[NOTE: My former employer, the USPS, is close to being the least glamorous government agency. I learned there a basic lesson of working-class life: the better we did our jobs, the more invisible & taken for granted we were by the public. I’m not complaining.
But as I watched and waded in the mail stream (we did speak of it as a river: it flowed in, it flowed out; sometimes flooded), I also learned that in its routine way, the mail also delivered many more dramatic chunks of the nation’s life and the people’s’ rights. It was once necessary for freedom of the press, and much of religion. It was Amazon before Amazon, bringing much of our stuff. It even served death: the cremated ashes of many citizens have bounced anonymously down its conveyor belts into parcel tubs; and it brought life: millions of prescriptions every day.
Even though digital now reigns and hogs the attention, the USPS still does all that. There’s no 3-D printer yet that can spit out my blood pressure pills, but the carrier slides them into my mailbox, and thereby delivers one of many important pieces of my national patrimony.
When seen from this angle, it’s no surprise that the mailbox is also a frequent scene of conflict, even battle: it has been the hammer of censorship; in the antebellum South, and again in World War One, it was sifted for seeds of abolition and terrorist anarchy.
And it is now contested again. It may sound far-fetched, but is entirely plausible that soon, otherwise ordinary Americans will be clapped in jail for using the mail. . . . Maybe you. Maybe me. . . .]
The Next Phase of the Abortion Fight Is Happening Right Now in New York [And in Your Mailbox]
Linda Prine spends a lot of time speaking to frantic women navigating the end of Roe v. Wade.
Prine is a New York physician and co-founder of the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline, which provides support to people using pills to end their pregnancies on their own. She started the hotline during the Trump administration in response to escalating state restrictions. At first, with abortion clinics still operating in every state, there weren’t many calls. Then Texas banned most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, and more calls started coming in.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned, “it just went through the roof, and it continued to get busier and busier,” said Prine. Now, 60 volunteers keep it staffed 18 hours a day. “Pretty much the phone rings almost nonstop, and we’re getting texts at the same time,” she said.
For those with unwanted pregnancies who live in states with abortion prohibitions, using medication to self-manage an abortion is sometimes the only option. “It’s only a minority of people who can afford the travel,” said Prine. Nonprofits like the Brigid Alliance can help cover expenses, but they can’t ensure people have child care they trust, make their bosses give them time off from work, or explain their absence to unsupportive parents. “So some people are figuring out how to get pills as best as they can,” Prine said.
Doing so can take a frighteningly long time. The Biden administration has authorizedtelehealth providers to prescribe and ship abortion pills, but online pharmacies won’t mail pills to states where abortion is illegal. Women can rent post office boxes in blue states and then have their mail forwarded, but Prine said that some telehealth providers check their patients’ IP addresses.
For people in prohibition states, one of the most reliable sources of mail-order pills is the European organization Aid Access, which Prine works closely with. But because those pills are shipped from India, they can take up to three weeks to arrive, an eternity for someone desperate to end an unwanted pregnancy.