If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, self-managed abortion will be a backstop, but activists don’t want to stop there. They want the postclinic abortion to be an option even in places where the procedure is legal. irin reports
After passing a fetal- heartbeat bill, members of the Missouri House throw papers in the air to mark the end of the legislative session. Photo: NICK SCHNELLE/The New York Times/Redux When Leana Wen introduced herself to America as the new president of Planned Parenthood last fall, she had a story she liked to tell — one that showed exactly why abortion access mattered. It was a sad tale of “a young woman lying on a stretcher, pulseless and unresponsive, because of a home abortion.
In its safest permutation, self-managed abortion means taking the same pills, mifepristone and misoprostol, that a doctor at an abortion clinic would give you if you chose a medication abortion rather than a surgical one. Medication abortions now account for a third of all clinic abortions, an option that has risen in popularity by 25 percent since 2011. If the Court takes an ax to Roe v. Wade, self-managed abortion will be a backstop, but activists don’t want to stop there.
Merritt’s home state of Missouri shows how bad the situation has gotten. The state is down to its last abortion provider after repeated legislative onslaughts from Republicans. To meet the demand for abortions, Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri built a large-capacity clinic 13 miles away, just across the Mississippi River in Illinois.
Which brings us back to those home abortions. Daniel Grossman, a physician and public-health researcher whose work the Court relied on in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, has noticed something different at the medical meetings and conferences he’s been to lately, even among OB/GYNs in red states who aren’t abortion providers. They’re talking about what they can do if abortion is made illegal. “All this has seemed very theoretical to clinicians up until very recently.
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