Last year, a Young Women for America ambassador in Nebraska (where the abortion drug is illegal) ordered the abortion drug from an Instagram page. She was not pregnant, but she filled out the online questionnaire, posing as an 18-week-pregnant minor. She did not get a receipt or order confirmation, but she did get a package delivered to her doorstep days later with no return label, no instructions for consumption, and no warnings. She opened the package and dumped a handful of white pills out of two little black baggies labeled “MF” and “MS,” supposedly for “Mifepristone” and “Misoprostol.”
If this young woman were an 18-week-pregnant minor, the abortion drug likely would have killed her. Abortion drugs cannot be administered after 12 weeks of gestation.
Recommended Stories
This shady Instagram-to-doorstep abortion drug scheme is not a fluke. It is courtesy of former President Joe Biden’s design, and two years into the present administration, that has not changed. For the domestic and international abortion drug industry, it is still Biden’s America.
The pro-life movement celebrated the overturn of Roe v. Wade right under the Biden administration’s nose in 2022. Trigger laws across the nation went into effect overnight, allowing pro-life states to protect unborn babies in their states for the first time since 1973. But the Biden administration was beholden to Big Abortion, and post-Roe retaliation came quickly.
Central to Biden’s counter-Roe strategy was the Department of Health and Human Services’ 2023 move to strip in-person dispensing requirements for the abortion drug. Since its first approval in 2000, the Food and Drug Administration guidance has included stringent safety standards for the use and prescription of the abortion drug: a minimum of three in-person consultations with a doctor, a maximum gestational age of seven weeks, in-office dispensing and consumption, mandatory in-office follow-ups, and mandatory reporting of adverse events.
Under the guise of COVID-19, Biden’s HHS removed the very last of these common-sense regulations for the dispensing of abortion drugs with a temporary suspension of in-person dispensing requirements just days after the conclusion of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization oral arguments. As of January 2023, that change was made permanent, and women in any state can get the abortion drug via mail without consulting a doctor to rule out ectopic pregnancy and determine gestational age (both fatal with the abortion drug).
Biden’s post-Roe revenge is working. Over two-thirds of abortions in the United States are now committed via the abortion drug. Therefore, abortion numbers are going up. Pro-life states with strong laws are seeing an influx of abortion drugs with no legal recourse. Thanks to Biden, the Roe reality rebounded quickly. Pro-life states’ hands are tied, and pro-abortion states still set the stage for national abortion norms.
The Biden Instagram-to-doorstep abortion scheme required a thorough cover-up to work. The scheme already benefited from one 2016 change at the FDA. After extending the availability of the drug from seven weeks’ gestation to 10 weeks under former President Barack Obama, all nonfatal adverse health events were no longer required to be reported. That made it easier for the Biden FDA to ignore the dangers of women taking a risky drug in their own homes without any medical oversight. As of 2025, an independent study found that 11% of women experience a serious adverse medical event — like severe hemorrhaging or sepsis — after taking Mifepristone for a DIY abortion. These are numbers that the FDA still does not acknowledge or record.
The Biden Department of Justice also had to redefine an existing federal statute that expressly prohibits the mailing of the abortion drug to suit its liking. The Comstock Act of 1873 plainly states that “Every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion … is declared to be nonmailable matter and shall not be conveyed in the mails or delivered from any post office or by any letter carrier.”
To avoid violating federal law, the Biden DOJ Office of Legal Counsel issued an interpretation claiming that the Comstock Act does not prohibit the mailing of abortion drugs if the “sender lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully.” There is nothing in the 1873 statute that references intent or outcome; the abortion drug itself is nonmailable by virtue of what it is, but the Biden DOJ OLC interpretation stands today.
IS BIRTH REALLY THE ONLY DIVIDING LINE? FACING THE MORAL REALITY OF LATE ABORTION
The abortion drug industry will continue to enjoy Biden’s America unless his post-Roe retaliation is unwritten. According to a recent Concerned Women for America national poll, over 67% of Americans definitely or probably believe that the FDA should again require an in-person doctor’s visit before dispensing the abortion drug to end Biden’s Instagram-to-doorstep abortion scheme.
At a minimum, HHS should reinstate in-person dispensing requirements for the abortion drug and reinstate robust adverse-event reporting requirements, and the DOJ should withdraw the Biden OLC Comstock opinion and enforce the law as written. Stalling in safety for women and babies is a losing strategy for conservatives, and American women deserve better than Biden’s Instagram-to-doorstep abortions.
Hannah Lape is legislative strategist for Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization. On X: @CWforA