State, Federal Law Enforcers Must Tackle Abortion Drug Cartel

A virtual drug cartel brags about setting up a distribution network from municipalities that don’t care about the kind of crimes they commit. Their targets are disproportionately people in states where the law limits the drugs due to health and safety concerns and dangers to young children. Shockingly, the people who sell the drugs intend for someone to die every time the drugs are used. Yet this crisis is often ignored — this drug cartel deals chemical abortion pills. 

A constitutional crisis is underway: Attorneys general are on the front lines, as chemical abortion pills are mailed in violation of the Comstock Act and blue states facilitate law-breaking and loss of life for their neighbors.

Attorneys general are stepping up, but they need to do more. More than 20 have called on Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reinstate health and safety standards for chemical abortion pills. In another recent letter, 16 state attorneys general called on Congress to address the attack on states’ pro-life laws through so-called shields. 

Missouri’s attorney general has filed suit against Planned Parenthood for deceiving women about the safety of abortion pills. 

At the federal and at the state levels, a lot of legislation has been on the move. A bill against chemical abortion pill trafficking is among the legislation caught in the Texas crossfire in a second special session.

Texas has filed suit against a New York doctor, Margaret Carpenter, who openly ships chemical abortion pills into pro-life states, leading to a $100,000 fine and an order to stop pushing the drugs. Though a county clerk’s job is literally to handle the paperwork of the law, a New York clerk refuses to file the paperwork for the judgment and now also faces legal consequences. 

In Louisiana, Carpenter also faces investigation and charges. 

Mostly Operating in Pro-Life States

Those dealing death by chemical abortion pills have set up operations in states that promise to block prosecution, which bizarrely means that law enforcement who may be investigating a crime against young women given the drugs by an abuser are blocked by those who protect the dealer rather than the victim. 

Right now an advertising campaign promoting chemical abortion pills at rural gas stations in West Virginia and Kentucky is underway, despite state protections for life in the womb.

Aid Access, an international pill pusher headed by Rebecca Gomperts, claims to have profited from more than 200,000 U.S. abortions since 2018. From July 2023 to August 2024, 84 percent of chemical abortion pills it sold went to states with limits on abortion, according to a recent report.

That’s not an accident; it’s a business plan. 

Gomperts regularly preens in the media about her deadly operation, pointing out her get-out-of-accountability-free card and telling reporters “I don’t care” about pro-life laws. 

“Where I work from, it’s legal to prescribe the medications. And so I’ll do that,” Gomperts told CBS.

In Texas, a woman recently filed a wrongful death suit against Aid Access for allegedly selling her former partner the chemical abortion pills he slipped into her in a cup of hot chocolate without her knowledge or consent. 

Mother Jones reports, “In some cases, the group relies on telemedicine shield laws — such as ones enacted in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, and Washington — to fulfill orders and mail them to recipients in states with bans.”

It’s not hard to find more such operations. 

NPR salutes with “Inside a medical practice sending abortion pills to states where they’re banned.” PBS details how to “navigate” the law. NBC explains “How a network of abortion pill providers works together in the wake of new threats.”

Unsafe Water

Using the abortion industry’s own math, due to abortion pills more than 50 tons of chemically tainted blood, placenta tissue, and human remains are dumped in our waterways each year. As Students for Life of America (SFLA) has detailed in five citizen petitions to the FDA, that is a crisis in the making that has never been properly addressed in the mad rush to get more chemical abortion pills on the market. SFLA has also invested in the water testing that the federal government has so far failed to do. 

The special protected class of chemical abortion pill pushers must end. The FDA must evaluate the pills as they are currently distributed. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) needs to respond to requests from SFLA, numerous other groups, and members of Congress to test the water. And attorneys general can use legal action to stop dumping. Water safety is uniquely an area in which state attorneys general can act to protect citizens, endangered species, and businesses, as both tourism and fishing depend on clean water. 

Even if you support abortion, that doesn’t mean that you want to drink other people’s abortions.

Trump Administration Must Act

The Trump administration, through the Department of Justice, could make a huge difference today on this issue of deadly distribution by enforcing the Comstock Act. A plain reading of the law is that chemical abortion pills cannot be mailed, and yet they are. Perhaps that’s one reason Costco didn’t want to engage in the business of distributing these pills, something SFLA called for in our Halt Pharmacy Abortions campaign.  

Given the lawlessness and recklessness of those making money, federal and state agencies and law enforcement also need to join in the fight that legislators and attorneys general are attempting. The Trump administration must be as aggressive in protecting life as their predecessors were in fast-tracking abortion deaths from chemical abortion pills. This is literally a life-and-death issue. 

Kristan Hawkins is president of Students for Life of America and Students for Life Action with more than 1,600 groups on educational campuses in all 50 states. Follow her  @KristanHawkins or subscribe to her podcast, The Kristan Hawkins Show. Kristi Stone Hamrick is vice president of media and policy at Students for Life Action and a former journalist and Pulliam Fellow. Follow her @KristiSHamrick.