There was a staggering increase in requests for abortion pills through telemedicine in the months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to a new analysis.
The study, published Tuesday in JAMA, was conducted by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Aid Access, a nonprofit online telemedicine service that provides medication that people can use to safely end a pregnancy at home. They examined the organization’s data from September 2021 through August 2022 and saw two distinct spikes: the first, after the Supreme Court’s draft decision leaked to the public, and an even starker increase after the decision came down.
The largest increases in medication abortion requests came from states with the most severe restrictions, including Louisiana and Arkansas. But even in states unlikely to ban abortion, there was a noticeable increase.
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