State officials opposed to abortion are increasingly aiming legal threats at the websites, ads and internet plumbing that help people find abortion-related information, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In a post by EFF civil liberties director Lisa Femia, the group said the four years since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision ended federal constitutional protection for abortion have also produced a fight over online speech. The targets, EFF said, include not only providers and medication sellers, but also groups that publish educational material, referrals and links.
The mechanism is not subtle: send letters, file lawsuits, threaten investigations, or pressure hosts and domain companies. A state does not have to win in court for that to work. Smaller groups may remove material rather than spend money defending speech in a lawsuit they did not ask for.
Cease-and-desist letters aimed at information
EFF pointed to Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s June cease-and-desist letters to groups with abortion-related websites, including Plan C. Plan C describes itself as a public health campaign that provides educational resources and research on abortion access. EFF said the group does not sell or ship abortion pills. Marshall’s office nevertheless claimed Plan C’s website “facilitates, aids, and abets” illegal abortion.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin sent similar cease-and-desist letters to several organizations, according to EFF, including Mayday Health, which EFF described as another site that provides information rather than prescribing or mailing pills.
North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley also threatened legal action against the Prairie Abortion Fund and ordered it to remove material from its website, EFF said. The complaint there centered on links to outside resources, including Plan C. In practical terms, the alleged problem was a link to a site that links to other sites.
Broad laws and consumer-protection claims
South Dakota has gone further than letters. EFF said the state passed a law making it a felony to “advertise” anything “described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing an abortion.” Mayday Health has sued in federal court to block the law. Its complaint argues the statute could reach even a sweatshirt displaying Mayday’s web address.
Texas lawmakers introduced a bill last year that would have banned providing information on how to obtain an abortion-inducing drug, EFF said. The proposal would have applied to email, online chats and websites describing legal abortion services in other states. It did not pass, but EFF said Texas has tried similar bills for several years.
EFF also said some states are recasting abortion information as deceptive advertising. South Dakota sent Mayday a cease-and-desist letter and sued over ads reading “Pregnant? Don’t want to be?” with a link to Mayday’s site. Mayday countersued in federal court on First Amendment grounds. EFF said the federal judge declined to intervene while a state case was pending, but stated that Mayday’s website appeared to be protected First Amendment speech.
Missouri sued Planned Parenthood in 2025 under its consumer-protection law over a webpage saying abortion pills are safe, EFF said. Florida brought a RICO case over similar statements, relying heavily on a study funded by an anti-abortion think tank, while major medical organizations and long-running research have described serious complications from mifepristone as rare.
Pressure moves to internet intermediaries
EFF said Arkansas also sent letters to internet intermediaries, including a domain registry company and a web host, demanding they stop supporting a site discussing abortion drugs. That is the blunt instrument version of content moderation: if a domain or host drops a site, the speech vanishes for users everywhere, not just in the state making the demand.
Texas’s failed 2025 bill would also have required intermediaries to remove abortion-related content, EFF said. The group argued that imposing liability on services that host user posts conflicts with Section 230, the federal law shielding online intermediaries from many claims over user-generated speech.
The pressure campaign has reached Washington as well. In March 2026, Sen. Bill Cassidy and other Republicans on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee urged the Food and Drug Administration to use its tools against online sellers, including pressure on domain registrars, according to EFF.
EFF’s warning is broader than abortion. The same legal pattern, consumer-protection claims, criminal penalties and pressure on internet middlemen, can be pointed at other disfavored speech if courts and lawmakers let it work.
This story draws on original reporting from Techdirt.
