A national nonprofit is responding to Florida’s recent approval of a six-week abortion ban with a media campaign to tell people in the state they can still get abortion pills by mail well past that time frame.
Mayday Health has taken out newspaper and Spanish-language radio advertisements across the state to tell women that Gov. Ron DeSantis “doesn’t want you to know you can still get abortion pills by mail.” The ads direct Floridians to Mayday Health’s website where the founders share resources for mail-order birth control, emergency contraception, and medication abortion pills. Those resources include ways for Floridians to protect their digital privacy, create a mail-forwarding address, and find methods to order the abortion pills by mail.
On its website, Mayday explains that women can order the pills from international venders like Aid Access or order them from a U.S.-based telehealth prescriber and have them delivered to a state with abortion rights and then forwarded. Both routes bypass the current law in Florida.
Florida law requires women to have an in-person visit with a physician at least 24 hours before an abortion procedure, including for medicine abortion. Mifepristone and misoprostol are drugs used together to end a pregnancy within 70 days (10 weeks) without the need for a surgical procedure.
“The current laws do not criminalize the person seeking the abortion,” said Dr. Jen Lincoln, an ob-gyn and executive director of Mayday Health. “Also, anyone can go to Mayday and get help with their legal questions.”
Mayday is a clearinghouse for information on these mail order sites, although the sites are independently operated and Mayday simply provides awareness. Lincoln said it’s important for women to know that it takes a few weeks for the pills to arrive when using international prescribers.
Medication abortion successfully terminates the pregnancy 99.6% of the time, with a 0.4% risk of major complications, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the pills for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. The World Health Organization has approved them for use up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.
“If someone needs to seek emergency care for a complication, or even if she doesn’t have a complication and would like in-person care, she does not have to tell a provider she used these pills. It is exactly the same as if you present with a miscarriage. It doesn’t change the type of medical care you would get,” Lincoln said.
Mayday founders believe even though all abortions including medication abortions may soon be illegal in Florida after six weeks, Florida law can’t prohibit an out-of-state group from providing general information under the First Amendment right to protected speech. Mayday doesn’t prescribe or distribute abortion pills, just provides resources and education.
“The ability to advertise in theory is protected by the First Amendment, but that doctrine is complicated,” said Mary Ziegler, a professor at UC-Davis School of Law and author of Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present. “Telling people how to get the pills is different from sending them. Those are two different things. The only question is whether what Mayday is doing is considered free speech or ‘aiding or abetting.’ It could be hard to draw the line.”
However, Ziegler said a prosecutor would have to have the appetite to pursue a case against Mayday and take on a First Amendment challenge. “They would have to be prepared for any political fallout, and Republicans in Florida may feel they have done enough on abortion without having to do this too.”
Mayday was launched on June 24, 2022, the day the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, with a goal to educate womenabout abortion pills and how they can safely terminate a pregnancy. The organization has since partnered with social-media influencers, released ads on Pandora targeting core demographics, and put up billboards in states that have restricted or banned abortion. The organization’s mobile billboards have made the rounds on college campuses in several states.
In addition to abortion pill resources, Mayday Health also provides a reproductive legal helpline, a miscarriage and abortion hotline and tips on internet surveillance and self-defense.
For now, women can legally get the pills at abortion clinics with abortion legal up until 15 weeks.
DeSantis signed into law a bill to ban abortions after six weeks on April 14, and has often said: “We welcome pro-life legislation,”
However, Florida’s 15-week ban is being challenged before the state Supreme Court. If the court upholds the 15-week ban, or rules that Florida’s constitutional right to privacy does not protect access to an abortion, the six-week cutoff will take effect 30 days after the decision.
Lincoln said Mayday has given out more than 2,000 education flyers in Florida and she recently spoke at Florida State University. On Friday, she will be in Miami, filming content for her popular social media accounts with more than 3 million followers. She plans to film outside a pregnancy crisis center, also referred to as a fake abortion clinic, to inform viewers about what those centers aren’t telling pregnant women, she said.
A legal battle over abortion pills in the United States is now at the U.S. Supreme Court. For now, the U.S. Supreme Court has an administrative stay in an ongoing lower-court fight over the FDA-approved use of the abortion pill mifepristone, one of the two pills used in medication abortions. Without Supreme Court intervention, mifepristone could be heavily restricted
“What we would do is the same messaging, letting women know you can still get it through international prescribers,” she said.
The pill already is restricted in some form in another 15 states, and Mayday has been helping women in those states with workarounds.
Sun Sentinel health reporter Cindy Goodman can be reached at .
