JAMA Study on Mail-Order Abortions Contains Fatal Flaws That Invalidate Its Legal Claims
Source: Jamie Bryan Hall. "No, Mail-Order Abortions Aren't 'Almost Exclusively' Legal." April 22, 2026. thefederalist.com
The Gist
The author argues that a medical journal study claiming mail-order abortion pills are mostly legal is deeply flawed. The study misses illegal activity because people lie about where they live and illegal providers don't report their data, making the study's conclusions unreliable.
Conclusion
The JAMA study's claim that mail-order abortions are 'almost exclusively' legal is false and should be ignored by courts and the FDA
Premises
- The study's dataset will reflect lies when women misrepresent their state of residence to obtain abortion pills illegally in pro-life states
- The dataset excludes mail-order pharmacies that prefer not to create paper trails of illegal activities, missing crucial data
- The study captures only about 3,000 mifepristone prescriptions per month while pro-abortion groups report 10,000 illegal telehealth abortions monthly
- The study can only report that pharmacies claim to provide pills legally, not that the provision actually is legal
- Cases like Rosalie Markezich's coerced abortion would not appear in the study's database despite representing real harm
Assumptions
- Women seeking illegal abortions will lie about their state of residence to obtain pills
- Pharmacies engaged in illegal activities will avoid participating in data collection
- The missing 15% of mail-order pharmacies include those operating illegally
- Pro-abortion organizations' statistics about illegal telehealth abortions are accurate
- Individual harm cases like Markezich's are representative of broader problems