One longstanding federal statute (18 U.S.C. § 1461), amended as recently as 1994, bars use of the United States postal service for abortion drugs:
Every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion … and
Every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion …
Is declared to be nonmailable matter and shall not be conveyed in the mails or delivered from any post office or by any letter carrier.
Another longstanding federal statute (18 U.S.C. § 1462), amended as recently as 1996, bars use of “any express company or other common carrier … for carriage in interstate or foreign commerce” for “any drug, medicine, article, or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.”
Each statute imposes a prison sentence of up to five years for a first offense and up to ten years for each additional offense.
The existence of Roe v. Wade might well have been a barrier to enforcement of these provisions. But now that Roe has been overruled, surely the Department of Justice will enforce these provisions, right? And even if Attorney General Garland and the Biden administration fail in their duty to pursue evenhanded enforcement of our laws, anyone who violates these provisions is vulnerable to prosecution in the next administration for violations that occur during this administration (subject, of course, to the relevant statute-of-limitations period, which I believe is five years).
These federal statutes ought also to mean that states have free rein to enact similar bans on carriage of abortion drugs. For there would surely be no conflict between the federal and state bans.
(There are First Amendment objections that can be brought against the parts of these statutes that limit advertising and other speech about abortion drugs, but those objections should have no bearing on their application to mailing and carrying abortion drugs.)