New law helps people in American states with a ban on abortion pills: ‘Most people don’t know it is available’

In the last five months of 2023, medical providers have sent abortion pills to more than 40,000 people living in states that ban abortions, through new “shield laws” that protect providers who send pills to people living under abortion restrictions.

Researchers from #WeCount, a project of the Society of Family Planning that studies the impact of abortion restrictions after the overturning of Roe v Wade, first began tracking abortions performed through shield laws in July 2023. In their report Tuesday, the researchers measured the impact of shield laws passed five blue states – Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont and Washington – that protect medical providers from legal repercussions if they send abortion pills to people in defiance of state bans.

An average of 5,800 medicines every month between October and December 2023 Abortions in states with six-week or near-complete abortion bans were facilitated under such shield laws, #WeCount found in the Tuesday’s report, which tracks abortion provisions between April 2022, before Roe was overturned, and December 2023. States that allow in-person abortions, but have effectively banned remote abortions, such as in Arizona and North Carolina, while an average of nearly 2,000 medication abortions were performed monthly through shield laws.

“That’s a large number of people having abortions in a way that didn’t exist just a few years ago,” Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, co-chair of #WeCount, said of abortions by protect laws. Upadhyay is also a professor at the University of California, San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health. “It’s incredible, and it’s a method of obtaining an abortion that most people in the US still don’t even know is available.”

Despite the fall of Roe, which led to abortion bans in much of the US South and Midwest, the number of abortions within the US health care system increased, according to the report, whose findings are in line with previous analyses. Even excluding abortions offered under shield laws, providers performed nearly 86,000 monthly abortions in 2023 in states that still allow the procedure, compared to nearly 82,000 monthly abortions in 2022.

“It leads to ongoing discussion in our field. What’s happening here? How can this happen?” Upadhyay said. “It’s very interesting, but also very important to remember that there are many people who live in states where there is a ban who cannot have their abortion.”

Abortions via telehealth in particular are increasing. As of December 2023, they were responsible for 19% of all abortions nationwide.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on a case that could limit access to telehealth abortions. Anti-abortion activists have asked the court, which is dominated 6-3 by conservatives, to overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s actions that allowed abortion patients to receive the common abortion pill mifepristone remotely, rather than forcing them to take the pills to be collected personally. .

The justices, who heard the case in March, appeared skeptical of the differing arguments put forward by the anti-abortion groups that brought the case. But if If these groups prevail, clinics that offer telehealth will be affected. At least one virtual clinic told the Guardian it would probably be shut down. Another might continue to perform abortions using a second abortion pill, misoprostol, which is still safe but can carry more complications.

“I don’t think they’re going away, and I think they’re going to continue to provide abortion care,” Upadhyay said of providers offering abortions via telehealth. “I think maybe the numbers will go down because the model will change.

“It will really shake up the system,” she added.

Upadhyay is also preparing for another shock to the system: On May 1, 2024, Florida banned abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people even know they are pregnant. Because Florida used to be the last southeastern state to allow abortion during the first trimester, people across the region often traveled there for abortions they couldn’t get in their home state. In the 18 months after Roe fell, providers in Florida performed more than 17,000 more abortions than they would have done if Roe had remained the law of the land, according to #WeCount.

“It remains to be seen whether the number of abortions under protective laws will increase as a result of Florida’s six-week ban,” Upadhyay said.