobbs decision is “certainly strategic,” argued New. “Supporters of legal abortion are always trying to weaken and undermine the good pro-life laws that we’ve passed. … This is just their latest strategy.” Abortion activists have successfully returned the service of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, and the ball is now in the court of pro-lifers.

In Dobbs, the Supreme Court returned power over the abortion issue to the elected representatives of the people. State lawmakers on both sides eagerly jumped onto the field (federal lawmakers, not so much, at least not on the pro-life side). But the ability to ship abortion drugs across state lines gives the pro-abortion faction a decided advantage in the state-versus-state fight (that is, pro-abortion politicians can enact shield laws to protect abortionists while they circumvent pro-life laws passed in other states).

This slanted playing field is not the result of accident or chance. Pro-abortion politicians have had 50 years to prepare a response to the long-telegraphed goal of pro-lifers — the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Throughout three presidential administrations over the past 30 years, pro-abortion activists in the federal government have gradually removed nearly all restrictions on chemical abortions, notwithstanding the harmful side effects.

To make matters worse, unlike other pro-life issues that swing back-and-forth between administrations (such as the Mexico City policy), the increasing license for chemical abortions has gone unchallengedby otherwise pro-life administrations.

The current Trump administration is generally happy to leave abortion policy to the states, but chemical abortion must be the exception. Due to decades of federal rulemaking, pro-life laws in dozens of states have been effectively nullified by chemical abortion pills shipped from a handful of other states. It was national policy that created these conditions, so only national policy can fix them.

“The Trump administration has the power to, frankly, end telehealth abortions tomorrow. I mean, telehealth abortions are [a] relatively new development,” urged New. “This is something that the Biden administration started during the pandemic [and] kept going after the pandemic ended. The Trump administration is within its power to, frankly, end this tomorrow. I think they have good reason to.”

In fact, 22 state attorneys general urged the Trump administration to do just that in a letter sent to health officials on July 31. “FDA should consider reinstating safety protocols that it identified as necessary as recently as 2011 in its issuance of a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) for mifepristone, but which were removed by the Obama and Biden administrations,” they advised. “Alternatively, in light of the serious risks to women who are presently being prescribed this drug without crucial safeguards … the FDA should consider withdrawing mifepristone from the market until it completes its review.”

“One of the things that the FDA is supposed to do, and usually does, is looks at all of the available evidence, all of the indications of side effects and medical emergencies or adverse conditions,” commented Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (R), who led the letter, on “Washington Watch.” “We now have a lot of data that the FDA didn’t have at the time [it originally approved mifepristone]. And all we’re asking is for the FDA to take a second look with all of this new data.”

“Recent comprehensive studies of the real-world effects of the chemical abortion drug mifepristone report that serious adverse events occur 22 times more often than stated on the drug’s label, while the drug is less than half as effective as claimed,” the state AGs argued. “Mifepristone’s label states that less than 0.5 percent of patients in clinical trials experienced a serious adverse event, but the real-world rate is actually 10.93 percent.”

These adverse events include sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, and follow-up surgeries, but “the prescriber is only required to report an adverse event if he or she becomes aware that the patient has died,” the letter added.

With such serious consequences at play, “it would behoove everyone on all sides of this issue to say, ‘Wait a minute. There’s a lot of information that’s come out indicating that the chances of an adverse event are much higher than the label indicates,’” Kobach continued. “We are saying, in our letter, at a minimum, ‘Take a look at these safety protocols.’ … Is this safe to have it all? And then secondly, if it is safe enough to have, then what are the … circumstances under which a woman could take the mifepristone? And I think this is a reasonable request.”

Kobach held out hope that the FDA under President Trump would do the right thing by reimposing restrictions on the chemical abortion pill, especially on its delivery through the mail. “They haven’t refused,” he said. On the other hand, the Trump administration has yet to reimplement commonsense safety restrictions on mifepristone, which were removed during the Obama and Biden administrations. That’s why nearly two dozen state AGs added their voices to the chorus of Americans urging the Trump administration to act quickly.