Study Finds Abortions Outside Healthcare System Spiked After Roe v. Wade Fell
The number of people who terminated their pregnancies without the involvement of the formal U.S. health care system skyrocketed immediately after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, according to a new study published by JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study refers to these as “self-managed abortions,” which can include methods ranging from low-risk use of abortion medication to the dangerous use of self-harm in order to terminate a pregnancy. Pills were the most common and safest way to carry out abortions without involving medical offices, the study found.
In the six months after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022, there were an estimated 28,000 more medication-induced abortions outside the healthcare system than there would have been based on pre-Dobbs data, the report said. These were largely thanks to community networks and telemedicine organizations, which provided 51.4 and 37.2 percent of medication abortions in the study.