Dr Linda Prine is providing abortion access to people in all 50 states, even those that have banned it. That might seem like an admission to be discreet about in post-Roe America, but Prine and her colleagues at Aid Access, a telemedicine abortion service, are doing it openly and in a way they believe is on firm legal ground.
On 14 July, Aid Access announced that over the past month, a team of seven doctors, midwives and nurse practitioners have mailed medication abortion to 3,500 people under the protection of “shield laws”, which protect clinicians who serve patients in states where providing abortion is illegal. As soon as she learned about shield laws, Prine knew it represented an opportunity to go on the offensive, for those bold enough to try it.
“It made me think, OK, we need to fight back,” Prine said. “We can’t just take this lying down. We’ve got to do something. And this was what we can do.”
From its origins, Aid Access has always been willing to test legal boundaries. It was started in 2018 by the Dutch physician Dr Rebecca Gomperts. At the time, FDA regulations prevented licensed US providers from mailing mifepristone, one of the two drugs in the medication abortion regimen, so Aid Access was structured like Gomperts’ other telemedicine service, Women on Web. That process involved abortion seekers filling out an online consultation, and if eligible, Gomperts wrote a prescription from Europe and the pills were dispatched by a pharmaceutical partner in India.
Then, in 2020, Covid hit. And a federal judge suspended the FDA’s in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone. For the first time, legally prescribed medication abortion could be put in the mail. Aid Access used this opportunity to implement a hybrid model: in states where telemedicine abortion was legal, US clinicians handled the prescriptions, while in states where it wasn’t, the pills continued to be mailed from India.
One drawback of shipping from India was the packages could take weeks to arrive. In addition to the stress and uncertainty involved in waiting, the time lag could push people past the 12-week limit recommended by the World Health Organization (although there is some emerging research that abortion pills can safely be taken later.) Covid also created concerns about shipping delays, and there was always the chance that customs could seize the packages.
“The whole experience of wanting an abortion and then needing to wait three or four weeks to get it to happen, and not even be sure if those pills are ever going to come, that’s just so hard,” said Prine, who started working with Aid Access in 2021. “Who wants to do that? Nobody.”
In March 2022, Prine read an op-ed by three legal scholars – David S Cohen of Drexel University, Rachel Rebouché of Temple University, and Greer Donley of the University of Pittsburgh – that introduced her to the idea of shield laws. The trio had published a paper titled The New Abortion Battleground in the Columbia Law Review, which outlined the ways that shield laws could protect abortion providers who treated patients in banned states if Roe fell.
“Certainly, it’s not a surprise that post-Dobbs, there are going to be medical care providers who want to push the limits and care for as many people as they can, including people in other states,” Cohen said in an interview. “People are going to do this, so we were thinking about what can the states where they live do to help them the most?”
Inspired by their work, a wave of states started passing shield laws. The first, in Connecticut, passed in May 2022. Massachusetts, the fifth state to pass a shield law in July 2022, was the first to include a telemedicine provision, meaning the state pledged to protect a provider licensed there who prescribed and mailed medication abortion pills, via telemedicine, to a patient in a state where abortion was banned – like Texas or Alabama. Currently, 15 states have shield laws in place, and five – Massachusetts, Washington, Vermont, Colorado and New York – have specific telemedicine protections.
Before Aid Access, no US providers had publicly tested them. Then, on 18 June, the organization started serving patients nationwide with providers licensed in those five states. Up to 13 weeks, they offer prescriptions for $150 with a sliding scale that asks people to pay whatever they can afford, with a shipping time of two-five days. (In a physical clinic, the median cost of medication abortion is over $500.)
“Now Aid Access is completely US provider-led,” Lauren Jacobson, a nurse practitioner licensed in Massachusetts who joined Aid Access in February 2023, told the Guardian this month. “I think this is important because it sends the broader message that this is an American issue, a US problem, and taking advantage of the shield laws means we are returning this to an at-home solution.”
In addition to enabling faster shipping times, Jacobson said some people also feel more secure knowing that the pills are coming from licensed clinicians through an FDA-approved pipeline. This is part of what distinguishes Aid Access from abortion pill suppliers that operate through unofficial channels, such as unregulated online pharmacies and clandestine community networks. While the non-profit Plan C has found those medications to be as advertised, and reliably safe and effective (and also, in the case of community networks, free), they don’t offer interaction with a licensed clinician, and some people want that support as part of the process.
Right now, each of the Aid Access providers is sending approximately 50 packages a day. Prine said all the packing and postage and shipping tasks are a “big pain in the rear”, but it’s manageable. They are prepared to scale, both in terms of infrastructure and in terms of the legal challenges their actions could invite.
Cohen suggests there will be a “coming battle” as shield laws get tested, and emphasized that providers have the greatest amount of protection while they are in shield law states. Jacobson and Prine are not overly concerned about legal repercussions, but that doesn’t mean they’re not taking precautions.
“If it happens, it happens, and we are prepared,” Prine said. “But I’m definitely not taking any vacations in Texas.”
Because shield laws are designed to protect providers, patient risk is a separate factor – one that’s particularly acute for people from communities that face heightened surveillance from law enforcement. A state doesn’t need to have an explicit law criminalizing people who have abortions to prosecute them, often under unrelated statutes, like the illegal concealment of human remains. Even before Dobbs, people were arrested for self-managing abortions. The risk is real, but in a moment where people have too few options and time is of the essence, Prine said, every option counts.
“I do consults all the time, and people are not saying, ‘What about the legality of this?’” Prine said. “That is not their concern. Their question is, ‘How soon will the pills arrive?’ That is the number one question.”
