Medication abortion accounts for more than half of all abortions in the U.S., and typically involves two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol. A research letter published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine looked at requests for these pills from people who weren’t pregnant and sought them through Aid Access, a European online telemedicine service that prescribes them for future and immediate use.

Aid Access received about 48,400 requests from across the U.S. for so-called “advance provision” from September 2021 through April 2023. Requests were highest right after news leaked in May 2022 that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade — but before the formal announcement that June, researchers found.

Nationally, the average number of daily requests shot up nearly tenfold, from about 25 in the eight months before the leak to 247 after the leak. In states where an abortion ban was inevitable, the average weekly request rate rose nearly ninefold.

  • @werefreeatlast
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    1311 months ago

    It’s going to be the abortion underground train. This reminds me of the history of how black people freed slaves in secret by sneaking them out of their slavery state.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      Already been happening. It’s called the Aunties Network. And actually, one of the things they do is buy up doses of abortion drugs to send to people in places where it isn’t available.