additional patients are opting for pharmaceutical abortion as additional limits on abortion services are placed by US legislators.
This approach entails taking pregnancy-ending medications, frequently without the need for a doctor’s appointment or office visit.
Medication abortion has been used for decades all over the world because it is safe and successful.
Although Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, depriving Americans of their constitutional right to an abortion, Attorney General Merrick Garland has subsequently stated that states cannot outlaw abortion drugs that have FDA approval.
The legality and application of medical abortion are still widely misunderstood, nonetheless, and false information can make it challenging to comprehend and obtain this therapy.
What is an abortion with medication?
Taking medications to end a pregnancy is known as a medication abortion. The typical course of treatment is taking mifepristone first, then misoprostol.
These drugs induce the uterus to empty itself, halting the pregnancy and preventing it from developing further.
Depending on your location, you can obtain abortion pills by going to a provider’s office or provider-staffed telemedicine platform (referred to as a “clinician-supported” abortion) or by purchasing them online and taking them at home (referred to as a “self-managed” abortion).
What is the effectiveness of abortion pills?
An extremely successful method of ending a pregnancy is medication abortion. However, the longer a woman has been pregnant, the less effective medication abortion becomes. After 12 weeks, effectiveness seems to start to decline.
Rarely, some pregnancy tissue will remain in the body if a medication abortion isn’t totally successful. We call this a “incomplete abortion.”
Individuals who have an incomplete abortion can require surgery or another misoprostol dosage to finish the procedure.
Abortion by medication is widespread worldwide.
In the United States, medication abortion became lawful in 2000 after the FDA authorized its use to induce abortions at an early stage of pregnancy.
Although the FDA has approved abortion pills for usage up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy, certain jurisdictions also utilize them off-label for longer periods of time.
In recent years, medication abortion has been increasingly prevalent among Americans, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic began and telemedicine made abortion pills more widely available.
Actually, pharmaceutical abortions account for more than half of abortions performed in the US and several European nations.
In Ghana, where 28–46% of abortions were medication abortions, and India, where up to 73% of abortions were medication abortions, the use of abortion pills is also growing in popularity.
Since the early 1980s, misoprostol has been legally available for self-management of abortions in many Latin American countriesTrusted Source.
When people have consistent access to abortion pills and reliable information about their use, they can decrease maternal mortality, increase access to safe abortions, and give people greater privacy and autonomy when handling their own abortions.
What is the process by which abortion drugs terminate a pregnancy?
Mifepristone and misoprostol are the two drugs taken during the majority of medication abortions. However, misoprostol by itself can also be used to accomplish a medication abortion.
Misoprostol causes the uterus to empty and shed its lining, whereas mifepristone prevents a pregnancy from progressing.