Abortion Shield Laws: A New War Between the States

Doctors in six states where abortion is legal are using new laws to send abortion pills to tens of thousands of women in states where it is illegal.

By Pam Belluck
Feb. 22, 2024

Behind an unmarked door in a boxy brick building outside Boston, a quiet rebellion is taking place. Here, in a 7-by-12-foot room, abortion is being made available to thousands of women in states where it is illegal.

The patients do not have to travel here to terminate their pregnancies, and they do not have to wait weeks to receive abortion medication from overseas.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/health/abortion-shield-laws-telemedicine.html

US women are stocking up on abortion pills, especially when there is news about restrictions

BY LAURA UNGAR
January 2, 2024

Thousands of women stocked up on abortion pills just in case they needed them, new research shows, with demand peaking in the past couple years at times when it looked like the medications might become harder to get.

Medication abortion accounts for more than half of all abortions in the U.S., and typically involves two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol. A research letter published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine looked at requests for these 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.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-pill-mifepristone-roe-1a257ab09aeeb6528ccca2f70363577c

02.01.2024

stock up on abortion pills

USA – What if You Had Abortion Pills in Your Medicine Cabinet?

Oct. 13, 2021
By Patrick Adams

In 2018, the Austria-based nonprofit Aid Access began offering Americans a new service: For the first time, pregnant people could obtain abortion pills by mail, with a prescription from a licensed physician, without ever visiting a clinic. For years, the group’s founder, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, had been doing similar work overseas. But as abortion rights were steadily eroded by Republican-controlled legislatures, Dr. Gomperts found herself inundated with requests from the United States and decided to act.

Three years later, American abortion rights are more threatened than ever, with the fate of Roe v. Wade resting on several Supreme Court justices appointed by Donald Trump. In response, Aid Access has introduced a service that offers a possible path forward for doctors adapting to the changing abortion landscape and reckoning with their role in gate-keeping a politically fraught drug: prescribing abortion pills in advance, to be kept on hand in the event of a future unwanted pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/opinion/abortion-pills-texas-prescription-doctors.html

How people are getting around the new Texas abortion law

Providers have seen a surge in interest in online purchases of abortion pills since the state's near-total ban went into effect.

Sept. 25, 2021 By Rebecca Shabad

WASHINGTON — K.T. Volkova got a positive pregnancy test just days before Texas' controversial law banning most abortions took effect.

The 23-year-old, who identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, was nearly six weeks pregnant and immediately knew they wanted an abortion. But Volkova was already on the cusp of the limit set by the new law, which bars in-clinic abortions after the detection of a fetal cardiac activity, or as early as six weeks.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/how-people-are-getting-around-new-texas-abortion-law-n1279961

How to Order an Abortion Online

Here’s how Texas women are getting around the most extreme abortion ban in the nation

By TESSA STUART
September 16, 2021

In the 21st century, you can order an abortion online. “It can be done without ever leaving your home,” says Elisa Wells, co-director of the organization Plan C, which provides information and instructions about how to self-manage an abortion. “You go online. You have either a virtual consultation or an e-visit — that’s just done by filling in a form and chatting with the provider. And then they mail the pills to your home…No need to take time off from work. No need to encounter protesters.” And no need, if you live in the state of Texas, to expose anyone to the threat of a lawsuit under the state’s medieval new abortion ban.

Continued: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-to-order-abortion-pill-online-texas-sb8-1224437/

Abortion in a Post-Roe World? “People Are Resilient and Resourceful”

Thanks to new medications and innovative organizations committed to reproductive health and bodily self-determination, a reversal of Roe v. Wade would not send us back to the pre-Roe world of coat hangers and hospital wards full of deathly ill women.

6/3/2021
by CARRIE N. BAKER, Ms. Magazine

The day after the Supreme Court announced they would hear the Mississippi abortion ban case, internet searches related to self-managed abortion surged across the United States—especially in states hostile to abortion rights. Online searches for terms related to abortion pills such as “misoprostol” and “medical abortion” exploded by more than 5,000 percent in the 24 hours after the court’s announcement.

“We see a definite spike in visitors to our website when there is news about abortion bans,” said Elisa Wells, co-founder and co-director of Plan C Pills, which provides up-to-date information on how to access abortion pills online. “People are looking for ways to access abortion pills. The need for abortion is never going to go away. When you cut off mainstream supply of it through clinical means, people will look for other ways to access the service.”

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2021/06/03/misoprostol-medical-abortion-post-roe-v-wade-abortion-pill-plan-c-aid-access-self-managed-abortion/

USA – Cost of care, distance to clinics drives demand for self-managed abortion: Study

The study looked at 57,500 who requested self-managed medication abortions.

By Alexandra Svokos
21 May 2021

The cost of care at clinics is a major factor driving patients to seek self-managed abortion through telemedicine, a new study published Friday found.

Aid Access, a nonprofit advocacy group founded by a Dutch doctor, helps individuals access abortion by arranging to mail mifepristone and misoprostol, the pills that make up a medication abortion, directly to people -- thus, they can have a self-managed abortion, meaning they take care of it outside a traditional medical setting. The study, published in the peer-reviewed JAMA Network Open, used data from the organization.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/cost-care-distance-clinics-drives-demand-managed-abortion/story?id=77826875