Anti-abortion groups have a new strategy to end telehealth abortion
The abortion opponents argue that the abortion by telehealth facilitates the strength to force people to abort. Experts say that the true image of reproduction coercion seems quite different.
By Shefali Luthra for the 19th
The conservatives are testing a new argument in their legal efforts to end the abortion of the tele -ante: people using correspondence drugs are forced to put an end to their pregnancies.
Two prosecutions against the unjustified death of Texas, both deposited last month before a Federal Court, alleged that women were forced to take abortion pills prescribed by the suppliers of viewers outside the state.
In one case, a woman alleys that abortion drugs have been secretly mixed with her hot chocolate and made him make a miscarriage. (The local police service investigated these allegations and said it was not founded.) In the other, a man claims that his girlfriend was forced to take medication by her mother and her husband. The two complainants are represented by Jonathan Mitchell, a leader in the development of anti-abortion policies in Texas and the former state lawyer.
Combinations represent a new phase in the wider effort to prevent people from Texas and other states with abortion bans from having abortion pills by post. The complainants suggest that online health services are delivered with insufficient guarantees, arguing that they have facilitated the fraudulently drugs, pretending to be someone else, then forced pregnant patients to take pills.
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Previous efforts to prevent people from receiving abortions have included a campaign carried out by the Texas anti-abortion group, the right to life so that the injured men claim that abortions have violated their rights as parents, as well as a civil action in which the former partner of a woman has targeted friends who helped her get an abortion.
The last prosecution continues their proofs after health providers. One of them as defendants The organization of Télésanté helps Access and his Dutch doctor Dr Rebecca Gomperts, in addition to the alleged ex-partner of the applicant. The second target Dr. Remy Coeytals, based in California, which alleges the prescribed applicant and sent drugs against abortion to his girlfriend.
“You see adversaries of abortion realize that everyone believes that they are misogynist or opposed to women, there is therefore an effort to change the story,” said Mary Ziegler, historian of abortion at the University of California in Davis.
Although few studies examine the frequency to which people are forced by abortions, existing data indicate that the situation is quite rare – and certainly less common than the opposite phenomenon of patients forced to remain pregnant against their will.
Opponents of abortion, however, say that the problem of coercion is omnipresent, so much so that the laws and courts should target health care providers with drugs via remote staff. In a legislative hearing for a anti -abortion bill in Texas, activist Mark Lee Dickson argued that the threat of constrained abortions – and the role of remote charters in facilitating them – justified specific laws going after medical providers, such as a bill making its way through the legislature that would allow private citizens to continue anyone abortion by post in the state.
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The data does not support this story. A 2011 article suggested that in most cases, the partners were on the same wavelength concerning the choice of abortion of a pregnant person. In cases where a male partner did not agree, he was more likely to prevent someone from asking for an abortion than forcing one. And most people who get abortions seem to believe that this is the right choice for them: other research, including a 2020 study, show that the vast majority of people who obtain abortions do not regret the decision.
Health care providers said they most often saw patients navigate in the opposite form of reproductive coercion: people are looking for abortions when their partners try to force them to stay pregnant.
“We know that there is a lot of violence against women and who takes different forms,” said Dr. Angel Foster, who heads the Massachusetts Meedation Abortion Project, a tele -history practice that prescribes and sends abortion pills to people across the country, including in prohibited states. “What we have seen more than anything else is that our patients make the decision to have an abortion so that they are not linked to a violent partner. We understand that every day of our patients, and we also hear our patients whose partners try to force them to continue pregnancies. ”
Foster said that his staff had seen men trying to fill out forms saying that they are looking for drugs on behalf of women in their lives. These requests are rejected. Only people looking for abortion drugs for their own use and who have certified that they will take the pills can receive a prescription. If someone fills the form by saying that he is looking for drugs for his own use – but if something in his information seems to be extinguished – Foster’s staff will engage in “Google sewing” to ensure that they have represented with precision, she said.
“When you care about 30,000 patients, if someone wants to lie and voluntarily manipulate the system, it is possible, but we have set up a lot of projections,” she said. “I feel really confident about the systems we have developed.”
However, the abortion services – and in particular the remote anti -service providers – vary in terms of precautions they take to ensure that patients in search of abortion do so on their own will.
The standards established by the National Abortion Federation, a professional association for abortion suppliers, encourage clinicians to obtain an “informed consent” of patients, ensuring that they have a chance to specify that having an abortion is their choice. But clinics can define their own policies on how to achieve it.
Patients in search of care via AID ACCESS – One of the largest cavity abortion options in the country, focused on providing care for people living under abortion bans – fill out an admission form before receiving a prescription. The form specifically requests patients if they are forced to take medication. Patients should also attest that they are looking for drugs for their own use.
But generally, patients do not communicate in depth with the prescribing doctor, including by phone or e-mail.
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Gomperts, the founder of the organization and a defendant in one of the proceedings of Mitchell, did not respond to several requests for comments. But a doctor from California who is prescribed via Aid Access declared that it would be “unsan hand” to speak in depth with each patient – whether by phone, e -mail or video – adding that it would take much more time, in turn, limiting the number of doctors. He could also alienate patients concerned about privacy. AID Access sends medication to around 6,000 patients in the United States each month.
“You must trust the person who contacts you is the person looking for your services,” said the doctor, who asked that his name be retained because of the prosecution against his colleagues and his fear of being later targeted. “The rate of coercion is extremely small, but not zero, and we just want to be able to help many, many people. We recognize that there will be people who lie and force their partners. ”
Often, an admission form can be a safe place to share for patients if they are forced to request an abortion, said Dr. Nisha Verma, an Obgyn in Atlanta who sees patients in person, which allows him to speak to them individually about their medical needs. Some patients she saw shared that a partner tries to have them terminated their pregnancies. Most often, she said, patients who have undergone coercion are prevented from taking contraception or forced to remain pregnant.
In her practice, she offers patients a chance to disclose any sensitive information in admission forms and in individual advice. But even if a health supplier offers only one form, this may be enough to detect possible abuses or coercion, as long as clinicians make sure to follow all red flags, she said.
“You can say that an admission form is not useless in terms of screening if that’s what practice has capacity and ensuring that you follow this,” she said.
But for some, it is a difficult compromise to do.
“We had a major concern about the fact that people could simply command drugs like this online and receive them,” said Debra Lynch, a nurse practitioner who began her tele-friendship because she believed that other shield law suppliers-including access to help-did not offer enough head advice between patients and suppliers.
Its organization, its refuge, prioritizes telephone calls with patients so that the staff can do their best to check that patients receive drugs for their own use and because they want to use them.
“Part of our regular screening process in our telephone calls is to ask them, are they felt by any type of pressure to do this, how comfortable they feel,” said Lynch. “Not that someone has to justify an abortion for any reason. Even if it’s just because she wants, it’s okay. We want to make sure that is their choice.”
