- Andrea Picciotti-Bayer.

Scott Jennings.

The two of you are high school sweethearts.

Christine is your daughter.

She's 17.

You have a son too, Max.

He's 14.

And Max comes in and gives you something he's found when he was snooping around in Christine's room, two prescription medicine bottles.

- Wow.

- For mifepristone and misoprostol.

Abortion pills.

Now, the pills are still in the bottle and the date on the bottle is from three weeks ago.

But I have to ask, how does it feel to make this truly difficult discovery?

- It's like a gut punch, right?

Because something's going on in our daughter's life and we didn't know about it.

- You look down at the bottle and the labels are unlike anything you've seen before.

The name of the drug is on the bottle, but the space where the name of the doctor who prescribed the drug is empty.

The patient's name empty.

Does that seem right to you, Scott?

- This does not seem right and now I have a whole host of questions about where these things came from, who helped procure them.

Did they even come from a doctor?

Did they come from the United States?

- To help us understand what might be happening here, let's talk to Professor Michele Goodwin.

Professor Goodwin, you are a national expert on health law.

You're also a senior policy advisor to the governor of Fredonia, Middlevania's neighboring state where abortion is legal.

Can you help us understand how or why there might be a prescription drug bottle in Scott's hand that doesn't have the name of the doctor?

- After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 2022, there were nearly two dozen states now that have enacted what are called shield laws.

And what these shield laws do is to protect doctors in states where reproductive health rights justice matters are still legal.

The reason why these states have enacted these shield laws that protect doctors is because in states that have passed abortion bans, there have been now, with that, laws that could criminally penalize a doctor for performing an abortion with the penalty being up to 99 years incarceration.

- Fredonia, in fact, has passed exactly the kind of shield law that Professor Goodwin has described.

It allows prescribing physicians in Fredonia to keep their identity hidden from parents like Andrea and Scott.

Let's talk to a doctor who is protected by Fredonia's shield law.

That's you, Dr.

Jennifer Gunter.

Dr.

Gunter, you are a OB/GYN who lives and practices in Fredonia.

And I'm wondering if a patient from Middlevania were to come to you and ask for abortion pills, would you be comfortable writing that prescription?

- Absolutely.

- [Aaron] Why?

- Because everybody has a right to control what happens to their own body.

These are incredibly safe medications.

It is safer to have a medication abortion than to take a pregnancy to term, and I believe in choice in all matters.

So I would absolutely support that person.

- And in fact, the pills that Scott Jennings is holding in his hand were prescribed by you, Dr.

Gunter.

Do you have any second thoughts, doubts, now that the pills you prescribed to Christine have been discovered by her parents?

- I don't because a 17-year-old can show up in labor and delivery and get a C-section in most places without her parents.

And if she can get a C-section, she can surely take a medication that is safer than a C-section.

- [Aaron] Governor Severino.

- Dr.

Gunter would not be allowed to practice in Middlevania because in this state, we recognize that with every pregnancy, there are two patients, not just one.

And both patients need to be protected in law and by the doctors treating them.

That is a fundamental difference between this state and Fredonia.

So she would not be welcome to practice medicine here.

- But if she lives and practices in Fredonia, prescribes these pills perhaps in a telehealth appointment, never steps foot in your state, would you try to go after her, prosecution, jail time, fines?

- To the extent we can.

So in circumstances where they're mailing pills unregulated by our state, this is black market practices.

This is illegal.

We have the ability to regulate the practice of medicine in our state, and we have somebody without the jurisdiction, without the regulation, without the supervision of our system, just like in any other state, they do not have a right to practice here.

- Scott Jennings, does anything anybody said here make you feel any better about your dilemma?

- No, I feel worse because I have adults who I don't know in other places putting medication in my minor child's hands without my knowing about it, without my wife knowing about it, without us knowing any of the circumstances of this.

So, no, I feel much worse about what I've heard here because everybody seems to want to get in the middle of the relationship between us and our child, and it's troubling to me.