If Trump Wins, Most Abortions Could Be Shut Down On January 25, 2025
This is post-election speculation on the world that Trump will create; some people are voting for it. It is not my view of something that will happen…but it could happen.
More people in the U.S. are having abortions today than before the fall of Roe, the Dobbs decision from Trump’s Supreme Court.
There are now just under 99,000 abortions per month, compared with 84,000 pre-Dobbs.
The public is supporting women’s right to control their bodies, with numbers that grow steadily. All seven state ballots on abortion have confirmed that support.
This does not matter to Trump, who lives in a reality where everyone is against a woman’s right to choose. He wanted to punish women who had abortions. He is pro-life…but every year he was in office he introduced measures to cut social security and Medicare. But I digress…
This does not matter to Trump, who lives in a reality where everyone is against a woman’s right to choose.
Abortion is the most powerful single Cause in this election. With a need to come from behind, Trump is now frantically trying to find a stance on the subject that appeals to the three-quarters of women who say the procedure should be legal.
But as far back as 2016 he vowed to overturn Roe and ban abortions – which his Supreme Court did for him. In February of this year he was still flirting with a national abortion ban. If he gets elected, you can tell where the ship of state will dock.
In the meantime, struggling against the system Trump has set up, women in restrictive states have turned to medication, which now accounts for two-thirds of all abortions. Mifepristone and misoprostol are the usual two-pill combination. They are so safe in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy that supervision by a medical clinician is not needed - a process called “self-managed abortion.”
The mail system is the first line of access in obtaining abortions. The number of US providers offering a telemedicine consultation—by video, phone call, text or online platform—and mailing abortion pills increased from 7% of all providers known to offer medication abortion in 2020 to 31% in 2022.
The number of facilities offering telehealth and mail-order service has increased from 7% to 31% (2022).
The Biden administration recently allowed the kits to be sent by mail, instead of having to be picked up by hand. Low-cost kits can be obtained by mail from countries such as India.
After an in-person assessment by a clinician, patients who received mifepristone and misoprostol dispensed by a mail-order pharmacy were satisfied with the privacy and convenience of the delivery method, and results showed it was just as safe and effective as in-person dispensing.
Nearly 98% of patients in a recent study had complete abortions with no adverse events related to mail-order dispensing. More than 85% of the participants received the medication within one to three days, a timeframe that 94% of the participants described as reasonable. The study notes:
“With the severe restrictions on abortion care imposed since the Dobbs decision, pharmacy dispensing of mifepristone has an important role to play in improving access. For both patients in states where abortion remains legal and those in states with restrictions who must travel for services, expanded access to medication abortion may reduce delays to care and congestion at abortion clinics where procedural abortion is provided.”
The US postal service is allowed to send the kits - with certain restrictions (below) – because a court issued an opinion that the sender could not know for sure whether the recipient would be using them illegally. In other words, the postal service is not the government’s watchdog (yet).
The opinion notes that the two pills commonly used to perform abortions, mifepristone and misoprostol, also can be used in other ways, such as managing miscarriages or treating gastric ulcers. When ordered by mail, the intended recipient does not have to say how the pills will be used. Because of that, the Justice Department concluded, neither the sender nor postal workers are violating any laws.
But what happens to the mail-order system if Trump gets in? The United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) would be put in a position to declare abortion-related mailing illegal.
While the USPIS currently does not go after pill mailers - as abortion rules are dictated by the states not the federal government - things would change if federal policy proscribed abortion pills.
Already, the USPIS does go after pills mailed from other countries, such as India. Those pills are not approved by the FDA, and are legitimate targets for the federal postal inspectors.
There are two techniques that it could use to end pill trafficking if the feds ban the pills.
The first is digital: in our society, very little escapes the scrutiny of online systems.
Using a system called a “mail cover” the images of the outside of envelopes and packages are sent to a huge database. There, information can be digitally compared on names, addresses, and other information. Postal systems can use to this information to correlate parcels to each other.
And the findings can be freely shared with almost any law enforcement agency that requests them.
The second technique to end drugs-by-mail, is the use of sniffer dogs.
The very same dogs that can detect illegal mind-bending drugs can sniff their way to a reward for detecting abortion pills.
According to The Intercept, sniffer dogs are used to obtain warrants to search inside envelopes. Once a dog has alerted its handler that a package is suspicious, the USPIS collects data from the envelope to locate additional envelopes with pills. They can then track related materials from disparate post offices as they flow through the federal system.
The cooperation between policing agencies and the postal service has been called “a candy store for law enforcement.”
This is a direct threat to abortion rights, says Intercept interviewee Nathan Freed Wessler of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project:
“If you start involving local law enforcement in a state that is trying to ban access to abortion, including abortion medication, you are putting patients at risk. Individuals who are trying to access medical care should not have to fear the federal government coming after them.”
But if Trump gets in, a guillotine blade will fall on postal distribution.
Right now, the feds leave it alone – unless a mailing violates FDA rules – because the Comstock Act has been suspended. That Act was put in place in 1873, and criminalizes importing and mailing materials which, according to the language of the law, are “intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use.” In 1971, after the Roe decision, Congress removed Comstock’s restrictions on abortion drugs. It has remained dormant for 50 years.
Then came the Trump Supreme Court which undid those 50 years of legal practice and made abortion a target again.
Plans are already underway to revive the Comstock Act if he wins. Before Vance entered the leadership race with Trump ha had written to the Department of Justice asking for all main-order abortion operations to be shut down.
How long do you think it will take him to put that iron back in the fire if he and Trump get elected?
Trump could issue an executive order on his first day in office, reviving Comstock and authorizing the seizure of pills in the mail.
Anyone who sends abortion pills, even domestically-produced pills - could be charged with a felony.
With the pills officially banned, the sniffer dogs could be unleashed to check the mail.
With envelopes identified, digital tracking would then be used to swiftly clamp down on any packages sent through the mail.
In one case, the USPIS also photographed the vehicle being driven by the mailer. There is no word on whether action was taken against that mailer.
But the main point is that on the first day in office, Trump could turn off the tap on mail-order abortion kits.
That would cut off the 8,000 women every month who receive abortion kits by mail. Almost 100,000 women a year. In one swoop of the president’s hand, most abortion access would be cut off!
That’s the kind of power Trump likes to wield – where no one can fight back and it causes pain to other people. He was delighted in his last months as president in 2020, when he signed the death warrants for so many people on Death Row. There were 13 people who were executed in the final six months of his presidency.
Banning birth control by mail is akin to putting people on Death Row. The number of women in Texas who died while pregnant, during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following the state’s 2021 ban on abortion care.
According to NBC News, citing an analysis by the Gender Equity Policy Institute, from 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same time period. Nancy L. Cohen, president of the GEPI, said that “All the research points to Texas’ abortion ban as the primary driver of this alarming increase.
“Texas, I fear, is a harbinger of what’s to come in other states.”
For the moment, for election purposes, Trump has cranked down his rhetoric on his harsh anti-abortion stance, saying that it is up to the states and that women should in any event not worry their pretty little heads about it and look on him as their solution. “I will be your protector,” he promised.
“You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today.
“Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free.
“You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”
Probably because there will be nothing you can do about it.
I am sure women are greatly reassured. It’s like something out of Handmaiden’s Tale.
This is the man who said: “Women: you have to treat ‘em like shit”.
So you know where he really stands on abortion.
On Monday, January 20, 2025, Trump will have the power to ban the mailing of abortion kits. Whether he needs Congressional approval to ban abortion facilities nation-wide is another question, but he certainly has the right to shut down postal delivery and distribution of abortion kits. He does not need to wait for Congressional approval. It’s his call.
And the number of women in pregnancy duress will soar. It will be especially bad for lower-income people…but those people have never been part of Trump’s circle anyway.
January 25, 2025.
A true dead-line.
Vote.