In Texas, a new law bars doctors from providing pills to induce abortions after seven weeks of pregnancy, and adds penalties of jail time and a fine of up to $10,000 for anyone who mails or delivers the medication.
Legal experts say such laws may be challenged after the F.D.A. decision, but for now, these state measures could discourage American doctors from sending pills to parts of the country with restrictive regulations.
“For the first time, Texas does have a way to protect women, through our criminal law, from people bringing dangerous abortion pills,” said Joe Pojman, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life, an organization that helped craft the measure. “We’ll have to wait to see how well it is enforced in the coming months.”
Anti-abortion groups acknowledge that criminally punishing activists who distribute the pills, especially if they are from Mexico, may prove difficult. They would have to be caught and arrested in Texas, or extradited, experts say.
“This is a really terrible, lawless attack on life,” John Seago, the legislative director for Texas Right to Life, said of the Mexican activists’ plan to help women in Texas get abortions, adding that such efforts would “make it absolutely more difficult to do it, to enforce these laws.”
Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, the leader of Aid Access, an Austria-based group that provides abortion pills to women across the world, confirmed she has been prescribing the medication to women in Texas — who then receive the drugs by mail from a pharmacy in India — even after the state’s law went into effect this month.