Behind an unmarked door in a boxy brick constructing outdoors Boston, a quiet revolt is going down. Right here, in a 7-by-12-foot room, abortion is being made accessible to 1000’s of girls in states the place it’s unlawful.
The sufferers do not need to journey right here to terminate their pregnancies, and they don’t have to attend weeks to obtain abortion medicine from abroad.
As an alternative, they’re acquiring abortion drugs prescribed by licensed Massachusetts suppliers, packaged within the little room and mailed from a close-by submit workplace, arriving days later in Texas, Missouri and different states the place abortion is essentially outlawed.
This service and others prefer it are working beneath novel legal guidelines enacted in a half-dozen states — Massachusetts, Washington, Colorado, Vermont, New York and California — which have sought to protect abortion entry for the reason that Supreme Courtroom overturned the nationwide proper to abortion in June 2022. The legal guidelines have been in use solely for the reason that summer time and haven’t been examined within the courts, however they’re already offering abortion entry to tens of 1000’s of girls in states with bans, particularly low-income sufferers and others who can’t journey.
Referred to as telemedicine abortion protect legal guidelines, they promise to guard medical doctors, nurse practitioners and midwives licensed in these six states who prescribe and ship abortion drugs to sufferers within the nearly two dozen states that ban or sharply prohibit abortion.
The legal guidelines stipulate that officers and companies of their states won’t cooperate with one other state’s efforts to research or penalize such suppliers — a stark departure from typical interstate practices of extraditing, honoring subpoenas and sharing info, authorized specialists on either side of the abortion situation say. Many count on them to finally be challenged in federal court docket.
