Anyone who pays even a little attention to current events can tell you it’s getting more difficult for women to get abortions. From the new restrictions and regulations in Indiana to the new requirements in Utah, it’s becoming pretty evident that preventing women’s access to abortions is a conservative priority. That’s why I’m glad there is a pilot program coming out of New York that is trying to make abortions easier by using telemedicine.
A research group is hoping to make use of technology and telemedicine to help women get access to an abortion medication called mifepristone. Currently, women have to go in person to a clinic to get the medication. However, with the new program they will be able receive the medication through the mail instead.
The Gynunity research group, who is behind this new program, believes telemedicine will be incredibly useful for helping women get this medication.
The Procedure
For a woman to get the medication, she will first need to confirm the pregnancy via blood test and ultrasound. Finding a location to get an ultrasound and blood test is a lot easier than trying to find an abortion clinic. Once the pregnancy is confirmed, she’ll get a prescription for the medication which will then be mailed to her. She’ll do a video conference where she learns how to properly use the medication. After she has completed dosing the only thing left for her to do will be to have a follow up to make sure the abortion completed.
Telemedicine has done this before
This might sound kind of crazy, sending medications like this through the mail. However, this won’t be the first instance of using telemedicine for this exact issue. A gynecologist in Australia has provided 300 women the medication through the Tabbot Foundation. After only five months of being in business, the company is shipping to 30 patients per week.
Restrictions
There are a couple restrictions on this process. The patient must be within the first nine weeks of pregnancy. She must also live in the same state as the clinic that is running the pilot program. The initial launch is in New York, but the program will soon be in Oregon, Hawaii, and Washington State, as well.
Opposition
The research group is well aware that they will face opposition for this program. They have already lost one website to hackers, and have had to switch their web hosting.
The opposition is mostly about safety, or that’s what they claim. Kristi Hamrick, a spokesperson for Americans United for life has said:
“It is entirely reckless to hand out the drugs without supervision because of the deaths that have occurred.”
Hamrick is referencing the 14 deaths out of the 1.52 million women that have taken the medication over a span of 11 years. For perspective, Viagra caused 522 deaths in the first year it was on the market. So it’s perfectly fine to take a medication at home that allows men to get boners; if a woman needs medication to deal with the consequences of that boner she has to go to a clinic so someone can watch her swallow a pill.
Another crazy aspect of this situation is that the side effects take hours to show up. What really is the difference between a woman taking the pill at a clinic then going home and her just staying home?
Concerns
While all of this is very promising, there are concerns. Getting blood tests and ultrasounds outside of the clinic could result in higher costs to the patients. Women will also need to follow up to ensure the abortion completed safely.
