How Innovators Are Emotionally Supporting Abortion Seekers in a Post-Roe World

With laws constantly changing and often unclear, being able to reach abortion seekers on an emotional level is a critical touchpoint in the new digital landscape of access.

James Estrada, Common Dreams
Jul 10, 2025

In the three years since the Dobbs decision resulted in abortion bans in 42 states across the U.S, the ecosystem of abortion access in America has shifted and stretched to meet the ever-changing moment. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Planned Parenthood vs. Medina has paved the way for even more states to further target abortion providers by enabling states to withhold state funding to clinics that provide sexual health services from sexually transmitted infection tests to cervical cancer screenings simply because they also offer abortion care.

With laws constantly changing and often unclear in the eyes on abortion seekers, being able to reach abortion seekers on an emotional level is a critical touchpoint in the new digital landscape of access. Innovators have stepped up to meet the demand for emotional support, helping individuals feel heard and get informed throughout the abortion process as laws change and stigma abounds. They’re pairing abortion seekers with counselors, peers, and educators as the digital entry point to care, meeting and supporting the actual and immediate needs, whether they are anxious, confused about where to find care, or feeling stigmatized.

Continued: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/support-abortion-seekers

USA – Is the ‘tech bro-ification’ of abortion here?

Repro workers and tech experts reveal startling gaps between the promises offered by abortion technologies and the realities facing abortion-seekers and support workers

by Nicole Froio and Jade Jasmine Hurley
June 11th, 2025

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortion tech has emerged as a potential solution for an increasingly prohibitive reproductive rights landscape…

This exclusive Prism investigation delves into the role of tech in reproductive health care, finding gaps in how abortion workers are served by tech initiatives, a clash between funding abortion tech and industry layoffs, and tension in how best to address the changing legal landscape for abortion. Interviews with a dozen reproductive health workers, tech specialists, abortion fund staff, and reproductive rights advocates further revealed a lack of investment in backend tools for abortion support workers navigating a progressively underfunded field.

Continued: https://prismreports.org/2025/06/11/abortion-tech-repro-workers/

11.06.2025

Commentary

abortion and tech

abortion and technology

abortion apps

abortion chatbot

Abortion Freedom Fund

Abortion Policy API

Aid Access

Amy Merrill

automated abortion finder

Carolina Abortion Fund

Cathy Torres

Cecile Richards

Charley app

crisis pregnancy centers

If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice

National Network of Abortion Funds

self-managed abortion

Making Abortion Safe Outside of the Legal System: A Q&A on Self-Managed Abortion

Sociologist Naomi Braine’s new book on the global feminist movement for self-managed abortion took her to Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe to study activists’ work there.

FELICIA KORNBLUH
Jan 30, 2024

From 2017 to 2019, sociologist Naomi Braine, a professor at Brooklyn College, traveled in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe to study what she terms a global feminist movement for self-managed abortion (SMA). The result is her new book, Abortion Beyond the Law: Building a Global Feminist Movement for Self-Managed Abortion (Verso, 2023).

The story of self-managed abortion starts from the fact that, according to the Guttmacher Institute, at least half of all abortions around the world in 2017 were medication abortions, in which people used drugs to end their pregnancies. (The ambiguous legal status of abortion in many countries means that the data is incomplete.) This contrasts with the common image of so-called “procedural” abortion, which occurs under professional medical care and mostly or entirely in a clinic or hospital.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/self-managed-abortion-naomi-braine/

USA – The human threat to abortion seekers

Apps and data matter — but people are often a weaker link

By LUX ALPTRAUM
Oct 15, 2022

In the years before Roe v. Wade, an anonymous group of Chicago-area women known only as The Janes came together to provide safe, clandestine abortions to pregnant people in need. Over the course of several years, the group provided over 11,000 abortions. When they were finally busted by the police in 1972, it wasn’t because of police surveillance or the group’s anti-war activism or even their willingness to provide abortions to the pregnant family members of police officers. It was a family member of a Jane patient who tipped off the police.

“Some nosey bitch tried to snitch on someone who needed an abortion,” says Renee Bracey Sherman, founder and executive director of the abortion storytelling organization We Testify.

Continued: https://www.theverge.com/23385553/abortion-seekers-security-threats-human-factor

Let’s Talk About Misoprostol—the Original Abortion Pill

7/28/2022
by CAITLIN GERDTS, RUVANI JAYAWEERA and CARRIE N. BAKER
The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade has paved the way for more than half of U.S. states to outlaw abortion. As we look to the future of abortion in the U.S., we can learn from the experiences of people in countries with restrictive abortion laws who have managed to find safe, effective ways to have abortions by using the original abortion pill: misoprostol.

In the 1980s, Brazilians discovered that an ulcer medication, misoprostol, could induce a miscarriage by causing contractions of the uterus to expel a pregnancy. Across Latin America, women and other people who can become pregnant began to use misoprostol to manage their own abortions. Infection, hemorrhaging and death from unsafe abortion declined precipitously.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2022/07/28/misoprostol-abortion-pill/

SCOTUS Issued a Blow to Abortion Pills by Mail, But Advocates Aren’t Giving Up

Reproductive justice activists are urging Biden to back access to abortion pills after a setback from the Supreme Court.

BY Amy Littlefield, Truthout
January 22, 2021

There has been a quiet revolution in access to abortion pills in the United States over the past six months — and whether it continues depends on the new Biden-Harris administration.

Last July, a federal court suspended a rule that requires patients to go to a health center in person to pick up mifepristone, the first pill in a two-step process for medication abortion. The court sided with SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, allowing providers to mail mifepristone during the COVID-19 pandemic. But on January 12, the Supreme Court reinstated the rules, leaving in doubt the future of a landscape which advocates like Elisa Wells, co-founder of the medication abortion advocacy group Plan C, had rapidly begun to put in place.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/scotus-issued-a-blow-to-abortion-pills-by-mail-but-advocates-arent-giving-up/