Demand for abortion pills sent from abroad more than tripled in Texas after the 1er September, when the American state considerably limited access to abortion, notes a study published on Friday.
Texas law put in place last September at the instigation of a conservative majority prohibits termination of any pregnancy once the embryo’s heartbeat is detected, after about six weeks of pregnancy, when most women don’t even know they are pregnant.
The article published Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association draws on figures from Aid Access, an Austrian company that provides abortion pills (for medical abortions) to women in the United States.
Before this new legislation, between October 2020 and May 2021, Aid Access received 10.8 requests for pills per day from Texas. The week following the application of the law, 137.7 requests were received daily, an increase of 1180%.
The following three weeks, the company received 37.1 daily requests, or 3.4 times more than during the reference period.
The following quarter (October to December 2021), it was still processing 29.5 requests per day, an increase of 173%, higher than other American states.
On Thursday, the Guttmacher Institute, which campaigns for abortion access, estimated that in 2020, for the first time, abortion pills were responsible for more than half of abortions in the United States (54% ).
Combining a drug, misoprostol, and a synthetic steroid, mifepristone, these pills were introduced to the US market in 2000.
In April 2020, to avoid exposing patients to COVID-19, the United States Medicines Agency (FDA) temporarily authorized their mailing, a possibility that continued in December 2021.
Texas passed a law restricting their access last December, but experts interviewed by the local press believe it will be difficult to enforce.
The law introduced in September in Texas is being challenged in court by abortion advocates in the United States, who point out that it opposes Supreme Court case law, which allows American women to have abortions until around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy. The question has not been definitively settled by American justice.