As Conservatives Try to Ban the Abortion Pill Mifepristone, New Research Shows Accessible Ulcer Drug
(an informative, encouraging read)
As Conservatives Try to Ban the Abortion Pill Mifepristone, New Research Shows Accessible Ulcer Drug Safely Ends Pregnancy Up to 12 Weeks
2/14/2023 by Carrie N. Baker
Mifepristone’s future is shaky—but women and pregnant people can still access misoprostol, a highly effective and medically safe method to end an early pregnancy.
The World Health Organization recommends two regimens for medication abortion: misoprostol alone or combined with another medication, mifepristone. In a recent study, almost 99 percent of those who used the misoprostol-alone regimen had a complete abortion without surgical intervention. (Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images)
Over half of clinician-supervised abortions in the U.S. in 2020 were done with a combination of two medications: mifepristone and misoprostol. A Trump-appointed judge in Texas will soon decide a lawsuit brought by anti-abortion extremists asking him to force mifepristone off the market in all 50 states. If he does, as anticipated, reproductive rights advocates are ready to offer a safe and effective alternative to end pregnancy through three months: a higher dosage of misoprostol taken alone.
Misoprostol is a widely available ulcer medication that can induce a miscarriage by causing contractions of the uterus to expel a pregnancy. In the 1980s, Brazilian women began using misoprostol to end their pregnancies because abortion was unavailable through the medical system. Self-managed abortion with misoprostol resulted in precipitous declines in infection, hemorrhaging and death from unsafe abortion. Today in countries where abortion is legally restricted, misoprostol is often used alone for self-managed abortion because it is inexpensive and widely available, often over the counter, unlike mifepristone. Many studies from around the world have found that self-managed abortion with misoprostol alone is 93 to 99 percent effective and very safe. Because of the widespread availability of mifepristone in the United States, the use of the misoprostol alone for abortion had not been studied here, until recently.
On Feb. 6, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin published peer-reviewed research on the use of misoprostol alone for abortion. The research found that misoprostol alone was over 88 percent effective, with few incidents of serious adverse events or signs of potential abortion complications. “This is the first U.S.-based study on misoprostol alone for self-managed abortion and it’s coming at this critical time where we don’t know what’s going to happen with access to mifepristone,” said the study’s lead author, Dana M. Johnson, a Ph.D. candidate in public policy and demography at the University of Texas at Austin and a senior associate research scientist at Ibis Reproductive Health. “Our contribution with this study is to add to the broad evidence base we have from the international space on how safe and effective misoprostol is.”
The research was based on data from the Vienna-based telemedicine abortion provider Aid Access, which provides telemedicine abortion services with pills in all 50 states in the U.S. Due to pandemic-related challenges shipping mifepristone, Aid Access prescribed misoprostol alone to over one thousand U.S.-based patients in June of 2020. Aid Access physicians either mailed misoprostol directly to patients or sent prescriptions to local pharmacies for pick-up. “We took a very conservative approach by including just the people who had a totally confirmed, complete abortion at four weeks and didn’t get a surgical intervention,” said Johnson. “That is why our finding is 88 percent effectiveness, which is much lower than the SAFE Study from Ibis, which showed 98 percent effectiveness.” Published in November of 2021, the SAFE Study—which stands for Studying Accompaniment Feasibility and Effectiveness—showed that 98.8 percent of those who used the misoprostol-alone regimen had a complete abortion without surgical intervention. “SMA with misoprostol only is highly effective, and warrants renewed attention,” it concludes, calling it “no longer a second-tier method, but one that offers similar effectiveness, and often greater accessibility, than the mifepristone and misoprostol regimen.”
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Pro-abortion activists rally on Jan. 15, 2016, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 2019. Northern Ireland changed its laws to allow access to abortions up to 12 weeks. For decades, women living in countries where abortion is restricted have self-managed their abortions in a safe, affordable way using misoprostol alone. (Charles McQuillan / Getty Images)
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Plan C provides comprehensive information about where and how to get abortion pills in all 50 states. The Digital Defense Fund offers detailed information about how to protect one’s identity when searching for abortion pill information and purchasing medications online. The M+A Hotline offers free, compassionate and confidential medical support for anyone who would like to speak to a trained medical professional when self-managing an abortion. Repro Legal Helpline can answer legal questions about self-managed abortion.
https://msmagazine.com/2023/02/14/misoprostol-abortion/