A tip brought a dog to the main post office in downtown Jackson, Miss. An employee there reported seeing someone in the lobby putting pills into hot pink envelopes. Hours later, Ed Steed, a police officer from the small city of Richland discovered the envelope contained five pills labeled “AntiPreg Kit.” They were made in India, and their medical purpose is to induce abortion, the Intercept reports. About two-thirds of abortions in the U.S. in 2023 were done with mifepristone and misoprostol, the two-pill combination found in AntiPreg and similar products. Most were prescribed by clinicians at brick-and-mortar offices or through telehealth appointments. The World Health Organization advises that the pills are so safe in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy that supervision by a medical clinician is not needed. Taking the pills without clinician oversight is called “self-managed abortion.” The practice is so widespread that the New York Times estimated that it comprised 10 percent of all U.S. abortions. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved the importation of foreign-made misoprostol or mifepristone pills or their distribution without a prescription.
The non-approved pills tend to enter the U.S. in bulk, most passing surreptitiously through Customs at land borders and international airports. Many are delivered to feminist-oriented mutual aid groups who distribute them at low cost or for free. Others go to people who are just trying to turn a profit. Both groups repackage their international bulk shipments as single doses and mail them domestically — typically from post offices. A piecemeal crackdown is already underway during a Democratic administration. Under a Trump regime, things might go much further. Whoever is in power, the incident in Jackson provides a potential window into the future — one in which freelancing local Postal Service employees and officials can call on local cops to halt women from accessing reproductive care and arrest those providing or using abortion medication. The pink-envelope investigation came out of a collaboration between federal regional offices and a local official: U.S postal workers and a city K-9 cop. No one in Mississippi has been arrested for helping carry out an abortion.
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