Significant rise in unsupervised abortions in 2023, new study finds

A pro-abortion activist displays abortion pills as she counter-protests during an anti-abortion demonstration on March 25, 2023, in New York City. / Credit: Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 6, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

There was a significant increase in unsupervised abortion attempts from 2021 to 2023, according to a new study published by the American Medical Association.

The percentage of American women who have undergone an unsupervised, self-managed abortion (SMA) rose from 2.4% in 2021 to 3.4% in 2023, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on July 30.

JAMA said that 3.4% represents a conservative estimate, given that abortion numbers are typically underreported. When adjusted to account for this underreporting, the percentage of American women who underwent a self-managed abortion in 2023 was 7.1%.

The researchers, some of whom have ties to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, attributed the rise to the increase in the number of states with pro-life laws and of people who “fear criminalization for seeking pregnancy-related care.”

The upsurge also appears to be spurred on by an increase in women taking chemical abortion pills, which can now be legally obtained without a doctor’s visit.

A chemical abortion is a two-pill regimen in which the first — a drug called mifepristone — is ingested to cut off nutrient flow to the unborn baby, essentially starving the child to death.

In 2021, chemical abortions accounted for 18% of all unsupervised abortions. As of 2023, chemical abortions now account for 24.1%, a 6.1% increase. This comes after another study by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute found that chemical abortions account for 63% of all U.S. abortions.

The Biden administration significantly loosened restrictions on chemical abortion pills following the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Revisions to FDA regulations made in 2021 and 2023 made it so that abortion pills can now be obtained at retail pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens as well as through the mail without an in-person doctor’s visit.

Despite abortion pills being heavily restricted in 14 states, those laws have not impeded pills from being mailed in from other states where they are legal.

The study reported that women used a wide range of other methods to attempt a self-managed abortion including taking emergency contraception (29.7%) and herbs (25.9%). Meanwhile, 21.6% of women participating in the study tried to abort their baby by hitting themselves in the stomach, while 18.6% reported using alcohol or other controlled substances.

Consistent with overall abortion statistics, the largest proportion of women attempting self-managed abortions were African Americans at 5.1% versus all other ethnic groups at 3.1%.

The study noted that several of the methods employed by women in the study have the “potential for harm” and that many “offer low to no effectiveness in ending a pregnancy.”

Because of this, researchers said that “interaction with the health care system following SMA is not uncommon, whether to seek emergency care related to adverse effects or complications or to seek subsequent prenatal or abortion care.”

Dr. Ingrid Skop, an OB-GYN based in Texas, responded to the study by saying: “We must skeptically evaluate this blatant propaganda by abortion advocates promoted by increasingly biased medical journals.”

“For years, abortion advocates have been seeking to de-medicalize induced abortion. Whereas, once they insisted abortion should be ‘between a woman and her doctor,’ increasingly there is no doctor involved in abortion provision, and women are left to suffer alone … Thus, ‘self-managed’ abortion is being promoted to women, regardless of the increased risks, in pursuit of ideological goals,” Skop told CNA. “Now, abortion advocates attempt to have it both ways, by implying the methods they have encouraged will cause harm to women in states protecting unborn life.”

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser commented to CNA that “pro-abortion fearmongering has hit new lows as the Democrats go all in on abortion to save them in the coming elections” and that “rebranding DIY mail-order abortions as ‘self-managed abortion’ exposes the lie of the Democrats’ old ‘safe, legal, and rare’ stance.”