I bought them online. They’re easy to get, and they’ll change everything.
One afternoon about a year ago, just as the US Senate began considering Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, I logged on to Day Night Healthcare, an online pharmacy based in India, and ordered a pack of abortion pills. A few hours later, I got a call from a Day Night customer service agent with a warning. If my credit card company called to ask about the purchase, “Tell them you approve the charge, but don’t say what it’s for,” the man advised. “If they ask, say it’s gym equipment, or something like that.” In fact, the bank never called, and in a week and a half, a small brown envelope – bearing a postmark not from India but from New Jersey – arrived in the mail.
Farhad Manjoo continued his research by ordering pills online from three other sources after this first one. The packets cost $200-300 each. He continues: “Each time I got a pack of pills in the mail, I was increasingly bowled over: If this is so easy, how will they ever stop this? I’ve been watching digital markets for 20 years, and I’ve learned to spot a simple, powerful dynamic: When something that is difficult to get offline becomes easy to get online, big changes are afoot.”
SOURCE: New York Times, by Farhad Manjoo, 3 August 2019 ; VISUAL by Angie Wang