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A new study shows that a growing number of women say they have tried to terminate their pregnancies by doing things like taking herbs, drinking alcohol or even stabbing themselves in the stomach. Researchers surveyed reproductive-age women in the US before and after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. The proportion of women who tried to terminate a pregnancy on their own rose from 2.4% to 3.3%.
“A lot of people are taking things into their own hands,” said Dr. Grace Ferguson, a Pittsburgh OB-GYN and abortion provider who was not involved in the research, which was published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Network Open. The study authors acknowledged the increase is small. But the data suggests the number could be in the hundreds of thousands of women.
The researchers surveyed about 7,000 women six months before the Supreme Court decision, and then another group of 7,100 women a year after the decision. They asked participants if they had ever done or taken anything on their own to terminate a pregnancy. Those who said yes were asked follow-up questions about their experiences.
“Our data suggest that making abortion access more difficult does not necessarily mean that people will need abortion less or will need it less often,” said Lauren Ralph, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and one of the study’s authors. Women gave a variety of reasons for handling their own abortions, such as wanting an additional measure of privacy, being concerned about the cost of clinic procedures and preferring to try to terminate their pregnancy on their own first.
They reported using a variety of methods. Some took medications – including emergency contraception and the abortion pills misoprostol and mifepristone – obtained outside the medical system and without a prescription. Others drank alcohol or used drugs. Some resorted to potentially harmful physical methods such as hitting their stomachs, lifting heavy objects or inserting objects into their bodies.
Some respondents said they faced complications such as bleeding and pain and had to seek medical help. Some said they later had an abortion in a clinic. Some said their pregnancy ended after their abortion attempts or because of a miscarriage later, while others said they continued their pregnancy when this method did not work.
Ralph pointed to some caveats and limitations in the research. He said respondents may be underreporting their abortions because researchers are asking them about “sensitive and potentially criminal behavior.”
She also cautioned that some women may have interpreted the question differently after the Dobbs decision, such as believing that getting a medication abortion via telehealth is outside of the formal healthcare system, when it isn’t. But Ralph said she and her colleagues tested how people were interpreting the question before conducting each survey.
Ferguson said the conclusion is that the study’s findings “confirm what’s been said all along: If you make it harder to get (an abortion) in a formal setting, people will get it informally.” The research was funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and a third foundation listed as anonymous.
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