After a Texas district judge decided to revoke the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, Pennsylvania launched a website to ensure women know where to get abortions and how to get the money to travel and pay for them. The site, however, does not provide women with life-affirming alternatives to ending the lives of their preborn children.
The new government website, unveiled on Monday, instructs both in-state and out-of-state women and girls on how to find an abortionist, make an abortion plan, and get financial support to pay for the abortion. The site states:
On April 7, 2023, a federal judge of the Northern District of Texas reversed the Federal Drug Administration’s decades-long approval of abortion pill regimen of mifepristone followed by misoprostol. Medication abortions often use a two-step regime of mifepristone and misoprostol at abortion clinics, pharmacies, or through the mail.
Even with the ruling, medication abortion is still legal and available in Pennsylvania. You can receive a medication abortion at a licensed clinic. Your medical provider can discuss the best option for you.
The website fails to mention support for women who don’t want abortions. And it assures women that they can get help to pay for their abortion, but does not discuss options for help raising their child or placing their child with an adoptive family, other than a buried link to a pro-abortion organization that also offers baby gear and counseling for “all options.”
It also must be noted that the abortion funds that Pennsylvania is promoting can work to coerce women into abortions by making it difficult for them to change their minds. A new documentary video from Sidewalk Advocates for Life exposed this pressure. Mark Cavaliere, executive director of the Southwest Coalition for Life in New Mexico, explained in the video that sidewalk counselors used to help four to five mothers escape abortion every day in Las Cruces and Santa Teresa. This is no longer the case.
“Now, there’s a different level of desperation,” he said. “The women that we’re seeing have invested so much. Often times they have gotten a plane ticket and they’ve flown across the state. They’ve gotten hotel rooms and rented rental cars, and by the time they show up at the abortion facility they say they’ve got to catch a plane back in a few hours.”
Not only is this physically dangerous for these women — who may not seek follow-up care in their home state — but the pressure to get into the pro-abortion state, have the abortion, and get back home is high.
“By the time they get here, they’re even more committed to obtaining this abortion because the abortion facilities, the referral centers in Texas have already given them a gift card,” said Dominique Davis, president and CEO of Project Defending Life, a pregnancy center in New Mexico. “[The women] feel more pressured to obtain the abortion because it’s already been paid for.”
District Court Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk ruled on April 7 to overturn the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, allowing a week for the order to take effect. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals then ruled on April 12, essentially turning back the clock on the FDA’s allowances. Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the plaintiffs, noted:
In its decision, the 5th Circuit ruled that abortionists are no longer allowed to send chemical abortion drugs through the mail, which the FDA had been allowing since 2021, in direct violation of longstanding federal law.
Additionally, in 2016, the FDA extended the permissible gestational age of the baby for which a girl or woman may take chemical abortion drugs—from seven weeks’ gestation to 10 weeks’ gestation. The 5th Circuit’s order moved that back to seven weeks’ gestation, protecting the mother from adverse complications that increase with gestational age, reinstated necessary doctor visits, and brought back the requirement that abortionists must check women for complications after their chemical abortions.
