USA – How anti-abortion laws impact the Black community

With some of the highest maternal death rates in the nation, Black pregnant people face extreme impacts on their health, particularly those in states with restrictive abortion bans.

By Rebekah Sager
April 17, 2023

When the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization last June, overturning Roe v. Wade and ending federal constitutional affirmation of the right to abortion, medical experts and pro-abortion activists working in the Black maternal health community say, they knew the result could be dire.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black pregnant people are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white pregnant people. And Black infants are nearly four times as likely to die during birth as white infants, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health reports.

Continued: https://americanindependent.com/anti-abortion-laws-black-pregnancy-mifepristone-supreme-court-maternal-infant-death-health-care/

USA – Why an ulcer drug could be the last option for many abortion patients

February 24, 2023
Sarah McCammon
3-Minute Listen with Transcript

A federal judge in Texas could rule as soon as today on whether to cut off access to a key medication abortion protocol, giving lawyers until day's end to submit additional arguments. Fearing another major blow to abortion access, some providers are already considering alternatives.

At the Trust Women clinic in Wichita, Kansas, it's already been crisis mode for months. And now clinic Director Ashley Brink says the staff is bracing for another — maybe even bigger — wave of uncertainty.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159075709/abortion-drug-mifepristone-misoprotol-texas-case

USA – The Underground Abortion Pill Network Is Booming

At least 20,000 abortion pills are estimated to have been shipped across the U.S. in the six months since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

By Carter Sherman
February 23, 2023

At least 20,000 packets of abortion pills were shipped to people in the United States in the six months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, two sources with knowledge of the situation told VICE News.

The suppliers of these estimated 20,000 packets are neither abortion clinics nor abortion telehealth organizations, but instead operate outside of the U.S. legal health care system. The demand for their pills, as well as their success at shipping them out undetected, are evidence of the thriving underground abortion network that has sprung up since Roe’s demise devastated access to abortion clinics.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/7k85wg/underground-abortion-pill-network

USA – With telehealth abortion, doctors have to learn to trust and empower patients

January 17, 2023
MARA GORDON

Like many pandemic-era remote workers, Robin Tucker starts her work day sitting on her sofa with a laptop, wearing soft pants and a T-shirt. But the Washington, DC-area nurse practitioner and midwife doesn't have a typical work-from-home job. She provides abortions over the Internet, a service that has only become available in the United States in the last few years.

Her career, she says, has turned out to be very different from what she learned in midwifery school, where she'd spend long shifts in a high-intensity labor and delivery unit, helping patients give birth.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/17/1140778856/with-telehealth-abortion-doctors-have-to-learn-to-trust-and-empower-patients

Telehealth abortion providers eye new options for patients under loosened FDA rules

By Katie Palmer
Jan. 9, 2023

In the past year, there’s been a significant surge in interest in medication abortion via telehealth, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the Food and Drug Administration made it possible for patients to get a prescription online and have the drug delivered to their front doors.

Now, telemedicine patients will have more pathways to care. A finalized rule from the FDA makes permanent the ability to distribute the medication by mail, while newly allowing retail pharmacies to distribute mifepristone, one of two drugs used to safely end an early pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.statnews.com/2023/01/09/abortion-telehealth-online-pharmacy-mifepristone/

Some major pharmacies are planning to dispense abortion pills, but not in every state

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN
Thu January 5, 2023

After a change to US Food and Drug Administration rules, major pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens say they plan to seek certification to distribute abortion pills where legally allowed.

The FDA said on its website Tuesday that pharmacies that become certified to dispense mifepristone, which may be used in a medication abortion, can do so directly to someone who has a prescription from a certified prescriber.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/04/health/fda-abortion-pills-pharmacies-xpn/index.html

USA – For-Profit Abortion Telemedicine Start-Ups Are Proliferating in Wake of “Roe”

Garnet Henderson, Truthout
November 26, 2022

In 2020, a federal judge ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must suspend its requirement that patients pick up mifepristone, one of the pills used in medication abortion, in person. After some back-and-forth under the Trump administration, the FDA permanently repealed the rule, which had long been decried by medical experts as unnecessary, in 2021.

This opened the door for providers to send abortion pills by mail in all but the 19 states that outlaw provision of abortion via telemedicine. (Many of those same states now ban abortion entirely.) This regulation change, along with increased popular interest in abortion access following Roe’s overturn, has led to a proliferation of telemedicine companies offering abortion pills. Some of these companies are run by people with prior experience in abortion care and connections in the reproductive health, rights and justice movements; others are not. Regardless, some abortion access advocates are raising concerns about whether the rise of for-profit telemedicine companies is the best way to serve abortion seekers.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/for-profit-abortion-telemedicine-start-ups-are-proliferating-in-the-wake-of-roe/

New Zealand women to be able to access abortion over the phone

Women in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy will be able to obtain abortion medication after a telephone consultation

Tess McClure in Auckland
Fri 28 Oct 2022

Women across New Zealand will be able to order an abortion over the phone from as early as next week, as the country becomes one of the few in the world to offer a full national telehealth service for the procedure.

The country is rolling out the final stage of its abortion telemedicine services, with a national hotline that will provide clinical consultations for an early medical abortion, then courier out medications.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/28/new-zealand-women-telehealth-abortion-access-phone-call

28.10.2022

telemedicine abortion

New Zealand

Oceania

Health

USA – Telemedicine providers navigate murky legal territory as abortion bans take effect

Iowa Public Radio | By Farah Yousry
September 19, 2022

The patchwork nature of abortion laws across the Midwest has made the procedure harder for pregnant people to get — and for health care providers to give. Telemedicine rules present especially murky legal territory.

Allison Case, a family medicine physician, spends much of her time working in a hospital where she delivers babies and provides reproductive health care services.

https://www.iowapublicradio.org/2022-09-19/telemedicine-providers-navigate-murky-legal-territory-as-abortion-bans-take-effect

19.09.2022

telemedicine abortion

Americans scramble for abortions in states that have banned it

New avenues are emerging, but logistical hassles are everywhere

By RUTH READER and BEN LEONARD
July 11, 2022

Demand for pills that end pregnancy has skyrocketed in states that have restricted abortion since the Supreme Court decision last month, and abortion clinics are reporting a rush for appointments in towns bordering those states.

Aid Access, a virtual abortion clinic based in the Netherlands, saw a 256 percent increase in people coming to its site in the 24 hours after the court’s June 24 decision.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/11/teleabortions-high-demand-abortion-pill-00044005