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.
I had an extremely drama free pregnancy and I’m still healing 6 weeks later. The hemorrhoids in particular fucking suck because it’s painful for hours afterwards every time I poop, even with taking stool softener. I have an extremely generous maternity leave policy and I work a desk job so I’m able to take plenty of time to fully recover. I can’t even imagine how a warehouse or retail worker is able to manage, and their leave policy probably isn’t nearly as generous either.