Rewire, Oct 10, 2017
New research shows that you can buy effective abortion pills online. This is a groundbreaking finding given that cost, travel, and onerous abortion restrictions often make in-clinic, first-trimester abortions inaccessible.
In the study, published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Contraception, researchers ordered abortion pills from 20 websites, none of which required a prescription. Once the pills arrived in their homes, researchers sent the pills to a lab in good standing with the FDA to test the pills’ chemical contents.
The lab confirmed that all of the mifepristone, one of the two drugs used during a medication abortion, was within 8 percent of the advertised—and World Health Organization-approved—effective amount. The other drug, misoprostol, varied more considerably in how much of it was present in the pills the researchers received. Despite this variation, the researchers determined that the misoprostol pills would still be effective in causing an abortion.