In the spring of 2018, the Austria-based organization Aid Access started providing the two drugs needed for a medication-induced abortion, mifepristone and misoprostol, by mail to people in the United States. Its founder, a Dutch physician named Rebecca Gomperts—whose other organizations Women on Web and Women on Waves have worked to make abortion pills available online and by sea for years—estimates that Aid Access has fulfilled requests from 600 U.S.-based women in the span of six months, despite having virtually no public rollout. But in March of this year, the Food and Drug Administration sent a letter to Aid Access, along with an online pharmacy named Rablon, ordering both services to stop the sale of mifepristone and misoprostol—despite the fact that, when used as directed, the drugs are proven to be safe and effective. That hasn’t stopped Gomperts.
“I will not be deterred,” Gomperts wrote on the Aid Access website that same month, adding that: “When U.S. women seeking to terminate their pregnancies prior to 9 weeks consult me, I will not turn them away.” While Aid Access gives people the option to self-manage their abortions in the privacy of their own home, the fight to keep the online provider open has turned public. This is just one example of how abortion providers are holding their ground against federal and state lawmakers who wish to roll back access.
