Post-Roe battle over abortion pills reaches Kentucky gas stations as AG opens investigation

With the March for Life marking nearly three years since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Kentucky has launched an investigation into out-of-state groups advertising mail-order abortion pills, citing a post-Dobbs law that bans the drugs’ delivery into the state.

The march's organizers now see new meaning in their annual demonstration following the landmark Dobbs decision, and states around the country are taking sides on whether abortion should be "safe, legal and rare," as then-President Bill Clinton put it, or liberally permitted or strictly prohibited. In Kentucky, lawmakers responded by passing House Bill 3 in 2022, banning the mailing or delivery of abortion-inducing drugs.

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman told Fox News Digital on Friday that he is citing the law in launching an investigation into organizations that could be participating in unlawful activity in that regard, as reproductive health groups have been advertising at gas stations in both the Bluegrass State and its Appalachian neighbor West Virginia.

In recent months, a New York-based nonprofit called Mayday Health that advertises "abortion pills by-mail" announced it would buy advertising at more than 100 gas stations in the two rural states, asking, "Pregnant? Don’t want to be?" and inviting customers to contact them.

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Coleman told Fox News Digital on Friday his probe is intended to discern whether the mail-order abortion ban and/or Kentucky's consumer protection laws are being violated by these groups. 

"Out-of-state activist groups who are targeting the vulnerable here should be on notice: Keep your illegal pills out of our Commonwealth or face the full weight of the attorney general’s office," Coleman said, issuing subpoenas to the various fuel stations as well.

"These deadly and unlawful pills cannot be allowed to continue flooding into Kentucky through the mail, and we will thoroughly pursue every lead to hold bad actors accountable," he continued, adding the ads may also violate Frankfort’s consumer-protection laws.

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Coleman said that any resident who sees such ads should report them to his agency’s consumer-protection office.

Liv Raisner, executive director of Mayday, told Fox News Digital in response that "it turns out [Coleman] doesn't like free speech as much as he says," adding her group similarly advertised at South Dakota gas stations and won a temporary restraining order against that state.

"We think everyone in Kentucky, and South Dakota, and around the country, should know that abortion pills are safe and available," Raisner said.

On the other side of the Tug Fork River, West Virginia itself previously took action to pass a near-total ban on abortion drug Mifepristone — a policy that was later upheld by a court — along with hefty restrictions on abortions themselves.

Mississippi, where the Dobbs case originated, had passed the Gestational Age Act in 2018, banning most abortions after 15 weeks, which set up a legal battle after the Tupelo State’s only clinic sued. The result of that case before the high court opened the floodgates to other localized changes nationwide.

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Upon the decision in favor of Dobbs, Mississippi’s pre-Roe ban became enforceable once more, as did a slew of other states’ so-called "trigger laws." Those include Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and North Dakota. 

Other states moved in the opposite direction. Arizona lawmakers decided to repeal their state’s ban after the Dobbs decision came down, while the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down a pre-Civil War law there that essentially provided for felony charges for anyone who "intentionally destroys the life of an unborn child." Illinois moved to protect abortion pills and expand the roles of medical providers, while Montana voters passed a constitutional amendment enshrining abortion rights.

Virginia voters will decide on a similar amendment this year, after lawmakers in the Democratic-majority legislature passed such a resolution.

Several other states have expressly protected abortion in their state constitutions since the Dobbs decision, further expressing the Tenth Amendment dichotomy of regulating issues not expressly delegated to the federal government by the Constitution that the high court’s ruling indicated.