Abortions are on the rise in the United States, despite bans that have gone into effect in more than a dozen states since the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs decision that repealed the federal right to abortion in June 2022.
There were more than 1 million abortions in the U.S. in 2023, the highest rate in more than a decade and a 10% jump from 2020, according to a report released Tuesday by the Guttmacher Institute, a research and education organization. policy focused on sexual and reproductive health issues that supports the right to abortion.
The latest trends also suggest that medical abortion is a more common option than ever.
While abortions have largely stopped in the 14 states with total bans, nearly every other state has seen an increase in the number of abortions performed from 2020 to 2023.
As the geography of abortion care changed amid a fragmented political landscape, the 10% increase in abortions nationwide meant that states without outright bans saw a 25% increase in those years.
The “drastic loss of access in states with bans has been offset by monumental efforts by clinics, abortion funds, and logistical support organizations to help people in states with bans access care through financial and practical support,” they wrote. the authors of the report.
States bordering those with bans saw particularly large increases, but abortions also rose in other states where they remained legal.
“It is very possible that while access has been drastically reduced for people living in ban states, access has substantially improved for residents of states without bans,” the authors wrote.
In addition to state policies enacted to protect patients and access to care and increased financial support from abortion funds, researchers at the Guttmacher Institute suggest that improved access to telehealth in recent years may have made medication abortion more widely available. available.
Medication abortion became more common than ever after Roe, according to another new Guttmacher report. Nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023 — about 642,700 — were medication abortions, the report says.
Medical abortion is a method by which someone ends a pregnancy by taking two pills – mifepristone and misoprostol – instead of undergoing a surgical procedure.
This option has become increasingly common over the two decades it has been available, rising from less than 10% of all abortions in the US in 2001 to 53% in 2020 and 63% in 2023.
But mifepristone, the drug that was approved for use in abortion by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000, faces an unprecedented legal challenge.
On March 26, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that puts access to the medicine at risk — even in states where abortion remains legal — and raises questions about the authority courts have to overturn the determinations of experts in the U.S. FDA on the safety of a drug.
Misoprostol can be used alone for a medical abortion and is a safe alternative, but research suggests that using the two pills together is the gold standard.
Research has long found that medication abortion is safe and effective, but another recent study found this to be true even when the patient receives the medication through a telehealth visit.
“Any return to restrictions on providing medical abortion through telemedicine would be harmful to people who prefer or only have access to abortion through telemedicine,” Guttmacher researchers wrote in the new report.
“While the current court case only affects the use of mifepristone – and a misoprostol-only regimen is also a safe and effective method of medical abortion – everyone seeking an abortion should have access to the full range of safe and effective options.”
Guttmacher's new reports estimate abortion trends based on responses from a sample of U.S. abortion providers.
They likely underestimate the number of abortions in the US, since the data does not include abortions that happen outside the formal healthcare system or medication abortions that were sent to people in states where abortion is prohibited.
(Jen Christensen and Tierney Sneed of CNN contributed to this text)
Source: CNN Brasil

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