Story at a glance
- A new study asked how many people would consider self-managed abortion (SMA) if they were unable to obtain care in a facility.
- About 1 in 3 people surveyed said they would consider SMA.
- SMA can include federally approved medication abortion or other medication or herbs taken without professional assistance.
Abortion access continues to be restricted and outright banned in large swaths of the country, and it’s driving many people to consider self-managing their abortion as the procedure becomes out of reach.
Most abortions are banned in at least 14 states following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June. About half of states are expected to enact bans on abortion or impose gestational limits, pushing the procedure further out of reach for millions of people.
That’s led some to consider ending a pregnancy on their own if they are unable to obtain care, which researchers at the University of California San Francisco Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health decided to take a closer look at.
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In a study, Bixby Center researchers found 1 in 3 people seeking a facility-based abortion would consider self-managed abortion if they were unable to obtain the procedure at a facility.
That translates to 34 percent of the 741 participants the Bixby Center surveyed.
Researchers gathered data from individuals in California, Illinois and New Mexico — states chosen because of their geographic location and minimal abortion restrictions, which means people travel from places with more restrictive abortion policies.
Self-managed abortion (SMA) is defined in numerous ways, including medication abortion that consists of two pills and is approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration. Other forms of SMA can include other medicine or herbs that are taken without any medical assistance, which can cause toxic reactions and even death, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
In rare cases, women in the U.S. also reported other means of SMA, such as vaginal insertion of objects or abdominal trauma to try physically disrupting their pregnancy.
Lauren Ralph, lead author of the study, explained in a piece for The Conversation that her team’s research suggests that if people do as they say in their survey responses, around 33,000 pregnant people per year will consider ending their pregnancy on their own.
“We find that being uninsured, having difficulty paying for abortion and facing one or more logistical or practical obstacles that delayed access to abortion care are associated with elevated likelihood of considering SMA,” wrote researchers.
Ralph’s team found that consideration for SMA was higher among those participants who reported having no health insurance, described their pregnancy as unintended, were seeking abortion because of concerns for their own physical or mental health or were experiencing obstacles that delayed their abortion care.
Participants who would consider SMA also expressed higher difficulty in finding an abortion facility, at 35 percent, compared to those who wouldn’t consider SMA. They also reported higher difficulty in figuring out how to get to a clinic and needing multiple clinic visits.
Illinois is one state in particular that’s becoming an abortion safe haven as surrounding states like Indiana, Wisconsin, Kentucky and Tennessee impose restrictive abortion policies. In 2020 alone, Illinois performed about 9,700 abortions for out-of-state residents, with nearly 2,000 of them for Indiana residents, where abortion is outright banned except in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal anomaly or serious risk to the health or life of the pregnant patient.
One in 4 women in the U.S. will have an abortion at some point in their life, which leads many health experts to argue abortion should be treated as part of the spectrum of health care women may need at some point.
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