{"id":3133,"date":"2024-08-02T10:35:34","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T10:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/?p=3133"},"modified":"2024-08-02T10:35:37","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T10:35:37","slug":"since-fall-of-roe-self-managed-abortions-have-increased","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/?p=3133","title":{"rendered":"Since Fall of &#8216;Roe,&#8217; Self-Managed Abortions Have Increased"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>\n\t<iframe loading=\"lazy\" allow=\"fullscreen\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"290\" src=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/player\/embed\/nx-s1-5057588\/nx-s1-3a6eba48-fca5-4ea7-8067-5815acb8af44\" width=\"100%\"><\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<p>The percentage of people who say they\u2019ve tried to end a pregnancy without medical assistance increased after the Supreme Court overturned <em>Roe v. Wade<\/em>. That\u2019s according to a <a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jamanetworkopen\/fullarticle\/2821654\">study published Tuesday<\/a> in the online journal JAMA Network Open.<\/p>\n<p>Tia Freeman, a reproductive health organizer, leads workshops for Tennesseans on how to safely take medication abortion pills outside of medical settings.<\/p>\n<p>Abortion is almost entirely illegal in Tennessee. Freeman, who lives near Nashville, said people planning to stop pregnancies have all sorts of reasons for wanting to do so without help from the formal health care system \u2014 including the cost of traveling to another state, challenge of finding child care, and fear of lost wages.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome people, it\u2019s that they don\u2019t have the support networks in their families where they would need to have someone drive them to a clinic and then sit with them,\u201d said Freeman, who works for <a href=\"https:\/\/abortionpillinfo.org\/\">Self-Managed Abortion; Safe and Supported<\/a>, a U.S.-based project of Women Help Women, an international nonprofit that advocates for abortion access.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe their family is superconservative and they would rather get the pills in their home and do it by themselves,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The new study is from Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a research group based at the University of California-San Francisco. The researchers surveyed more than 7,000 people ages 15 to 49 from December 2021 to January 2022 and another 7,000-plus from June 2023 to July 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Of the respondents who had attempted self-managed abortions, they found the percentage who used the abortion pill mifepristone was 11 in 2023 \u2014 up from 6.6 before the Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>One of the most common reasons for seeking a self-administered abortion was privacy concerns, said a study co-author, epidemiologist Lauren Ralph.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo not wanting others to know that they were seeking or in need of an abortion or wanted to maintain autonomy in the decision,\u201d Ralph said. \u201cThey liked it was something under their control that they could do on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.studentsforlifeaction.org\/team\/kristi-hamrick\/\">Kristi Hamrick<\/a>, vice president of media and policy at Students for Life Action, a national anti-abortion group, said she doesn\u2019t believe the study findings, which she said benefit people who provide abortion pills.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt should surprise no one that the abortion lobby reports their business is doing well, without problems,\u201d Hamrick said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n<p>Ralph said in addition to privacy concerns, state laws criminalizing abortion also weighed heavily on women\u2019s minds.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe found 6% of people said the reason they self-managed was because abortion was illegal where they lived,\u201d Ralph said.<\/p>\n<p>In the JAMA study, women who self-managed abortion attempts reported using a range of methods, including using drugs or alcohol, lifting heavy objects, and taking a hot bath. In addition, about 22% reported hitting themselves in the stomach. Nearly 4% reported inserting an object in their body.<\/p>\n<p>The term \u201cself-managed abortion\u201d may conjure images of back-alley procedures from the 1950s and \u201960s. But OB-GYN Laura Laursen, a family planning physician in Chicago, said self-managed abortions using medication abortion \u2014 the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol \u2014 are far safer, whether done inside or outside the health care system.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re equally safe no matter which way you do it,\u201d Laursen said. \u201cIt involves passing a pregnancy and bleeding, which is what happens when you have a miscarriage. If your body doesn\u2019t have a miscarriage on its own, these are actually the medications we give women to pass the miscarriage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since <em>Roe<\/em>\u2019s end, more than 20 states have banned or further restricted abortion.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"meta-authors meta\">\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"author-name\">Sarah Varney: <\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/SarahVarney4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t@SarahVarney4<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<section class=\"block--category-tag-list \">\n<div class=\"category-tag-list__content-wrapper\">\n<h3 class=\"block--category-tag-list__title\">\n\t\t\t\tRelated Topics\t\t\t<\/h3>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<a class=\"category-tag-list__contact-link\" href=\"https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/contact-us\/\"><br \/>\n\t\t\tContact Us\t\t<\/a><br \/>\n\t\t<a class=\"category-tag-list__tip-link\" href=\"https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/tips\/\"><br \/>\n\t\t\tSubmit a Story Tip\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The percentage of people who say they\u2019ve tried to end a pregnancy without medical assistance increased after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. That\u2019s according to a study published Tuesday in the online journal JAMA Network Open. Tia Freeman, a reproductive health organizer, leads workshops for Tennesseans on how to safely take medication abortion [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pharmaceuticals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3135,"href":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133\/revisions\/3135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}