Despite a near-total ban, Arkansans in need are still able to access safe medication abortion care with the help of doctors and pharmacists in other states and countries.

That’s irritating to the puritans at the Arkansas Family Council. On Thursday, Family Council President Jerry Cox asked supporters to call on the Trump administration and members of Congress to outlaw abortion medication by mail and require in-person doctor visits instead. The Family Council press release said women in Ohio, Texas and Louisiana have been coerced into taking abortion-inducing medications, or that they’ve been given them without their knowledge.

“This is a women’s health issue,” Cox said in the release. “Abortionists in other states are shipping abortion pills into communities in Arkansas in violation of state law and with no medical oversight. We are urging Arkansans to contact the Trump administration and their members of Congress this week, and ask that federal officials reinstate the medical safeguards that the Biden administration removed.”

Viewed through a different lens, one could say that telemedicine appointments and prescriptions by mail helped thousands of Arkansans end unsafe or unwanted pregnancies in 2025. The Guttmacher Institute estimates clinicians provided 3,680 abortions in Arkansas last year, almost all of them thanks to medication sent in from out of state.

Doctors note mifepristone and misoprostol, the medications routinely used to induce abortion in the early weeks of pregnancy, have been used safely for decades, and represent a standard of care that politicians and courts know little about, and in which they lack the expertise to interfere.

For now, telehealth abortion access and shield laws that protect telehealth providers and pharmacists in pro-choice states mean savvy Arkansans can still maintain control of their destinies. Whether and how long we can hold on to that narrow freedom is a glaring red question mark.  

The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed telehealth abortion access in May when justices said a 2021 U.S. Food and Drug Administration policy allowing abortion pills to be dispensed online via telehealth appointments will remain in place as Louisiana’s legal challenge to the rule plays out in court.

The decision was at least a temporary reprieve for reproductive rights advocates struggling to help women with vanishingly few options. Thirteen U.S. states, including Arkansas, clicked near-total abortion bans into place in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court repealed abortion rights guaranteed at the national level since 1973. States regained the power to ban abortion, and in Arkansas, the Republican supermajority was ready, with a trigger law in place. Now, only women in danger of imminent death can legally end their pregnancies in Arkansas.

The medication-by-mail ban that Cox and other conservative activists seek would put abortion out of reach for Arkansans unable to travel to a state where doctors are still legally allowed to prescribe and provide abortion care.

The Family Council’s call to action does not include any other drugs commonly sent through the mail after online consultations. So don’t worry. Your boner pills and weight loss drugs are still safe from political meddling.