Abortions made available by mail in the US by Aid Access

By Sejal Makheja, '22The age-old battle over abortion has turned a new page with a concept called telemedicine, which utilizes consultations to remotely deliver healthcare services using common technology such as mail and smartphones. Telemedicine is used to provide efficient and effective care to patients at a lower cost. Aid Access is an online telemedical service where women are able to be prescribed abortion pills, specifically Mifepristone and Misoprostol. Mifepristone and Misoprostol are together 97% effective in causing an abortion within the first trimester of a pregnancy. Dr. Rebecca Gomperts is the founder of Aid Access and is committed to serving women who are unable to gain access to abortions. Aid Access will screen the potential patient for eligibility, which would be that the woman is less than nine weeks pregnant, then Dr. Gomperts fills each woman’s prescription herself and sends it to an Indian pharmacy that will then ship the pills to the women at their homes in the United States for a fee of $95.Dr. Gomperts was mailing abortion pills through Women on Web, an organization similar to Aid Access, except Women on Web mailed internationally and not to the United States because Dr. Gomperts was afraid that the anti-abortion movement in America would try to shut down the organization and stop its efforts. Therefore, she founded Aid Access, a separate organization that services the United States. The entire process of shipping medicines for personal use is legal, however, Mifepristone is not legally available over the internet, so the FDA is taking a closer look at possible legal violations.Those against Dr. Gomperts efforts criticize it as being unsafe for women in fear they may use it later on in pregnancy or in cases of ectopic pregnancy. In those cases, women need to be physically examined, which is not possible via telemedicine services like Aid Access. Catherine Foster, CEO of Americans United for Life, likens at-home abortion to “playing Russian roulette with [women’s] health, because an unsuccessful chemical abortion may lead to a far riskier surgical one.” There are certain groups of women who should not take Mifepristone or Misoprostol and those are women with ectopic pregnancies, women with intrauterine devices in place, and women with chronic adrenal failure or women on long-term corticosteroids. These can be hard instances to be aware of, thus causing risk to women who could be unaware of their health or pregnancy status. On the other hand, according to The World Health Organization, “There is no evidence that home-based medical abortion is less effective, safe or acceptable than clinic-based medical abortion.”Overall statistics on Dr. Gomperts’ approach of mailing abortion pills show that 94.7% of 1,000 women who used her services to perform at-home abortions successfully ended their pregnancies without surgical intervention. Seven of those women reported needing to receive a blood transfusion and 26 reported needing to receive antibiotics. Eighty seven women sought medical attention for their symptoms, as advised.  Dr. Gomperts emphasizes the importance to give women a safe option for abortions in the U.S. as state restrictions are continuing to intensify. Her goal is to expose the restriction to abortion access to incite greater policy change so that she does not have to provide her service any longer.