I came across this article about six weeks ago, when the early-draft Supreme Court ruling on abortion was leaked. Because of other news, and since the Court hadn’t officially made its decision, I held off writing about. But Rachel Maddow did a story on it the other day, and had the Dutch woman behind it all on as a guest, and since the Supreme Court has now overturned Roe v. Wade, I scrounged through my notes to bring it back up. You likely know about it at this point, but it’s still worth addressing.
It's an organization called Aid Access, based in Austria that was started by Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch physician who in 2020 Time magazine listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. At that time, it was largely because of her fight for abortion rights and her Women on Waves “abortion boat” that would anchor off coasts in international waters, providing abortions to women who couldn’t obtain them. What Aid Access does (and has since 2018) is provide abortion pills over the Internet. As the Agence France-Presse article notes, the organization “has been working with physicians to fill requests in the 20 US states where abortion pills can be legally prescribed by telemedicine. “For requests from the other states, Gompert's group has exploited a legal loophole to send the pills from abroad.” Even before the Court ruling, demand had been high in the United States. Indeed, in just over a years, Aid Access got over 45,000 requests from the U.S. alone. There are other places one can order abortion pills over the Internet, but they are purely commercial. Aid Access provides medical care and also works with people depending on what they can afford to pay. It’s clearly not anything close to a substantial solution. As Gomperts notes, "The biggest problem is that the women that are not literate, that cannot read and write, that have no access to internet -- the most impoverished group -- they will not be able to find these solutions," But it’s a fascinating start. It’s an interesting article, and if you want to know more, here’s the full story.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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