Thousands of women have been stockpiling abortion pills just in case they need them, a new study suggests, with demand peaking over the past two years at times when it seemed the drugs might become harder to obtain .
Medical abortion accounts for more than half of all abortions in the United States and typically involves two medications: mifepristone and misoprostol. A letter from researchers published Tuesday in the medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine reviewed requests for pills from people who were not pregnant and who requested them through Aid Access, a European online telemedicine service that prescribes pills for future and immediate use.
Aid Access received approximately 48,400 requests from across the United States for so-called “advance dispositions” between September 2021 and April 2023. Researchers found that requests peaked right after the leak in May 2022 on the news that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade – but before the official decision announced in June.
Nationally, the average number of daily requests increased almost tenfold, from about 25 in the eight months before the leak to 247 after the leak. In states where abortion bans were inevitable, the average weekly request rate increased ninefold.
“People see the threats to access to reproductive health, the threats to their reproductive rights, and potentially ask: How can I prepare for this? Or how can I get around this or get out of this sooner,” raised the DD Abigail Aiken, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the letter’s authors.
The study shows that daily requests fell to 89 nationally after the Supreme Court decision, then rose again to 172 in April 2023, when conflicting legal rulings were issued regarding the federal authorization of mifepristone. The Supreme Court is expected to rule this year on the limits imposed on this drug.
The co-author, DD Amsterdam’s Rebecca Gomperts, director of Aid Access, attributed the rise to greater public awareness in times of uncertainty.
Researchers found inequalities in who gets the pills in advance. Compared to people seeking pills to manage their current abortions, a larger proportion were at least 30 years old, white, had no children, and lived in urban areas and less poor regions.
According to the Dr Daniel Grossman, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study, says advance arrangements are not yet reaching people who face the greatest barriers to related care to abortion.
“It’s no surprise that some people want to have these pills on hand in case they need them, instead of having to travel to another state or try to obtain them via telemedicine once they’re pregnant,” she said. he added in an email, also saying that more research is needed regarding inequality.
DD Aiken said other organizations have started offering pills in advance.
“It’s a very new idea for a lot of people because it’s not a common practice in health care in the United States,” she said. It will actually be news to a lot of people that this is even something that is being proposed. »
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