More Americans are stockpiling abortion pills without pregnancy – study

More Americans are now stockpiling abortion pills in casethey get pregnant, according to new research published Tuesday.

Before Roe v Wade was overturned in June 2022, Aid Access, an organization that mails abortion pills to people across the US, received an average of 25 requests a day from people seeking the pills despite not being pregnant. After the leak of the supreme court decision to overturn Roe, that average shot up to 247 requests each day, the research published on Tuesday found.

That number fell after the actual decision, but rose again to 172 a day in April 2023, as US courts signaled a willingness to restrict the availability of a major abortion pill.

People have been turning to Aid Access for “advance provision” pills since September 2021, after Texas enacted a six-week abortion ban but long before the US supreme court overturned Roe and abolished the national right to abortion. Now, with wide swathes of the US south and midwest under abortion bans, an online market to request and obtain abortion pills is thriving.

The study tracks requests between the beginning of September 2021 and the end of April 2023. In December 2023, the US supreme court announced that it would hear arguments in a case regarding the future of mifepristone, a major abortion pill. That case is expected to be decided by this summer.

In total, over the study’stime frame, Aid Access tracked roughly 48,400 advance provision requests. It received more requests for advance provision pills from states that were anticipated to enact bans – even more than the requests from states that did enact bans.

“It seems to suggest that what people are reacting to is the threat of reduced access, the threat of curtailment of reproductive rights,” said Dr