Medication abortion accounts for more than half of all abortions in the U.S., and typically involves two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol. A research letter published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine looked at requests for these pills from people who weren’t pregnant and sought them through Aid Access, a European online telemedicine service that prescribes them for future and immediate use.
Aid Access received about 48,400 requests from across the U.S. for so-called “advance provision” from September 2021 through April 2023. Requests were highest right after news leaked in May 2022 that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade — but before the formal announcement that June, researchers found.
Nationally, the average number of daily requests shot up nearly tenfold, from about 25 in the eight months before the leak to 247 after the leak. In states where an abortion ban was inevitable, the average weekly request rate rose nearly ninefold.
Plan B is contraception, not an abortion drug.
It’s for when the condom breaks, not for when you are already pregnant. It’s also legal in states where abortions are illegal (because it isn’t an abortion drug).
The drugs that are being stockpiled are probably Misoprostol and Mifepristone. (Edit- I read the article more thoroughly, they are specifically talking about these two drugs not plan B)
I think it’s awful that I need to preface this with “I oppose all laws, including those that make abortions illegal” but let that suffice
if a sperm meeting and egg and beginning cellular division is the beginning of a human life, and plan b prevents that zone from embedding in the uterine lining, then it is arguably whether plan b is an abortion. you have stated that it is not, but without defining an abortion, and I think it’s obvious, by most definitions of abortion, plan b is an abortion.
We are on the same side. That said:
the FDA recognizes that plan b stops or delays ovulation, so it’s method of contraception is not what you describe: Link to FDA faq. This page specifically addresses the claim that plan B prevents implantation (the fda says it does not).
the article is specifically about two drugs that are not plan B and are abortifacients.
oh cool