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

Women on Web Telemedicine Abortion Service Turns 15!

May 10, 2021
Women on Web

For 15 years now, Women on Web, the first ever telemedical abortion service, has made sure that pregnant people around the world have access to safe abortions. The first abortion Women on Web provided was to a woman living in Lisbon, who completed the online consultation on May 10, 2006, when abortion was still illegal in Portugal.

Continued: https://www.womenonweb.org/en/page/20954/women-on-web-telemedicine-abortion-service-turns-15

13.05.2021

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Europe’s underground abortion network

When terminations are banned in Poland, Polish women buy train tickets

Feb 27th 2021
The Economist

Wander around any Polish city and the same phone number pops up on an array of unlikely surfaces. It is scrawled on bus stops and billboards. It can be daubed on the side of a church. Head online and the same number (+48 222 922 597) appears in people’s usernames. Those who dial it are put through to Kobiety w Sieci (“Women on the Net”), a group that offers women information on how to get abortions. In a country where providing terminations is now, in effect, illegal, it is a useful number to have.

In October Poland’s constitutional court struck down a law allowing abortion in cases of fetal abnormality. Of the 1,000 or so legal abortions in Poland per year before the ban, nearly all were in this category. Now, abortion is limited to cases of rape or to save a mother’s life. This fulfils a long-held dream of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party to clamp down on abortions. Activists responded by turning cities into a gonzo Yellow Pages.

Continued: https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/02/27/europes-underground-abortion-network

USA – Unacceptable care: why patients manage their own abortion

As states make it more difficult to get abortion pills from providers, they may just be increasing the demand for medication abortion

eb 8, 2021

Susan Rinkunas

Almost 40 percent of abortions in the United
States each year are done with pills—but those are just the ones provided in
clinics and other medical facilities. An unknown number of people end their
pregnancies on their own with pills they bought online or from a pharmacy in
another country. This is known as self-managed abortion, or sourcing and using
the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, or misoprostol alone, to end an early
pregnancy outside of a medical setting.

Some people prefer going it alone, while others buy their own pills because
getting care in a clinic is too difficult, expensive, or risky. Interestingly,
some patients who get pills from an abortion provider and take them at home
also call that process self-managed abortion, since they are in fact, ending
their pregnancy themselves. This confusion highlights the hypocrisy of
restrictions on abortion pills, said Dr. Jamila Perritt, an abortion provider
and president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health.

https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2021/02/08/unacceptable-care-why-patients-manage-their-own-abortion/

Dutch abortion activist lands on Time Magazine’s 100 most influential list

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2020

Rebecca Gomperts is one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people this year. The Dutch activist has dedicated her life to trying to get women safe access to abortions in countries where abortion is illegal.

Gomperts is the founder of Women on Waves, which involves a ship with an on board abortion clinic. Women are taken from countries where abortion is illegal by boat to this ship on international waters, where they can get the treatment they need.

Continued: https://nltimes.nl/2020/09/23/dutch-abortion-activist-lands-time-magazines-100-influential-list

23.09.2020

TIME 100: Rebecca Gomperts is among the 100 most influential people of 2020

For immediate release, September 23nd, 2020

Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, founder of Women on Web, Women on Waves and AidAccess, has been chosen among the 100 most influential people of the world in 2020 by Time magazine.

Cecile Richards writes for Time 100: "In this moment of fear and uncertainty, Gomperts is a beacon of hope, standing up for the principle that safe abortion is a human right."

The full list of the Time most influential people of 2020 can be seen here: time.com/time100

Continued: https://www.womenonwaves.org/en/page/7616/time-100-rebecca-gomperts-founder-of-women-on-web-is-among-the-100-most-influ

USA – Coronavirus Sparks Surge in Demand for At-Home Abortions

Interest in at-home abortions spiked most in states that used the outbreak as an excuse to restrict access to clinics.

Emily Shugerman
Published Jul. 21, 2020

As the nation locked down for the coronavirus pandemic and some states used the virus as an excuse to further restrict abortion access, women around the country became concerned they might not be able to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. A new study suggests many of them may have turned to at-home options.

The study, released Tuesday by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, analyzed the number of requests sent to Aid Access, a website that mails abortion pills to women in the U.S., between January 1 and April 11. Across the country, they found a 27 percent increase in requests after March 20—the average date lockdown orders started in most states.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/coronavirus-sparks-surge-in-demand-for-at-home-abortions

21.07.2020

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USA – Amid Covid-19, a Call for M.D.s to Mail the Abortion Pill

Amid Covid-19, a Call for M.D.s to Mail the Abortion Pill
For decades, the consensus has been that F.D.A. regulations require that the abortion pill be obtained in a clinic. But that’s changing.

By Patrick Adams
May 12, 2020

Last fall, months before America’s first outbreak of the coronavirus, Francine Coeytaux and Elisa Wells, co-founders of the abortion rights advocacy group Plan C, were reaching out to doctors with a question they said was urgent:

“Would you be willing to mail the ‘abortion pills’ to women in their homes?”

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/opinion/covid-abortion-pill.html

Netherlands – Health minister urged to guarantee abortion pill access amid corona restrictions

Health minister urged to guarantee abortion pill access amid corona restrictions

April 3, 2020

Pro-abortion organisation Women on Waves and women’s support agency Bureau Clara Wichmann are urging health minister Hugo de Jonge to act swiftly to make the abortion pill available to women who are unable to make the requisite visit to an abortion clinic because of the corona crisis.

Women who want to terminate an early pregnancy are bound by law to visit an abortion clinic before they can be given the drugs. The current coronavirus restrictions are making this impossible for at least two women in the Netherlands who are self-isolating, the organisations said. Both women want to terminate their pregnancy within the first trimester using the abortion pill.

Continued: https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2020/04/health-minister-urged-to-guarantee-abortion-pill-access-amid-corona-restrictions/

The FDA Could Improve Abortion Access Under Coronavirus But It Won’t

The FDA Could Improve Abortion Access Under Coronavirus But It Won't
Abortion pills have to be picked up in person at a clinic. Advocates say that has to change during the pandemic.

by Christine Grimaldi
Mar 19 2020

When Donald Trump used “two very big words” to declare a national emergency over the novel coronavirus on Friday, he bragged about giving his top health official the “ability to waive laws to enable telehealth” during the pandemic. But it appears that the president’s latitude will not apply to medication abortion care, a federal agency confirmed to VICE.

People who want to end their pregnancies will have to navigate the same restrictions as always, which will become all the more complicated in a pandemic environment.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/epg85a/fda-refuses-to-improve-abortion-pill-access-under-coronavirus