Americans are stockpiling abortion pills and hormones ahead of the ‘reproductive apocalypse’ under Trump
WAs the presidential election results were announced on Wednesday, Rebecca Gomperts, the founder of Aid Access, the No. 1 provider of mail-in abortion pills in the United States, huddled in a Paris apartment with her team of eight American doctors and 15 assistants . staff. The group — which typically operates remotely and ships more than 9,000 abortion pills each month — had met in person before the election, knowing they might have to take action.
They were right: As news of Trump’s victory spread, the website received more than 5,000 requests for abortion pills in less than 12 hours — an increase even greater than the day after Roe v Wade fell. “As we talk, I see all the new requests coming in,” Gomperts said by phone on Wednesday afternoon. “We have never seen this before.”
The scenario was repeated across the country as news of Trump’s victory broke, with health care providers for women and transgender people inundated with requests for services that their patients feared would be banned in a Trump administration. Telehealth service Wisp saw a 300% increase in requests for emergency contraception; abortion pill finder site Plan C saw a 625% increase in traffic.
“It’s clear that people are trying to plan for the reproductive apocalypse that we expect will occur under the Trump presidency,” said Elisa Wells, co-founder of Plan C.
For Gomperts and her team at Aid Access, the moment didn’t come as a shock: They had been preparing for it since the last Trump administration, when Gomperts, a Dutch doctor, expanded her international abortion pill service to the United States. Since then, Aid Access has devised a system where doctors in states where abortion is legal prescribe and ship abortion pills to patients in states where it is not. The nonprofit eventually expanded to the team of eight physicians in four states that they have today, along with a 24/7 help desk.
But the scale of demand on Wednesday – five times more than on a normal day – was shocking even to them.
“We have an extremely streamlined process and we are able to handle all requests very quickly,” says Gomperts. “But it is much more (than normal). And I think the reason for that is that people are much more aware now – people are aware of the possibility of the abortion pill and are aware of the threat that it will be taken off the market.”
Trump has shot down the prospect of a national abortion ban, saying at one point that women who have abortions illegally should be punished, and at other times saying the decision should be left to the states. But his appointments to the Supreme Court paved the way for Roe to be overturned in 2022, and his appointments to other, lower courts have held up even the strictest abortion bans in red states like Texas. There are also several ways he could do that go after prescribing and the shipment of abortion pills, which now account for the majority of abortions in the US.
The panic didn’t just extend to abortion pills. Online healthcare provider Wisp told the Guardian that it had already tripled its usual daily sales of emergency contraception by 11.30am on Wednesday. It also saw a huge increase in orders for Plan B bulk kits, from about 30% of their emergency contraceptive orders earlier this month to nearly 90% on Wednesday. New patient requests for Plan B also increased from 50% of their orders to 70%.
The telehealth site Hey Jane said requests for contraception had doubled, and Winx, a similar women’s health service, said it had sold six times as many Plan B doses as of Wednesday afternoon than in the previous seven days combined.
“Women are smart,” Winx co-founder Cynthia Plotch told The Guardian. “We see what’s going to happen and we protect ourselves.”
Dr. Crystal Beal faced an influx of emails on Wednesday from trans patients concerned about their access to hormones and hormone blocking therapy. Beal runs a site called QueerDoc, which provides estrogen, testosterone and hormone blocking drugs. Trump is hostile to trans rights and promises to do so punish doctors that provide gender-affirming care to minors, and Beal’s patients wanted to know how to protect themselves from a second administration.
By early Wednesday afternoon, QueerDoc had already received more messages that day than in a normal week.
“Part of it is, ‘How can I secure my access to medicine?’” Beal said. “Some of it is, ‘Should I put (the gender on) my legal documents back so I’m safer?’ Should I stop taking medications so I can be safer? ”
Beal said the agency advised patients to stock up on as much of their hormone treatment as state law and their insurance coverage allowed, and even suggested that trans men reuse disposable vials of testosterone to help them stretch further. When it came to stopping medications or changing paperwork, Beal said, that was a more personal question.
“I have to tell people that ultimately I cannot predict the future or make that choice or decision for them, and I certainly cannot give legal advice,” Beal said. “But changing your documentation or stopping your medication does not make you less man or woman, or less trans. Who we are is not defined by what our documents say or what medications we take.”
QueerDoc sent a message to its patients Wednesday morning reminding them that while they were concerned about the future, “transgender people have always been here, and we will continue to persevere,” Beal said. And all providers who spoke to The Guardian urged patients not to panic and said they would continue to provide services until the day this was no longer legally possible – and in some cases even beyond.
“Someone gave us a donation today with the message: ‘Don’t let those bastards get you down,’” Wells said. “Politicians won’t stop access, and they won’t stop us either.”