Women stockpile abortion pills before Trump term
Women are seeking out abortion medication in higher-than-usual numbers ahead of a Donald Trump presidency that they fear could severely curtail access to reproductive care.
Aid Access, one of the largest suppliers of abortion pills, reported receiving 10,000 requests for the medication in the 24 hours after the election was called for the Republican nominee early Wednesday – roughly 17 times the 600 that the organization typically gets in a day.
Just the Pill, a nonprofit that prescribes abortion medication through telemedicine, said 22 of its 125 orders from Wednesday through Friday were from people who are not pregnant. It’s normally “a rarity” for anyone to ask for that kind of “advance provision,” said Julie Amaon, the group’s interim executive director.
And Plan C, which provides information about accessing abortion medication, reported receiving 82,200 visitors to its website on Wednesday, compared with approximately 4,000 or 4,500 visitors per day leading up to the election.
Reproductive-health organizations and companies also said demand for emergency contraceptive – or “morning after” – pills and long-lasting birth control, like intrauterine devices and vasectomies, has increased, but they declined to provide specific numbers.
“People understand that the threat is very real and the threat is dire to abortion access under a Trump administration,” said Brittany Fonteno, president of the National Abortion Federation, a professional association of abortion providers. “And so I think that people feel extremely, understandably concerned about their ability to get the care that they need.”
“President Trump has long been consistent in supporting the rights of states to make decisions on abortion,” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s transition team.
Trump has repeatedly shifted positions on abortion, calling himself “the most pro-life president in history” but promising to veto a federal ban on the procedure. He nominated three Supreme Court justices in his first term, opening the door for the court to strike down the constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Antiabortion doctors, meanwhile, have sued to limit access to mifepristone, one of two drugs taken at a set interval to induce abortion. And some far-right conservatives have inaccurately conflated emergency contraception and IUDs with abortifacients.
Women have previously stocked up on abortion medication when access to the pills has appeared to be in doubt. A research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine in January stated that daily requests from nonpregnant people to Aid Access for advance-provision abortion medication increased nearly tenfold after the May 2022 leak of a draft decision in Dobbs. Women with private health insurance also increasingly sought out long-acting reversible contraception, like IUDs, after Trump was first elected in 2016.
Planned Parenthood said that on Wednesday, vasectomy appointments scheduled increased by 1,200 % and IUD appointments scheduled rose more than 760 % compared with the previous day. And Winx Health, which sells reproductive health products, reported selling seven times more emergency contraception on Wednesday than in the whole previous week. Both organizations declined to share raw numbers.
Sohana Pai, a 24-year-old medical student in Kansas City, Missouri, has never used birth control pills or an intrauterine device. But on Wednesday, she called an OB/GYN office and asked to book the next available consultation to discuss getting an IUD. She went in the following day, chose a specific device and made an appointment for insertion this month.
Pai said she worries about Project 2025, a plan for the next Republican administration that calls for abortion restrictions – although not a national ban. Contributors to the plan, issued by the Heritage Foundation, include several former Trump administration officials. Although Trump has distanced himself from the initiative, Pai doesn’t want to risk having to carry a pregnancy to term when she doesn’t feel financially prepared to raise a child.
She said she knows getting an IUD can be uncomfortable, but she values the autonomy the device will give her.
“That’s just a little bit of pain to, honestly, last me eight years, and I feel like that’s kind of worth it,” Pai said. “But it’s frustrating that I’m being forced to take these steps.”
For Briana Schneekloth, 20, getting long-lasting birth control was one of the first things she thought of after she woke up around 6:45 a.m. Wednesday and saw an email news alert that Trump had won. Less than an hour later, she said, she sent a text to her friend: “We need to get implanted birth control or IUDs.”
It’s important to Schneekloth, a junior at Temple University in Philadelphia, to be able to terminate any unexpected pregnancy that could result from sexual assault or consensual sex. While she’s worried about the possible side effects of hormonal birth control, she said it’s worth the risk. If Trump restricts access to abortion or contraception, she wants to be ready.
“It just feels like there’s a clock on it now because it feels like something could change any day after he gets inaugurated,” Schneekloth said. “And it’s something that if I do, it’s a long-term protection plan.”
Rebecca Gomperts, founder of Europe-based Aid Access, said her organization received so many online orders for abortion medication on Wednesday that the website briefly crashed. More of those requests than usual were from people who wanted to have the pills on hand in case they unexpectedly became pregnant, Gomperts said. She added that orders came not just from states with abortion restrictions but also from states where the procedure is protected.
“People don’t trust anymore that the laws in the states will protect them,” Gomperts said.
Elisa Wells, co-director of Plan C, said she believes that the spike her abortion-information site experienced reflects fears that the Trump administration could direct the Food and Drug Administration to restrict the mailing of abortion medication, among other possibilities.
Antiabortion groups have argued that a law from 1873, the Comstock Act, should be used to bar sending abortion pills through the mail. Trump rejected the idea in an August interview with CBS News, but Vice President-elect JD Vance has pushed the Justice Department to enforce the act to “shut down all mail-order abortion operations.”
“We don’t know what to expect, but I think we have to plan for the worst and make sure that we have systems in place to help people access these very safe and effective pills,” Wells said.