Study: Self-managed Abortions Jumped Post-Dobbs

(Dreamstime)

Self-managed abortion attempts increased after the Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling to end Roe v. Wade, according to a new study released Tuesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open.

The percentage of females of reproductive age who said they tried to end a pregnancy on their own increased from 2.4% in December 2021-January 2022 to 3.4% in June-July 2023, one year after the high court’s ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, according to JAMA.

JAMA said that number is a conservative estimate, given the under-reporting of abortion. The group projected the lifetime experience of self-managed abortions to be 10.1%.

JAMA said 21 states have banned or severely restricted access to abortion since Dobbs. Further, while the evidence shows an increase in travel to states where abortion remains legally protected, an increase “in abortion occurring outside of the formal healthcare system, also known as self-managed abortion (SMA) is expected.”

“As barriers to facility-based abortion grow, SMA may increasingly become an individual’s only or preferred option to end a pregnancy,” JAMA wrote.

Notably, just 5.9% of those surveyed in 2023 gave “abortion is illegal” as the reason for SMA, last in a list of 13 reasons for SMA, according to JAMA. Tops on the list was “early in the pregnancy” at 31.8% of responses.

SMA is defined as any action taken to end a pregnancy without medical supervision. Those surveyed report taking medications, such as mifepristone and misoprostol, ingesting herbs, alcohol “or using physical methods such as punching oneself in the stomach,” with 51% choosing that method in the 2023 survey, JAMA reported.

Of those, 14.9% said they experienced a complication that required treatment by a physician or nurse, with 4.7% saying their complication required a trip to the hospital or urgent care, according to JAMA’s 2023 survey.

“We found evidence of increased SMA attempts from before to after the Supreme Court’s decision overturning federal protections on abortion. The national landscape of abortion access will likely continue to become more restricted or at least remain in flux, for years to come, suggesting SMA attempts will continue to increase,” JAMA wrote in its conclusion.