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BY CARRIE BAKER | After Texas enacted a six-week abortion ban on September 1, the number of Texans visiting the website of Plan C—which provides information about how to order abortion pills online—increased over 15 times what it was five months ago.
While 2,220 Texans visited the Plan C website in April of this year, a whopping 34,996 Texans visited the website last month. “Most were from Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Fort Worth. But they were from all over, all over the state,” Plan C’s co-director Elisa Wells told Ms.
On the heels of the state’s newly-enacted abortion ban—blocked by a federal court on Oct. 6, then reinstated on Oct. 8 by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals—Governor Greg Abbott signed into law S.B. 4 making it a felony for doctors to mail abortion pills to a patient. Violating the law is a felony punishable by up to two years in jail and a fine of $10,000. The law applies to abortions induced after December 1, 2021. The law applies only to doctors and explicitly exempts pregnant people from criminal penalties for ordering pills online.
Unless Texas is willing to post abortion police at every woman’s mailbox to check and intercept her mail, Texans will still have access to medication abortion online and through the mail, says Wells.
(To read the article, click here.)
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