No choice: Men use mail-order pills to end pregnancies; women suffering from relaxed access

The abortion pill has become so easily accessible that even men can obtain it, with potentially disastrous consequences for pregnant women.

A half-dozen men have been accused of slipping the pills to their pregnant wives or girlfriends since the Food and Drug Administration relaxed its safeguards on mifepristone in 2021, allowing the abortion-inducing drug to be prescribed via telehealth without an in-person medical visit and delivered by mail.

“Coerced and forced abortions are already happening,” Melanie Israel, a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said in her Sept. 2 report, “Abortion Pills, Coercion, and Abuse.” “And every time safety protocols are degraded, it becomes easier for an unsupportive partner, abuser, or trafficker to harm women, girls, and unborn children.”

Ms. Israel’s newly updated database lists 17 incidents since 2015 in which third parties, usually men, were accused of giving the pills to pregnant women without their knowledge or strong-arming them into taking the drugs.

Most, but not all, of the incidents resulted in criminal charges. More often than not, the perpetrator succeeded in terminating the pregnancy.

The cases include that of Emerson Evans, a 31-year-old Illinois man who was charged last month with intentional homicide. Illinois Newsroom reported that he was accused of inserting four mifepristone pills into his pregnant girlfriend’s vagina. She lost the baby.

Abortion pills are legal in Illinois but not Texas, which bans most abortions and specifically prohibits abortion-inducing drugs from being mailed into the state. Even so, at least two men from the Lone Star State have been charged with secretly administering the pills.

In June, Texas Rangers in Tarrant County charged Justin Anthony Banta, 38, with capital murder and tampering with evidence. They said he invited his girlfriend out for coffee and then spiked her drink and cookies with abortion-inducing drugs after she refused to end the pregnancy.

The girlfriend suffered heavy bleeding. She went to an emergency room the next day but lost the baby. Mr. Banta’s attorney told WFAA-TV that his client was the victim of a “relationship gone bad.”

Last year, Mason Herring, a 39-year-old Houston lawyer, pleaded guilty to injury to a child and assault on a pregnant person for putting abortion-inducing drugs into his pregnant wife’s water in 2022. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail and six months of probation.

The baby survived but was born 10 weeks early and has developmental delays.

This updated report by @Melanie_Israel is vitally important. Not only is the abortion pill dangerous to women, but when the Biden FDA removed saftey regs and allowed mail-order abortion pills on the web, well it opened the door to coercion and abuse:https://t.co/NO58PrdwpW

— Ryan T. Anderson (@RyanTAnd) September 2, 2025

The first such incident on The Heritage Foundation’s list dates back to 2015. Pro-life advocates said the risks to pregnant women surged after the FDA eliminated the in-person dispensing rule for mifepristone in 2021, a change made permanent in 2023.

The agency’s initial approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs in the abortion pill protocol, in 2000 required women to have three in-person medical visits and obtain the pills at a clinic or hospital.

State legislatures are taking note. Last year, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed first-of-its-kind legislation classifying mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled and dangerous substances.

The legislation was introduced by state Sen. Thomas Pressly, a Republican whose sister, Catherine Herring, was married to Mason Herring and delivered their baby early after he doctored her drinks seven times.

Ms. Herring grew suspicious after being hospitalized once. She responded by saving samples of the beverages and turning them over to police, the Louisiana Illuminator reported.

The Texas Legislature took action this month by passing House Bill 7, giving residents standing to bring civil lawsuits against those who manufacture and distribute abortion pills. Damages start at $100,000 per pill.

The bill, known as the Woman and Child Protection Act, is expected to be signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican.

“HB 7 aims to stop the abortion pills in the first place,” said Texas Right to Life spokesperson Kim Schwartz. “Right now, anyone can go online and obtain abortion pills; abortionists don’t verify the identity of the buyer, so a man could easily order them. The Woman and Child Protection Act is made to be a deterrent to the companies and abortionists who sell the pills.”

Opposing the bill is Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, which said the Republican-led Legislature “fast-tracked cruelty through a second special session and doubled down on isolating Texans from the care we deserve.”

“HB 7 isn’t just about Texas; it’s designed to intimidate doctors, pharmacists, and manufacturers everywhere into cutting off access to medication abortion across the country,” Planned Parenthood said in a Sept. 2 statement. “This isn’t about safety. It’s about control. Texans deserve access to healthcare, not endless bans and persecution.”

As many as 19,000 abortion pills flow into Texas annually through online companies such as Aid Access, said Texas Right to Life, citing data from a 2022 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“There are penalties attached to it, but we’ve found an enforcement gap because a lot of the illegal activity is originating in other states or in other countries,” said Texas Right to Life President John Seago. “Then you have the political nature of district attorneys not wanting to invest resources or be seen as someone who’s enforcing pro-life laws. That has contributed to this enforcement gap that we’re trying to fill with House Bill 7.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, sent cease-and-desist letters last month to three distributors — two in California, one in Delaware — warning them to stop shipping abortion pills into Texas or face civil penalties of at least $100,000 for violating the Human Life Protection Law, a “trigger law” that went into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Texas prohibits abortions except to save the pregnant woman’s life or when the pregnancy poses “serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”

“This legal action follows two tragic cases in Texas in which radical abortion activists and organizations facilitated men illegally purchasing abortion-inducing drugs,” Mr. Paxton’s office said in an Aug. 21 statement.

Not all cases are cut-and-dried. In a lawsuit filed last month, Liana Davis, 37, of Corpus Christi, accused 34-year-old Marine Capt. Christopher Cooprider of spiking her hot chocolate, causing her to hemorrhage and lose the baby.

He has countersued for $1 billion in damages, accusing her of lying and saying he ordered the abortion pills at her request. His lawsuit also says the Corpus Christi Police Department declined to pursue charges after investigating.