If abortion is not legal in your area, you can either travel to a state that protects the procedure or self-manage it at home.
For years, people have been able to access care both ways. According to the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, thousands of Texans have obtained abortions out of state in the wake of Texas banning abortions for six weeks. In 2020, medication abortions made up more than half of all abortions in the US.
The application of what we already see happening to many people will be the focus of the project.
If you need help covering the costs associated with traveling out of state for care, your local abortion fund can give you financial support.
They can pick you up from the airport and give you a place to stay if you need it.
I agree. People have traveled to different states to get abortions. There is no law on the books that would allow anti-abortion legislators to prevent people from leaving their states for care or punish them when they come back.
According to a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, the laws will likely be challenged.
If a person commits a crime in one state and then moves to another, there is an expectation that the second state will hand that person over to the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. It's not clear if a state can prosecute someone for committing a crime in another jurisdiction where the same act is legal.
We don't know how this will play out.
Even if they don't have the legal authority to do so, anti-abortion lawmakers will try to prosecute people who travel for abortions.
The states have shown themselves to be cruel to people. They're going to try to prosecute people and then they're going to wait for the challenge and destroy people's lives
States where abortion is legal have been working to make it easier for people to travel to get care. Connecticut's governor signed a bill into law that prohibits state officials and health providers from being sued by patients who travel to Connecticut for a procedure. Similar legislation is being considered by California and New York.
A medication abortion is a non surgical procedure that uses prescription drugs to end a pregnant woman's baby's life. Mifepristone causes the uterus to expel its contents by blocking the hormones that are needed for a pregnant woman to have a baby.
The method has been extensively tested and has resulted in very few hospitalizations. The medications are approved by the FDA, which allows healthcare providers to administer the pills in person or send them to patients by mail, but a number of states have adopted laws that restrict how the medications are distributed.
State-by-state information on how to access medication abortion is provided by Plan C. Aid Access and Hey Jane give the pills by mail. People can call the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline to find out how to use their medication on their own. If/When/How's Repro Legal Helpline can be reached by phone or online, and is a resource for people seeking secure and confidential legal guidance on how to self-manage an abortion.
This is going to be an important point of access for the majority of people living in these states if they can't travel.
The answer to this question is more complex. Only three states have laws that criminalize self-managed abortion, and many more have laws that restrict access to abortion. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 19 states prohibit the use of telemedicine to prescribe medication abortion, and 32 states require clinicians who administer the pills to be doctors.
People have been prosecuted for ending their own pregnancies as a result of the restrictions on abortion. A Texas woman was arrested and charged with murder for her involvement in a self-inducing abortion. Prosecutors acknowledged that she did not violate any laws.
If there is a law that says they will prosecute pregnant women if they use medication abortion, you could be violating the law. They were already trying to do that in Texas.
Even though medication abortion is approved by the FDA, it is still unclear if states have the right to restrict access.
It's one of those things where we can't really know the answer until there is a legal challenge.
It is important to know that healthcare providers wouldn't be able to tell if you are having a miscarriage or an abortion when you take the pills, so it is not necessary to share that information with hospital staff.
There is no difference between a prompted miscarriage and a spontaneously occurring one. They are not clinically relevant.
The pills can leave a mark when taken in the vagina. Moayedi said it's not right to tell people to only use medication abortion because it can be good for people with certain medical conditions. She agreed that people who are accessing pills in a secret way should take them in pill form.
Moayedi doesn't want to live in a country where people have to lie to their healthcare providers to be safe. People are telling you things We have to be cautious.
If you want to protect yourself from criminalization, you should be careful about who you share your health information with.
The Repro Legal Helpline suggests using a Virtual Private Network to hide your internet search activity and to protect your private conversations. Law enforcement can gain access to their phones and computers when people are charged with abortion related crimes.
There are prosecutions related to self-managed abortion. Law enforcement intrusion into people's private data has been common.
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