Self-managed abortions increased after Dobbs

Significantly more women chose to end pregnancies themselves — using unsupervised and potentially dangerous at-home methods — in the year following the Supreme Court’s abolition of federal protections for abortion, according to a new study.

An estimated 3.4 percent of all women of reproductive age reported having tried some form of at-home abortion in the year following the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, according to findings published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open.

That’s up from 2.4 percent of all women the year before — a trend that researchers projected would keep growing.

“We know that restricting abortion doesn’t mean that the need for care will go away,” said study author Lauren Ralph, a researcher and associate professor at the University of California San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health.

Self-managed abortion typically includes any action taken to end a pregnancy without medical supervision. It includes self-sourcing medications mifepristone and misoprostol; ingesting herbs, alcohol, or other substances; or using physical methods like punching yourself in the stomach.

As abortion is increasingly restricted, self-managed abortion attempts will likely continue to rise, the study found.

“Even before the Dobbs decision, people trying to make ends meet, young people, and people of color struggled to access the in-clinic abortion care they wanted and needed. As barriers to in-clinic abortion grow, self-managing may be a pregnant person’s only or preferred option to end a pregnancy. Self-managed abortion fills a critical gap, giving people another option for care on their own terms,” Ralph said in a statement.

In a worrying trend, about three-quarters of women who tried to perform at-home abortions didn’t use misoprostol or mifepristone.

Instead they opted for “ineffective” methods such as herbs, Plan B emergency contraception or physical methods the study found.

The study authors concluded that efforts to connect pregnant people with safe and effective methods of self-managed abortions, as well as efforts to ensure that health care providers are aware of self-managed abortions, can help mitigate some of the legal and health risks people who attempt a self-managed abortion will face.