July 29, 2020
In the first few weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, thousands of Americans sought out pills to end pregnancies on their own — without the help of an abortion clinic. LBJ's Abigail Aiken talks with VICE about the findings of the study on which she was lead researcher that found a 27 percent increase in the rate of requests for the pills from Aid Access, an organization that ships abortion-inducing pills across the United States. During that time period, Aid Access would normally expect to field about 2,638 requests for abortion-inducing pills. Instead, it received 3,343 requests.
In Texas, where government officials successfully banned almost all abortions for a time, requests for abortions rose by nearly 94 percent.