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.
So, it’s like stocking up on guns and ammo, but for an actual real demonstrable reason by rational actors.
Wow you must live in utopia
I live in a Midwestern US city where people in the far suburbs stock up on ammo. I’m going fine and have been for 40 years. (1) Nobody’s coming for your guns in the US if you aren’t a felon. It’s not even possible. (2) The odds of you needing all those rounds in the event of a home invasion is straight up silly. In fact, worst case you show them how much you got and they come back with more muscle next time.