Dr. Angel Foster

A 29-year-old patient from South Carolina wrote to us to say, "...just left a domestic violence situation with the father of all the kids.

It's only been three weeks of him being in jail and I just found out.

I was a stay-at-home mom for seven years and have literally just started getting all of the balls caught up and figuring out life.

I have no idea how to even afford this right now, but I cannot have another."

I've had extremely difficult pregnancies and end up hospitalized almost every time, and I don't have a support system to help.

And so I fear that if we are unable to provide care through our telemedicine service to patients in states with near total bans or with severe gestational duration restrictions, it's patients like these that are not going to get the care that they need.

I'm not a lawyer, but when I read the dissent, what immediately came to mind was that

Justice Alito was providing a roadmap for anti-abortion actors, anti-abortion rights actors, providing them a roadmap for how to go after shield law providers and using language that suggested that there were conspiracies and schemes that involved the pharmaceutical company, the providers, potentially the state, you know, other kind of advocacy groups.

This current stay that's been extended of the Fifth Circuit's decision is...

just another step in this process.

The anti-abortion rights movement is preoccupied with restricting mefapristone in particular, but medication abortion more generally.

And they're doing a lot of things to do that, whether that's these suits that are coming through attorneys general or the lawsuits against individual providers, whether those are criminal or civil suits.

And, you know, what we're seeing is the SHIELD laws in states

where individual providers have been indicted or sued, the shield laws are doing their job.

The shield laws are working.

Everybody who's involved with the MAP has done their own kind of individual risk assessment to determine what makes the most sense for each person.

In my case, because I'm

the most public-facing person involved with the map.

I don't travel to or through states with near-total abortion bans or states with gestational duration restrictions.

I don't drive a car outside of Massachusetts, and I fly into the country.