Abortion restrictions lead more in US to stock up on abortion pills
(WISH) — Just in case.
That’s the mindset for many when it comes to the abortion pill.
Thousands of women have stocked up on abortion pills just in case they need them, new research shows, according to The Associated Press. Demand peaked in the past couple years when it looked like the medications might become harder to get.
Medication abortion accounts for more than half of all abortions in the United States, and typically involves two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol. A research letter published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine looked at requests for the pills from people who weren’t pregnant and sought them through Aid Access, a European online telemedicine service that prescribes them for future and immediate use.
Aid Access received about 48,400 requests from the U.S. for so-called “advance provision” from September 2021 through April 2023. Requests were highest right after news leaked in May 2022 that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade but before the formal announcement that June, researchers found.
Nationally, the average number of daily requests shot up nearly tenfold, from about 25 in the eight months before the leak to 247 after the leak. In states where an abortion ban was inevitable, the average weekly request rate rose nearly ninefold.
Daily requests dropped to 89 nationally after the Supreme Court decision, the research shows, then rose to 172 in April 2023 when there were conflicting legal rulings about the federal approval of mifepristone. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on limits on the drug this year.
Co-author Dr. Rebecca Gomperts of Amsterdam is director of Aid Access. Gomperts attributed this spike to greater public awareness during times of uncertainty.
Researchers also found inequities in who is getting pills in advance. Compared with people requesting pills to manage current abortions, a greater proportion were at least 30 years old, white, had no children and lived in urban areas and regions with less poverty.
Advance provision isn’t yet reaching people who face the greatest barriers to abortion care, said Dr. Daniel Grossman, an OB-GYN at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the research.
“It’s not surprising that some people would 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 through telehealth once pregnant,” he added in an email, also saying more research is needed into the inequities.
Recently, Aiken said, some other organizations have started offering pills in advance.
“It’s a very new idea for a lot of folks because it’s not standard practice within the U.S. health care setting,” she said. “It will actually be news to a lot of people that it’s even something that is offered.”