Don’t Trust DIY Abortion Advice on TikTok. These are the risks involved.

By Julia Craven
May 23, 2022

Scouring the internet for answers on “how to have an abortion at home” will dredge up answers that read like school-bus gossip: Some, like douching with Coca-Cola or taking a lot of vitamin C, are unlikely to be life-threatening, but they’re also extremely unlikely to end your pregnancy.

Other methods are blatantly unsafe. They include inserting anything into the vagina, which poses a high risk of infection and sepsis; ingesting toxic substances such as turpentine, bleach, and other household chemicals; and any type of physical trauma, such as hitting oneself in the abdomen or throwing oneself down the stairs. “These are all things that people heartbreakingly try to do to end their pregnancies due to lack of access to clinical care, or lack of information or awareness of safer methods,” says Heidi Moseson, a senior research scientist at Ibis Reproductive Health.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/article/diy-abortion-what-it-is-and-its-risks.html

A covert network of activists is preparing for the end of Roe

What will the future of abortion in America look like?

By Jessica Bruder
APRIL 4, 2022

One bright afternoon in early January, on a beach in Southern California, a young woman spread what looked like a very strange picnic across an orange polka-dot towel: A mason jar. A rubber stopper with two holes. A syringe without a needle. A coil of aquarium tubing and a one-way valve. A plastic speculum. Several individually wrapped sterile cannulas—thin tubes designed to be inserted into the body—which resembled long soda straws. And, finally, a three-dimensional scale model of the female reproductive system.

The two of us were sitting on the sand. The woman, whom I’ll call Ellie, had suggested that we meet at the beach; she had recently recovered from COVID-19, and proposed the open-air setting for my safety. She also didn’t want to risk revealing where she lives—and asked me to withhold her name—because of concerns about harassment or violence from anti-abortion extremists.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/roe-v-wade-overturn-abortion-rights/629366/

04.04.2022

American Medical Association

Army of Three

Autonomous Pelvic Care

Carol Downer

Choix

Clergy Consultation Service

Danika Severino Wynn

Del-Em device

dilatation and curettage

DIY abortion

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Laurie Bertram Roberts

Letitia James

Lorraine Rothman

lunch-hour abortion

manual vacuum aspiration

Mountain Access Brigade

Plan C

Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood v. Casey

self-managed abortion

Self-managed Abortion Safe and Supported

telemedicine abortion

The End of Roe v. Wade

traveling for abortion

trigger laws

undue burden standard

The Pandemic Means More People May Be Giving Themselves Abortions

The Pandemic Means More People May Be Giving Themselves Abortions
But the abortion pill sites people rely on are in jeopardy.

by Marie Solis
Apr 8 2020

The first time H* needed an abortion, she drove about two hours to the nearest clinic and back, waited 48 hours—the required waiting period for anyone in Tennessee seeking an abortion—then went back and paid more than $700 for the procedure. That’s not counting gas money for eight hours of driving, or the wages she lost when she took time off from her hourly job for the appointment.

In March, she learned she was pregnant again, and found herself confronting many of the same barriers to getting an abortion: The clinic was still far away, the procedure was still costly, and she would still have to take off a day or two to account for the waiting period and the drives to and from the clinic.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/g5xezx/abortion-pill-sites-still-shipping-during-coronavirus-aid-access

USA – There’s nothing pro-life about exploiting a pandemic to further a political agenda

There’s nothing pro-life about exploiting a pandemic to further a political agenda
It’s already apparent a small minority of zealots will do everything they can to use the coronavirus crisis to eradicate the right to an abortion

Arwa Mahdawi
Sat 4 Apr 2020

Coronavirus is an unprecedented public health crisis. But, for some Republicans, it’s also a political opportunity: anti-abortion activists are ruthlessly using the pandemic as an excuse to crack down on reproductive rights. Six conservative states – Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas – have categorized abortions as non-essential, except in very limited cases, effectively banning access to the procedure during the pandemic.

Federal judges have stopped the bans from going into effect in most of these states. However, on Tuesday an appeals court ruled that Texas could reinstate its abortion ban. On the same day women were told that their reproductive rights were considered dispensable, Texas’s Governor Greg Abbott declared that religious services were “essential” and in-person gatherings could continue during the pandemic. This is despite the fact that there have been multiple cases of coronavirus spreading in places of worship, with people dying as a result.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/04/abortion-restrictions-coronavirus-pandemic-nothing-pro-life

Mexico – The Radical Future of Self-Managed Abortion Is Already Here

The Radical Future of Self-Managed Abortion Is Already Here
“I remember one woman who arrived and asked, ‘Is this the clinic?’ And we were like, ‘What clinic?’”

By Amy Littlefield and Laura Gottesdiener
March 4, 2020

Lizy and the woman who helped her to end her pregnancy met at a Starbucks in León, the largest city in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. Then a 20-year-old social-work student with curly hair and a heart-shaped face, Lizy, which is a nickname we’ve used to help protect her identity, felt nervous about discussing her pregnancy in such a public place. She was afraid she could be jailed for even considering an abortion, which is a crime in most cases in the heavily Catholic and conservative state. Enrolled in an exchange program in a city where she knew few people, she had no way to make the hours-long trip to Mexico City, the only place where abortion was legal at the time. She and her partner felt hopeless. “We were dying from fear, really, we were two frightened children,” she said later, seated in a park in her home city of Guadalajara. Finally, she had confided in a professor who told her about Rosalía.

Continued; https://newrepublic.com/article/156667/radical-future-self-managed-abortion-already

USA – Activists Are Now Teaching Women How to Have Abortions at Home

Activists Are Now Teaching Women How to Have Abortions at Home
“So long as we have a safe option that can be accomplished outside of a clinical or medical setting, there’s no reason that shouldn’t also be available.”

by Carter Sherman
Jan 22 2020

COLUMBIA, Missouri — In the Columbia Public Library, just past a room where a Bible study was wrapping up, a group of people gathered in a conference room to learn how to have an abortion at home.

What happens when you self-induce an abortion? one woman asked the panelists, who sat at a table in the front of the room.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/xgqywj/activists-are-now-teaching-women-how-to-have-abortions-at-home

DIY abortion attempts three times as prevalent in Texas as other states, study finds

DIY abortion attempts three times as prevalent in Texas as other states, study finds

Andrea Zelinski
Jan. 9, 2020

AUSTIN — Using home remedies such as herbs, teas and vitamins or a prescription drug obtained from Mexico, Texas women have tried to end their pregnancies themselves three times more often than women in other states, a new study finds.

The Texas Policy Evaluation Project at The University of Texas at Austin found 6.9 percent percent of 721 patients seeking abortion tried to end their pregnancies on their own before going to an abortion clinic, compared to 2.2 percent nationally. The results of the study were released Thursday morning.

Continued: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/texas/article/DIY-abortion-attempts-three-times-as-prevalent-in-14962685.php

D.I.Y. – Self-Managed Abortion

Conscience Magazine, 2019 issue 2, Abortion
By Susan Yanow, Joanna Erdman and Kinga Jelinska
Posted Sep 19, 2019

The advent of abortion pills as a health technology has deep personal and political consequences for how, when and where abortions happen. The “discovery” of abortion pills occurred in the 1980s in Brazil, when women noticed that the label for misoprostol, a drug registered to treat gastric ulcers, cautioned against its use by pregnant women because the drug caused uterine cramping. Use of misoprostol alone to end unwanted pregnancy spread quickly in Brazil and across Latin America outside the formal health system, as abortion is criminalized in most of the region. 1

The use of pills for abortion entered formal healthcare systems when the French pharmaceutical company Roussel-Uclaf developed mifepristone for use with a prostaglandin like misoprostol to end a pregnancy (with higher effectiveness than misoprostol alone, although the World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes both misoprostol alone and the combination mifepristone/misoprostol as highly safe and effective).2

Continued: https://consciencemag.org/2019/09/19/d-i-y/

USA – Almost 40 Percent of Abortions Are Now Done With Pills

Almost 40 Percent of Abortions Are Now Done With Pills
Experts say the number would be even higher if the FDA loosened its restrictions on medication abortion.

by Marie Solis
Sep 19 2019

While the overall abortion rate in the U.S. has hit a record low since the procedure was legalized in 1973 under Roe v. Wade, the rate of people choosing medication abortion to end pregnancies is on the rise, according to new findings from Guttmacher Institute.

Medication abortion is a method of abortion that involves taking the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol to induce what is effectively a miscarriage. The method became available in the United States in 2000, when the Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone, and has dramatically increased in use since: Whereas in 2004, medication abortions made up just 14 percent of all abortions in the U.S., by 2015 that number rose to almost 25 percent. Now Guttmacher reports that the share of medication abortions in 2017 was 39 percent of the total, or almost two in five.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/gyzjgx/medication-abortion-rates-in-the-us-hit-record-high-of-40-percent

USA – With Abortion Restrictions On The Rise, Some Women Induce Their Own

With Abortion Restrictions On The Rise, Some Women Induce Their Own

September 19, 2019
Sarah McCammon

When Arlen found out she was pregnant this year, she was still finishing college and knew she didn't want a child.

There's a clinic near her home, but Arlen faced other obstacles to getting an abortion.

"I started researching about prices, and I was like, 'Well, I don't have $500,' " said Arlen, who is in her 20s and lives in El Paso, Texas. We're not using her full name to protect her privacy.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/759761114/with-abortion-restrictions-on-the-rise-some-women-induce-their-own