More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Pregnant and need not to be? You have options—no matter where you live. Here’s what you need to know.
On Tuesday, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco released the first-ever study on the safety and effectiveness of new online clinics offering telemedicine abortion, allowed for the first time in the U.S. during the pandemic.
“This study is real world evidence that providing medication abortion with telehealth and with a mail order pharmacy leads to efficacy and safety that is similar to in-clinic care.”
The reproductive justice lawyers network If/When/How launched a nationwide Repro Legal Defense Fund—a first-of-its-kind resource to support women and others investigated, arrested or prosecuted for self-managed abortion.
Self-managed abortion is when someone ends a pregnancy outside of a clinical setting, such as buying abortion pills online and using them without medical supervision. RLDF provides money for bail and legal representation.
Dr. Jamie Phifer, founder and medical director of Abortion On Demand: “It’s called Abortion On Demand for a reason. It’s provocative, I know. But when you’ve already decided that you don’t want to continue your pregnancy, especially if you have pregnancy symptoms, making people wait doesn’t feel right to me. … Abortion care is easy. Medically speaking, it is easy enough that a robot could do it. So we built the robot.”
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—evidence a post-Roe world would be quite different because we now have extremely safe and highly effective abortion pills that are easy to obtain and use.
As red states increasingly pass abortion bans and the Supreme Court is now reviewing a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, Aid Access and other online providers of abortion pills are likely to play an increasingly important role in helping people access abortion.
“As legislators make in-clinic abortion harder and harder to get, people are having to look for viable alternatives.”
In Massachusetts, Maine Family Planning is offering telemedicine abortion, operating under a research exception to the FDA restriction.
“The pandemic has really amplified all of the hurdles for folks getting abortions. Telemedicine can help eliminate some of those challenges, allowing people to get care at home. Telemedicine has really helped to make sure that people can access the services that they want.”
The COVID-19 pandemic is transforming many aspects of our lives, and abortion is no exception. Telemedicine is expanding access to abortion healthcare in ways that are likely to persist long after the pandemic is over.
Telemedicine abortion startups are springing up across the country after a federal court in July temporarily suspended FDA restrictions on distribution of the abortion pill during the pandemic. In total, people in 19 states and Washington D.C. now have legal access to telemedicine abortion from a doctor within their state.
“This is a very safe early option. You can have a telemedicine appointment with a doctor in the comfort of your home and you get something mailed to your home. … To have that ability to be able to take care of yourself at home, I think that’s just an amazing service. And it should continue to be an option.”
For the first time, a U.S.-based pharmacy—Honeybee Health—is distributing abortion pills directly to patients within the country by mail, now legal because of a recent federal court ruling.
Telemedicine abortion combines medication abortion—which uses pills to end a pregnancy—and telemedicine—which allows health providers to supervise the use of abortion pills via videoconferencing or telephone consultations.
