Member-only story
How to Have a Mail-Order Abortion
Answers to every question you have about a new U.S. service that ships abortion-inducing drugs
Women in the U.S. who have trouble accessing an abortion—because of cost, geography, waiting periods, or other reasons—now have another option: the mail. Aid Access, an online organization that allows women to order abortion-inducing medications shipped directly to their home, has been discreetly operating in the United States for the last six months, according to the Atlantic, serving an estimated 600 women so far.
Aid Access isn’t a new idea—it’s a spinoff of Women on Web, a site founded in 2005 by Dutch physician Rebecca Gomperts to supply abortion-inducing drugs to women in countries where abortion is outlawed—but it is new to the U.S., offering a more reliable alternative to shady online sites already selling the drugs. Here’s everything you need to know about the service, also founded by Gomperts, that promises American women access to a safe abortion by mail.
How does it work?
Aid Access supplies the same two drugs you would take for a medication abortion in a U.S. clinic: mifepristone, which was approved by the FDA as an abortifacient in 2000, and misoprostol, which is also used to treat gastric ulcers. By the first half of 2001, 6…
