Harsh Anti-abortion Laws Are Not Empty Threats
The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade more than a year ago, but in the time since, the number of abortions performed nationwide seems to have gone up, not down. And not just in blue states—even in red states where abortion has been banned, some sizable percentage of people can and do travel out of state or get abortion pills in the mail.
[Read: Dobbs’s confounding effect on abortion rates]
The anti-abortion movement is—no surprise—committed to stopping this flow of patients and abortion pills across state lines. One strategy that has recently emerged is, a 19th-century anti-vice law that the movement claims makes sending or receiving any abortion drug or device in the mail a federal crime. Other approaches are proliferating. In Alabama, the attorney general has vowed to use existing state conspiracy law to prosecute residents for helping others . And in Texas, several counties passed an ordinance allowing anyone to sue a person driving on local highways who is bringing to get an abortion, whether illegally in Texas or legally elsewhere.
