According to recent study, the average monthly number of abortions performed in the United States is also growing at the same time as the rise.
When Kaniya discovered she was pregnant last year, she was in the thick of her college spring examinations.
Kaniya, who requested to be identified only by her first name in order to preserve her privacy, stated, “I didn’t have the resources to support a child.” Financially, I wasn’t making enough money. I had several jobs that I was working. I was incapable of taking care of a child.
The now-21-year-old chose to undergo an abortion after much thought. In order to have her family’s support and concern, her initial preference was to do it close to home. However, they were residents of Kentucky, which, after the Dobbs ruling two years prior, had enacted a state-wide ban on abortion.
Kaniya attempted to schedule a meeting close to her house in Maryland. She said, however, that every facility she phoned was weeks ahead of schedule. The Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that promotes access to abortions, believes that the wait time was probably caused by a surge of women from states with severe prohibitions.
“At least a month was required of you,” she said to NBC News. “I considered driving an hour away, but it didn’t help me get an appointment.”
She chose to undergo a self-managed abortion—one that doesn’t need a visit to a clinic or doctor—after reaching out to advocacy groups for support. Misoprostol and mifepristone are the abortion medicines that women use most frequently.
“It was someone I connected with from one of the organizations who got the pills for me,” she remarked. I was not required to pay for any services. Even with my various occupations, this is a sizable sum of money.
The number of women having self-managed abortions is increasing as more states impose limitations on the procedure, a new report from the University of California, San Francisco research group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health shows.
2.4% of the 7,000 women between the ages of 15 and 49 who participated in the poll reported self-managing abortions in the year prior to the Dobbs ruling. That number rose to 3.4% in the year after Dobbs, citing the study that was just released in JAMA Network Open.
This rise coincides with recent data showing that the average monthly number of abortions is also growing. For the first time since the organization started keeping count two years ago, the number of abortions performed nationally hit 100,000 in January, according to #WeCount, a research initiative from the Society of Family Planning, an organization that advocates for abortion rights. The researchers gathered information from abortion facilities and clinicians across the country between April 2022 and March 2024 for the paper, which was made public on Wednesday.
One of the authors of the study on self-managed abortions and an epidemiologist, Lauren Ralph, is an associate professor of OB-GYN and reproductive sciences at UCSF. She stated, “If we make abortion more difficult to access, it doesn’t mean that people will need an abortion less frequently.” We observe the contrary. Rather than limiting access, the health care system and legislators have a responsibility to ensure that individuals are connected to safe and efficient means.
Based on surveys administered to various groups of women across the nation in 2021 and 2023, Ralph’s study discovered that the most popular means of self-managed abortions reported by women were herbal remedies, emergency contraception, alcohol and drugs, and even self-harm, such as striking oneself in the stomach.
The abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol were used by somewhat fewer women.
According to the survey, almost one in five required medical attention from a physician or nurse, although few required hospital emergency care. The most frequent side effects were discomfort and bleeding.
“We did not see too many serious side effects,” the spokesperson stated. “Perhaps they didn’t get the result they were hoping for. Simply put, it wasn’t working.
According to Dr. Nisha Verma, an OB-GYN and complicated family planning expert in Georgia, some women choose to handle their own healthcare because they value privacy and secrecy or because they have had bad experiences with the medical system.
However, a lot of the people she encounters in her Atlanta office are compelled to handle their own abortions as they reside in a state where the procedure is illegal for six weeks and lack the funds to fly outside of it.
Verma, a member of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, stated, “I see the desolation in the eyes of those for whom I am not able to provide care, and I see the utter relief in my patients when I am able to provide them with the abortion care they need, every day.” “For them, self-managing an abortion is one of their alternatives for abortion treatment. Though certain patients might not be aware of or unable to use this procedure, this can be accomplished with safe, dependable access to misoprostol and/or mifepristone.
Susan Yanow focuses on awareness.
She has collaborated with groups such as Safe & Supported, a global NGO that offers information and access to medication abortions, and SASS, or Self-Managed Abortion, for almost ten years. Although she had dedicated a significant portion of her time to global activism, when Donald Trump was elected in 2016, she began to worry that Roe v. Wade might be reversed. She was accurate.
“At that time, studies revealed that nearly half of individuals within the reproductive age range were unaware that abortion pills existed,” the speaker stated. We therefore began a two-hour instruction that outlines the use of the tablets. It is not counsel; it is information. Thus, it is transferable to any state.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, pharmaceutical abortions now account for about two thirds of abortions performed in the United States. Misoprostol, which can be given up to two days after mifepristone, is the next step in the procedure.
Doctors insist that mifepristone and misoprostol are both safe drugs, even in the face of legal opposition. Although they are uncommon, complications can include pregnancy tissue that remains in the uterus, infections, and blood clots inside the uterus.
Dr. Monica Dragoman, an obstetrician-gynecologist with the Mount Sinai Health System in New York, stated, “There is abundant evidence demonstrating that early medication abortion with mifepristone and misoprostol — or misoprostol alone when mifepristone is not available — is safe and effective when people have access to quality medicines, use them according to evidence-based guidelines and are aware of how to recognize and seek care for uncommon complications.”
The World Health Organization revised their recommendations in 2022 and stated that women who are up to 12 weeks pregnant should have the option of using these drugs for self-management.
Yanow stated, “So if people know how to use them, they can use them on their own given how safe they are.”
She is currently attempting to “demedicalize” and de-stigmatize the use of the medication.
“People are traveling up to 1,000 miles to obtain these medications, then driving back to their homes to take them because they believe a doctor has to be involved,” she stated. In actuality, the medications are administered at home. The bleeding and cramps occur at home. The miscarriage occurs at home, and there are no medical professionals present. So, the misconception that a doctor must be involved—although they don’t—has been reinforced by rules, stigma, fear, and anti-abortion laws.
Kaniya reported that she never felt the need to see a doctor during her experience. The most severe adverse effects, which persisted for almost five hours, included cramps, weariness, nausea, and vomiting. She was happy that she wouldn’t have to travel to a clinic where she may run across protestors or someone she knew, and she had a few close friends nearby for support.
She remarked, “I don’t have to deal with a lot of people.” “I’m free to have as many individuals in this area as I choose. I’m able to admit visitors on my own terms.
