“It's almost here. We're going to succeed,” one young woman says to another in an ad recently aired in Alabama. The woman looks nervously over her shoulder as she drives past a sign indicating that the Alabama state line is one mile away. At that moment, a siren is heard.
A police car pulls them up, and a male officer wanders up to the driver's side window. “Miss, I need you to get out of the car and take a pregnancy test,” the officer said, leaning against the car and cheekily tapping a plastic pregnancy test on the door.
In the next frame, the officer bends the woman in front of the car and handcuffs her wrists. The voiceover warns, “Trump Republicans want to criminalize young Alabama women who travel for reproductive health care.”
opinion
The ad, titled “Fugitive,” was funded by California Gov. Gavin Newsom's Democracy Campaign PAC and is part of several ads and billboards he runs in states that ban abortion. One of them urges women who need an abortion to leave the state to seek care. Clinician in California. In the past few weeks, Newsom has also encouraged women from Arizona and Florida, states that have made headlines for their extreme abortion bans, to come to California for care.
The issue here is that women don't have to travel out of state to receive quality abortion care. Telemedicine abortions are currently available in all 50 states by licensed medical professionals based in California. Newsom's ad directs viewers to RightToTravel.org, where the only action he can take is to ask lawmakers in Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Alabama to pass bills that would strip them of their constitutional rights. You would never know from Newsom's ads that all you have to do is sign a petition asking them not to. Travel.
Nearly two-thirds of all abortions in 2023 will be performed using the pill, and one in five abortions will be performed through telemedicine, where a clinician will mail the pill. Women don't have to cross state lines or travel hundreds of miles to receive abortion care. They can access a laptop or pick up a cell phone and order abortion pills from a California clinician.
We need to sound the alarm about travel bans, but not in a way that misleads people into thinking they have to travel out of state for abortion care. Most people get an abortion before 12 weeks, and abortions are legal in all 50 states through telemedicine, which uses a pill mailed directly to your home in a few days. Telemedicine abortions are much cheaper, more convenient, and more private than traveling hundreds of miles out of state to receive treatment at a clinic.
If someone who saw this Alabama ad somehow ended up on a California state government website directing them to abortion care in the state, the site would include a California government website that would require people to travel to Alabama. Only state providers and finding telehealth providers who request patient transfers are listed. States where it is legal to receive abortion care. The website includes information about Aid Access, a telemedicine abortion provider in California that serves people wherever they live, and Armadillo Clinic, which serves people in California and six restricted states. No list has been published.
These providers operate under, among other things, California's Telehealth Provider Protection Act, signed by Newsom last September and effective in January. The law protects California clinicians from criminal and civil lawsuits brought in other states for telemedicine abortion services they provide to out-of-state patients. Three California-based clinicians have teamed up with Aid Access to currently serve people in all 50 states for a sliding fee of up to $150, with abortion pills delivered by mail within two to five days. Delivering.
Aid Access and two other U.S.-based telemedicine providers, Abuzz and Cambridge Reproduction Health Consultants, operate under the Telemedicine Abortion Provider Protection Act. The law is in effect in her five states outside of California: Massachusetts, Washington, Colorado, Vermont, and New York. Each month, these clinicians serve more than 12,000 people in states that prohibit clinicians from providing abortion care.
The sliding fee scale is supported by two new abortion funds: California-based Healthcare Across Borders' Abortion Pill Sustainability Fund and The Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine's ACT Fund. Plan C, another California-based organization, provides the most comprehensive guide to abortion pills in the nation.
Through the organization's network, California plays an important role in making abortions available to people living in states where abortion is prohibited, but you wouldn't know it from Newsom's billboards and commercials. You probably can't.
Many people are unable to travel out of state for abortion care. Many people cannot afford it. Half of abortion patients in the United States live in poverty, and 75% are low-income. Some people may not be able to travel due to caregiving responsibilities, and others may not be able to leave work to travel for abortion care, especially if they live in the South, where entire states currently ban access to abortion. .
Minors and teens are often unable to leave their homes and travel for abortion care. Undocumented immigrants and immigrants are prevented from traveling for abortion treatment at random checkpoints. Some people simply don't want to travel far from home for medical care.
These people have a right to know all the options available to them.
We urge Newsom to tell women all of their abortion options and stop telling them they have to travel for early abortion care. Mr. Newsom's message should include the most promising ways to help people living in ban states get abortions. That's because telemedicine abortion providers in California and elsewhere are mailing patients wherever they are, at a price they can afford.
Carrie N. Baker, PhD, JD, is a professor at Smith College and author of the forthcoming book, The Abortion Pill: History and Politics in the United States (Amherst College Press, 2024). Roxanne Szal is a reporter and editor based in Austin, Texas.
