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Hastings Center Report

Upcoming Abortion Case Threatens Telemedicine and Justice in Medicine

Published

New York physician Mary Carpenter faces criminal charges from Louisiana and Texas for mailing abortion pills to patients in those states, where abortion is illegal – a case that is “likely to become the Supreme Court’s next blockbuster ruling on abortion,” writes Katie Watson in the Hastings Center Report.

Watson, a Hasting Center Fellow, is a bioethicist and lawyer at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. The case against Carpenter is important, she writes, because “it’s about the regulation of new medical technologies, as well as economic justice in medicine.”

Takeways from the essay:

  • Three years after Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortion bans in 19 states haven’t cut the total number of procedures nationwide; one reason is that 100,000 people obtained abortion pills prescribed by telemedicine by physicians practicing in states where abortion is legal.
  • Shield laws currently protect these clinicians from out-of-state prosecution, but this could change if the Supreme Court rules against Carpenter.
  • Abortion bans have caused financial, psychological, and privacy harms, and at least six deaths have been linked to restricted access.
  • Restricting telemedicine disproportionately impacts those who cannot afford in-person travel.

Watson is the author of Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law, and Politics of Ordinary Abortion, which the New York Times recommended as one of “Ten Books to Understand the Abortion Debate in the United States.”