There has been a sharp increase in demand for birth control, emergency contraception, and abortion pills as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade.
Parents and women have been hoarding options out of concern that access to family planning services may be restricted.
According to certain clinics, the number of appointments has increased by four, and the nonprofit Just the Pill has received 100 inquiries in the hours following the ruling.
When Katie Thomas, 42, learned that abortion would no longer be permitted in the state, she said she bought drugs for her daughter, who is 16 years old.
“I want to be able to manage that,” she said, according to The New York Times, “just the concept of something happening to my daughter, whether by force or by her choice, and there’s an unwanted pregnancy.”
I’ll take care of that on my own if I have to.
She claimed that in case her son, 21, and his girlfriend ever needed it, she had been stockpiling the emergency contraceptive Plan B and purchased more on Friday.
According to Lauren Frazier, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Southeast in Atlanta, calls from worried women asking how many pills they may hoard have surged.
Women are being cautioned by other abortion and healthcare professionals not to totally empty the shelves so that others who urgently want pills can receive them.
Hey Jane, a startup that offers telemedicine abortions in six states, reported that after the court ruling, patient demand doubled and website traffic increased by 1,000% on Friday.
It is anticipated that abortion pills will be the subject of numerous court cases in states attempting to prohibit abortion.
With no exceptions for rape or incest, 13 states have already implemented new legislation, with Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Missouri completely outlawing them.
For the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, medical abortion is still permitted by the Food and Drug Administration.
It requires a woman to take two medications between 24 and 48 hours of one another to induce contractions akin to a miscarriage, which expel the fetus and result in significant bleeding.
Medication is a prominent option for women seeking to have an abortion because it is less expensive, less invasive, and the pills may be shipped to your home.
According to experts, it will be challenging to regulate the mailing and receiving of the prescription, as well as flying to another state for a consultation.
Several hundred pro-choice demonstrators gathered outside the Supreme Court on Sunday for a candlelight vigil as part of yesterday’s ongoing demonstrations against the court’s historic ruling.
During a weekend of largely peaceful protests that occasionally became rowdy, there were said to be dozens of arrests and some incidents of destruction.
Republican Governor Kristi Noem defended the law that is now in place in South Dakota, which allows no exceptions for rape or incest victims, calling the Supreme Court’s decision “great news in the preservation of life.”
Noem discussed her support for legislation that would outlaw telemedicine abortions on ABC’s “This Week.”
Asa Hutchinson, the governor of Arkansas, also claimed that it was “acceptable” for the government to use force to “force someone to carry a child to term” in order to preserve an unborn child.
He argued on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that states should now concentrate on assisting expectant mothers and babies by expanding services, including adoption.
However, the Republican also criticized calls for more action, such as a federal ban on abortion, which is a goal shared by many on the religious right, or limits on contraception, which he claimed would not be touched in Arkansas.
Since Friday, there has been a worldwide mobilization due to concerns that the Supreme Court’s strong conservative majority, which Donald Trump made possible, may now try to assault other rights like same-sex marriage and contraception.
President Joe Biden has called the Supreme Court’s decision a “tragic blunder,” but he has also conceded that his options are limited because state legislatures, which are frequently anti-abortion, now hold the majority of the power.
In the meantime, Biden’s Democrats have sworn to use all legal means at their disposal to protect women’s reproductive rights. The president’s major hope is that people will turn out in support of abortion rights during the midterm elections in November.
Governor Tony Evers promised to grant clemency to any doctors who face prosecution in Wisconsin, where an 1849 statute that forbade abortions except in cases of mother-saving may take effect. This was reported by local media.
And the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, vowed to “fight like hell,” announcing that a temporary injunction had been filed to protect the right to an abortion in her state.
Apocalyptic scenarios, according to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, may soon come to pass as women are compelled to carry out unwanted pregnancies, travel great distances to states where abortion is still allowed, or have clandestine abortions.
Women will die if they are forced to carry pregnancies against their choice. The progressive senator warned that access to abortion services “would kill them,” pleading with Biden to consider setting up medical facilities on government property in conservative states.
According to a CBS poll issued on Sunday, 59 percent of Americans and 67 percent of women disagreed of the court’s decision.
There were sporadic acts of violence despite the fact that thousands of people demonstrated peacefully over the course of the weekend, the most of them in protest but also many in celebration.
In Arizona, police used tear gas to disperse protesters, while in Iowa, a pickup truck plowed right into a crowd of demonstrators.
Police in Lynchburg, Virginia, were looking into a case of vandalism at an anti-abortion pregnancy clinic on Saturday. The center’s windows had been broken and graffiti was spray-painted on them.
A similar anti-abortion facility in the town of Longmont, Colorado, was burned down on Saturday, and the phrase “If abortions aren’t safe, neither are you” was spray-painted on the building. Police were looking into the incident.