Women living under abortion bans in the US are being offered advice on how to get access to abortion pills by mail, through a system of mobile billboards which are being driven through college campuses in 14 states carrying the prohibition.
The billboards are the creation of Mayday.Health, a non-profit set up in the wake of the US supreme court’s ruling last June that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion. The posters carry QR codes that link to online information providing a step-by-step guide on how to obtain the abortion pill even in states which have banned it.
“We wish that everybody could just get these medications as easily as you can get Tylenol or Viagra in this country. Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Jennifer Lincoln, Mayday’s president, told Mississippi Public Broadcasting, referring to common brands of painkiller and erectile dysfunction medication.
Mayday’s bid to help women circumvent tight anti-abortion restrictions that are now in place in 26 states is part of a storm of legal activity around the abortion pill. Advocates on both sides of the bitter struggle are anxiously awaiting the decision of a federal district judge in Amarillo, Texas who could move any day now to impose an injunction on mifepristone, the first pill used in the two-drug abortion pill protocol.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by Donald Trump and who espouses right-wing Christian ideology, is considering a petition from an alliance of anti-abortion groups that attempts to nullify the approval given to mifepristone 22 years ago by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). If he does impose an injunction it could snarl up the abortion pill across the US for months or even years.
Pushing in the opposite direction, a lawsuit was filed last month in West Virginia by GenBioPro, a US producer of mifepristone, arguing that the FDA’s federal approval of the medication overrides local state bans. The outcome of that case could also have huge ramifications right across the country.
In its advice to women, Mayday points out that the abortion pill is 99% medically safe, functioning on the same lines as a natural miscarriage. Despite local state bans, it remains legal to receive by mail in all 50 states, the Department of Justice has advised.
Some states with Republican-controlled legislatures that have imposed tough abortion restrictions are seeking to challenge the federal government’s claim. This week a 33-year-old woman was arrested by police in Greenville, South Carolina, and charged with performing or soliciting an abortion after she told hospital staff she had taken an abortion pill.
The woman is currently out of jail on a bond of $2,500, according to the local the State newspaper.
Mayday’s billboard is touring campuses in Jackson, Missippi; Austin and Dallas in Texas; Boise, Idaho and in other anti-abortion states.
Lincoln urged women to obtain the medication irrespective of their personal situation, saying they need not wait for a crisis but should order them now “to know you’ve got this in your back pocket”.
