On this International Safe Abortion Day, we celebrate mifepristone and Misoprostol: the tiny tablets making abortion safer and more accessible to women around the world.
In June of 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court rolled back the constitutional right to an abortion with the Dobbs decision, many people took to the streets in protest — and many of the signs they carried featured wire hangers.
Why wire hangers?
It harkened back to the years before Roe v. Wade when abortion was illegal, and women seeking to end their pregnancies often risked unsafe procedures that threatened their health and lives. Fortunately, the wire hanger has less relevance today in the US than it did in 1973. And that’s because of a game-changing advancement in reproductive care that was first introduced about 30 years ago: medication abortion, also known as medical abortion or the “abortion pill.”
Abortion using medication, also known as medical abortion, usually involves taking two different drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, which are taken in sequence. Mifepristone stops further development of the pregnancy, and misoprostol induces uterine contractions to expel the pregnancy tissue. The use of misoprostol alone has also proven an effective and safe way to end a pregnancy, which is especially important in extending access in countries where mifepristone is more difficult to obtain.
Around the world, these tiny pills are revolutionizing abortion access for several reasons:
- They are generally less expensive than a procedure, putting abortion within financial reach for people and communities that otherwise couldn’t afford it.
- They require less medical training and equipment.
- They can be taken in the comfort and privacy of one’s home.
- They offer the pregnant person choice in abortion services options in instances where both procedural abortion and medical abortion are available.
when
country
United States
region
Americas & the Caribbean
Subject
Abortion Care
Around the world, these tiny pills are revolutionizing abortion access.
Since Dobbs, nearly half of U.S. states have moved to ban or severely restrict abortion procedures. Medication abortion, which is safe and still legal in most states, has been a lifeline for abortion-seekers whose access has otherwise been severely restricted. To put the United States in a global context, we are one of the only countries on earth moving to roll back abortion rights rather than expand them; nearly all other countries are liberalizing access.
That is all to say: if medication abortion is ensuring abortion access here in the States, imagine what it can do for the developing world, where banning abortion rights results in pregnant people dying.
“Medical abortion has revolutionized abortion services globally by putting the control over the abortion process into the hands of pregnant people,” says IPPF’s Dr. Nathalie Kapp, Chief Medical Adviser. “As a medication regimen, it has decreased many of the barriers to training and need for equipment that is necessary for an abortion procedure, thereby facilitating provision of abortion in many more settings, including in rural areas, and by allowing provision by a larger range of provider cadres.”
“Medical abortion has revolutionized abortion services globally by putting the control over the abortion process into the hands of pregnant people,” says IPPF’s Dr. Nathalie Kapp, Chief Medical Adviser.
We know restricting legal access to abortions does not reduce the number of abortions that take place; it simply drives women and girls toward unsafe abortions. This year, over 9 million women will face health complications as a result of unsafe abortions globally, and 22,800 of these women will die. The infuriating truth is that nearly all of these deaths could be prevented by giving women access to safe, timely, affordable and respectful abortion care.
In fact, studies show that deaths from induced abortion would decline by two-thirds in developing regions if all women having unsafe abortions could have safe and legal access to Misoprostol instead.
If you zoom out for a global view, you’ll find a hopeful trend begins to reveal itself: access to safe abortion care is increasing in parts of the developing world where it was once available only to the most privileged. And one major reason for this promising development is the advancement of medication abortion.
Continuing further in this promising direction will require combating cultural stigmas, expanding access to all forms of safe abortion (procedural and medical), reducing barriers to care, and adopting clinical guidelines around comprehensive abortion care worldwide.
But today, we want to take a minute to celebrate progress. Cheers to medication abortion, the lifesaving advancement in reproductive medicine that has put power back in so many millions of people’s hands. Cheers to safety and bodily autonomy. Cheers to mifepristone and misoprostol. Happy International Safe Abortion Day.
Illustration credits: SAAF
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Bill is a senior-level Philanthropy, Communications, and Marketing leader in the INGO sector. He currently serves as the Head of Individual Philanthropy at IPPF, building strategic partnerships to support its global mission.