Republicans are making a huge mistake on abortion pills.
They are choosing intrusion.
Forty years ago I would buy Coors beer in California and bring it across the border into Oregon. Oregon prohibited whatever pasteurizing process Coors used, so Coors was illegal in Oregon back then. Coors became a prized commodity, served to guests as a special treat.
I presume that most motivated women, and certainly women with money to spend, will get abortion pills if they want them, regardless of the law. Some people will get them easily at a local pharmacy. Others will get them brought in from out of state. If that is blocked, women will get them via underground methods, the way people buy illegal drugs now, dangerously and furtively. For some people the hassles and illegality will be too much, or they will be caught in the legal snares, and they won't get them in time.
Counterfeits will enter the market. In the cases where there are medical complications women will be slower to get medical help. Abortion pill bans will make a bad situation worse.
Over half of all abortions are done very early and by pill. Normal protocol is to take two drugs, first one day and then the next. The first is mifepristone, which ends the pregnancy. It works by blocking the hormone progesterone, so the uterine lining breaks down and the fertilized egg detaches, ending the pregnancy. A second pill, misoprostol, taken within 48 hours, causes the uterus to cramp, which empties the uterus. Either pill taken alone almost always works, but best results are when both are taken. It is 99% effective in ending the pregnancy without additional medical intervention. The woman experiences it as "a heavy period."
The two-pill regimen may be covered by a health plan. In 16 of the states it is covered by Medicaid; in the others it is not. Planned Parenthood reports that the average cost of the pills at their clinics is $580. People who acquire them underground will pay the up-charges associated with legal risks.
Walgreens announced that it will stop dispensing the drugs in about 20 states where current laws appear to ban early abortions, plus four states where abortions are legal but where a Republican Attorney General has threatened Walgreens anyway. In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that California would end its contract with Walgreens to provide drugs to California's prisons.
America is moving into a new phase on abortions, and now abortion pills, one characterized by different laws in different jurisdictions. Pills legal in one state will be illegal in another. In New Mexico, which is generally friendly to abortion, some counties are imposing local bans, so the subject of state pre-emption of county bans is being debated in its legislature.
All of this puts a focus on location, not health, safety, or the moral bases for abortion bans. Actions that are a felony in El Paso are perfectly legal across the border in New Mexico. Felony behavior in Boise is perfectly legal across the border in Oregon. I felt no guilt bringing Coors beer into Oregon.
This issue won't go away. Republican lawmakers are stuck with the inertia of having been anti-abortion back before the Dobbs decision. Republicans said abortion was murder because a fertilized egg was a precious un-born child with an immortal soul. Most Republicans never really believed that. If they had, there would have been mass uprisings by armed citizens at the "Auschwitz" of a woman's health center. GOP lawmakers are stuck with an extreme ideology at odds with their own real feelings, and significantly at odds with majority opinion.
Americans have complicated feelings about abortion, but early abortions have widespread acceptance by a majority of voters. Banning early abortion pills makes later abortions more common. Americans are accustomed to taking pills, including on matters of reproduction. Fights over abortion pills are a huge negative for Republicans. It puts the issue directly in the faces of voters.
Aggressive prosecutors are subpoenaing internet searches for abortion pills as a way to investigate and prosecute women. Republicans are making something intensely personal into something complicated, intrusive, arbitrary and fraught with legal risk. Women who consider themselves law-abiding will need to sneak and they won't like doing so. This all comes across as overreach, but Republicans are stuck doing it. After all, they said abortion is murder.
I am no longer in the age group of women who might need abortion services. However, I am appalled at the right wing efforts to restrict access. In response to Walgreen's cowardly decision not to dispense abortion pills in 20 states, I sent an email message to their corporate offices informing them that I would no longer be patronizing their stores or pharmacies. And I told them why.
I will ask my family in California to boycott Walgreens
Most of them will comply