Lower than 1 / 4 of a century in the past, abortion drugs couldn’t be legally obtained from a U.S.-based medical supplier.
Now, they’re the most typical methodology of terminating a being pregnant — utilized by 3 out of 5 abortion sufferers within the U.S.
People’ use of medicine abortion has quickly expanded since 2000, when the FDA accredited the usage of mifepristone, one of many two medicine utilized in the most typical medicine abortion routine.
Over the past eight years, the U.S. Meals and Drug Administration has steadily relaxed its guidelines to permit sufferers to take mifepristone as much as 10 weeks into being pregnant and obtain it by mail after a telemedicine appointment.
Abortion care has begun to shift from in-person visits to the mailbox. Simply 4 years in the past, there have been no online-only U.S. abortion clinics shelling out abortion drugs. However in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic — and after the Supreme Court docket’s 2022 overturning of the constitutional proper to an abortion — digital abortion clinics started to tackle an more and more important function.
If the Supreme Court docket decides to order a reversal of current FDA guidelines, limiting sufferers from acquiring mifepristone at pharmacies or by way of the mail with out an in-person go to, abortion companies might be restricted even in blue states like California.
Listed below are a few of the numbers on abortion capsule utilization within the U.S.:
What number of medicine abortions happen every year within the U.S.?
About 642,700 medicine abortions befell in 2023 inside the formal healthcare system, based on the Month-to-month Abortion Provision Examine from the Guttmacher Institute, a Washington based mostly nonprofit analysis group dedicated to advancing sexual and reproductive well being within the U.S.
This quantity is probably going an undercount, because it doesn’t embrace self-managed medicine abortions exterior of the formal healthcare system or abortion drugs mailed to anybody within the 14 states the place abortion is banned.
What proportion of abortion sufferers within the U.S. use medicine abortion?
Based on Guttmacher, medicine abortions accounted for 63% of abortions in 2023 — an enormous leap from zero in 2000 and 53% in 2020.
This proportion doesn’t embrace self-managed abortions or abortion drugs mailed to anybody in a state the place abortion is banned.
Guttmacher doesn’t have state-level medicine abortion information.
What number of states restrict the mailing of abortion drugs?
Twelve states — aside from the 14 states the place abortion is banned — have handed legal guidelines mandating no less than one in-person clinic go to, based on the well being information service Kaiser Household Basis.
Twenty-four states, together with California, don’t have any telehealth medicine abortion restrictions.
Nonetheless, the authorized panorama is hazy. Some online-only abortion clinics, reminiscent of Europe-based Assist Entry, permit U.S. medical doctors in blue states with “protect legal guidelines,” laws designed to guard them from prosecution, to prescribe and mail drugs to sufferers in restricted states.
What number of People get medicine abortion by mail?
There’s no full nationwide information on the variety of self-managed medicine abortions. However analysis suggests extra American ladies started to entry abortion drugs by way of mail in recent times as they skilled restricted clinic entry in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, states imposed abortion restrictions, and abortion drugs grew to become extra readily accessible.
Knowledge from Assist Entry, a service run by European physician Rebecca Gomperts that started transport abortion drugs to People in 2018, exhibits that requests for self-managed abortion by way of on-line telemedicine practically tripled after the Supreme Court docket overturned Roe vs. Wade.
In 2022, requests from U.S. sufferers to Assist Entry for self-managed medicine abortions jumped from a median of 83 a day earlier than the Supreme Court docket’s abortion choice was leaked to 214 a day after the courtroom choice was formally introduced, based on analysis led by Abigail Aiken, affiliate professor of public affairs on the College of Texas at Austin. Demand elevated in all states, however the largest will increase had been in states which have enacted whole or near-total abortion bans: Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma.
The Society of Household Planning, a worldwide nonprofit group that makes a speciality of “abortion and contraception science,” just lately estimated that 16% of abortions within the U.S. had been supplied by way of telehealth in September 2023, with 13,770 telehealth abortions leading to medicines being allotted by way of mail from online-only and brick-and-mortar clinics.
This information contains abortion drugs mailed to folks in states with bans or restrictions on telehealth abortion.
What number of U.S. clinics provide medicine abortion?
About 789 amenities within the U.S. supplied medicine abortion in 2022, based on information from Advancing New Requirements in Reproductive Well being, a analysis program at UC San Francisco.
The variety of amenities offering telehealth abortion care and mailing abortion drugs soared from 52 in 2020 to 243 in 2022.
How have telehealth abortion companies expanded for the reason that COVID-19 pandemic?
In 2020, there have been zero online-only clinics offering medicine abortion.
By 2022, 69 digital clinics supplied care by way of telehealth in 23 states and D.C., based on ANSRH’s Abortion Facility Database. Many of the new clinics are concentrated within the Northeast and West.
What number of Californians get medicine abortion by mail from virtual-only clinics?
Based on the Society for Household Planning’s October 2023 #WeCount report, 7,510 telehealth abortions in California had been supplied by virtual-only clinics within the first six months of 2023.
This determine doesn’t embrace telehealth abortions from brick-and-mortar clinics.