This is only information, and not legal or medical advice. However, it is not illegal to research or to share scientific and medical information, especially when that information is about health care that may affect more than half of the population. In many states in the US it is illegal to purchase medications online from outside the country, and in some states it is illegal to purposely terminate a pregnancy if you are not a medical provider or if you are doing it outside a hospital or clinic. This is not meant to encourage any decisions regarding abortion care.
The following sections are reprints of information found on the Internet or taken from medical sources, and are simply a compilation of what information has been published regarding herbal and medication abortions in a nonclinical setting.
The biggest health risk for self-managed abortion care using abortion pills is that those who attempt to induce their own abortions may not seek out medical assistance in the rare case that there is a complication, fearing a doctor or hospital may then report them to law enforcement. Current research shows that medication abortion can and is being used to easily and safely end pregnancies independent of a clinic and with minimal risk to a patient-at least, minimal medical risk. As part of a protocol developed first by the FDA and later streamlined by medical professionals through their own clinical use and more than a decade of research, patients were now able to obtain medicine in the clinic and take the dose of mifepristone there, then take misoprostol home to finish the termination in private. Mifepristone (RU-486) was approved by the FDA for use in the US in 2000 and offered as a medication-only option for terminating a pregnancy outside an abortion clinic.
Using medication (mifepristone plus misoprostol or misoprostol alone) to effectively induce a miscarriage, however, is a much more recent (and effective) option. Herbs also tend to require action as early as possible in the pregnancy and are a long-term commitment since they take time to work.
Today’s herbal abortion attempts are often far less effective due to misleading or incorrect information on the Internet and no medically vetted, detailed directions on how to use herbs correctly that the general public can easily access. Herbal abortions have existed for as long as there have been midwives, medicine women, and pregnancy. Those who want to end a pregnancy but either can’t access a clinic or prefer to manage their own abortions have been using herbs and abortion pills since long before Trump’s surprise electoral win. What drives this project is the knowledge that women have been managing this on their own.” They’re being advised if they’ve already decided to use the pills. As SASS’s US spokesperson Susan Yanow told the Guardian, “People are not being advised to use the pills. In April 2017 Women Help Women announced the launch of an online support service called Self-Managed Abortion: Safe and Supported (SASS) to offer information and counseling to those trying to end their pregnancies through abortion-inducing medications outside a clinical setting. It didn’t take me long to learn that it was a topic at the front of everyone’s mind. Two days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, an editor from the United Kingdom approached me with an assignment-reporting on the likelihood of DIY (self-induced, “do-it-yourself”) abortion taking over the country now that the federal government was under Republican control.