On the day the US Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion, Julie Crowe, in Nashville, Tennessee, immediately went online to order ten emergency contraceptive pills. At 52, she is not the only one to have reacted to this historic volte-face on June 24. In order to avoid being taken aback and for fear of future restrictions in their respective states, many Americans rushed to acquire the morning after pill, sometimes by the dozens.
Within 24 hours of the ruling, online drug platform Wisp saw an all-time sales spike of 3,000% on its emergency contraceptive products. This upward trend continued for several days, breaking record after record, before stabilizing. However, health professionals advise against buying the morning after pill – a single-dose contraceptive – in multiple copies. This measure, they judge, is at best useless, and at worst, counterproductive.
Julie Crowe was curious to see if her very conservative state of Tennessee would “block the delivery” of the pills. But above all, she wanted to be able to help anyone around her who wanted to regain “control over her life. “It is completely mind-blowing to see our country going backwards in terms of civil rights and the autonomy of its body,” she lamented.
“Very visceral feeling”
The morning-after pill is different from other products that allow a so-called medical abortion to be carried out much later in pregnancy. It is taken in one dose within five days of unprotected sex. The sooner it is taken, the more effective it is.
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, calls from citizens to stock up on morning-after pills forced e-commerce giant Amazon and top US pharmaceutical chain CVS to briefly cap purchases. If reproductive health professionals and American family planning recommend having a pill in your medicine cabinet “just in case”, they advise against building up a reserve at home.
The thought of not being able to end an unwanted pregnancy can leave some people with a “very visceral feeling of having their body used against their will”, says Hayley McMahon, a reproductive health researcher in the United States. But, faced with limited quantities in each pharmacy, “nobody wants to empty the stock of a store when one of these pills could have helped the next customer” who would not have the luxury of waiting, adds. -she.
Confusion between the morning after pill and the abortion pill
Hayley McMahon believes that this rush is favored by online misinformation and confusion between the morning after pill and the abortion pill, making it possible to perform an abortion. Some states banned the latter pills in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. But emergency contraceptives are not affected by any ban in the United States.
Savannah Norvell, a nanny from Richmond (Eastern Virginia), ordered six morning-after pills on the Internet to redistribute them to people in need – she lives in a working-class neighborhood with a large student population. Access to reproductive health is a very personal struggle for the young woman, who resorted to abortion after being raped at 18. She “was ashamed” and felt alone. She didn’t know where to get an emergency pill, before it was too late.
Well-meaning but ill-advised people like her who are building up these reserves, doctors say. “As long as emergency contraceptives are available in stores, it is not beneficial for citizens to send these pills by private mail to other people in different states,” explains Caroline Moreau, reproductive health specialist at from Johns Hopkins University. “There’s no need to reinvent the system,” says specialist Hayley McMahon, who applauds the work of local organizations to keep these products easily accessible. A collective of Boston University students recently installed a morning-after pill dispenser on its campus, and hopes to be able to extend the initiative elsewhere.
After the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States to revoke the right to abortion, the subject was invited into political discussions in France. A bill aimed at including the “fundamental right” to voluntary termination of pregnancy in the Constitution and in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union has been tabled.
