(Daily Caller News Foundation) – In as little as five minutes, the Daily Caller News Foundation was able to easily order abortion pills opponents argue are unsafe without a doctor adequately verifying key eligibility requirements.
Groups that launched online services after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved mail-order abortions will provide the pill under circumstances that are questionable even by the agency’s relaxed standards, a DCNF investigation found.
“Mail-order abortion subjects women to an abysmal standard of care,” Dr. Christina Francis, CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs (AAPLOG), told the DCNF. “Not only is there minimal health screening that occurs, but women typically have no interaction with any medical professional, let alone a physician.”
The FDA removed in 2021 a requirement that providers distribute mifepristone in person and enabled prescribers to send the pill directly to women in the mail. Now, without speaking to a physician or confirming a pregnancy, a woman can order prescription abortion pills to her home “just in case” she needs them in the future.
Minutes after filling out a brief online form, she’ll have her request approved. Days after payment, the pills will arrive on her doorstep. The package might include a handwritten note saying, “You are brave,” but no doctor will physically be there to warn her that mifepristone is not “safer than tylenol” as its advocates claim or that the danger of complications is likely higher than the drug’s label indicates.
The DCNF obtained five sets of medication for $660 — with sets ranging from $90 to $150 each — simply by filling out online medical forms created by providers.
Three of the five organizations that sent pills to the DCNF — Aid Access, OPTIO Women’s Health and Abuzz Health — use GenBioPro, one of two FDA-approved manufacturers of mifepristone. The fourth, Cambridge Reproductive Health Consultants (CRHC), supplies pills produced by Danco Laboratories, the other approved manufacturer.
The final group, Women on Web, sent pills in a plain manila envelope that did not indicate the drug’s producer. The mailing address on its website is in Toronto, Canada, though the return address on the package was listed as “Supplement City” in Kansas City, Kansas.
The owner of the Kansas property is Jose Franco Guevara, per public records, who owns multiple other buildings in the neighborhood. He faced a federal lawsuit in 2019 for not paying employees overtime compensation at one business he runs in the area, Sabor Latino Restaurant. Guevara agreed to a Consent Order paying the employees money owed to them.
Several other groups listed P.O. boxes as their return address. Aid Access’ package shipped from a California address linked to an individual who works for Honeybee Health, which was the first online pharmacy to begin shipping abortion pills by mail.
Aid Access, OPTIO Women’s Health, Abuzz Health, CRHC, Women on Web and Honeybee Health did not respond to requests for comment. GenBioPro and Danco Laboratories also did not respond to requests for comment.
