As many as 180 Missourians each month received abortion pills from out-of-state providers between 2023 and 2024, according to a recent report from the Society of Family Planning.
According to the latest #WeCount report from the organization, from April to June of this year, there were an average of 167 telehealth-assisted abortions provided to Missourians from clinicians in California, Massachusetts and other states with laws that protect them from legal action.
The total number of abortions among Missouri residents in the last half of 2023 compared with half of 2020 has risen slightly since the Supreme Court’s decision, according to the report. Its authors used clinic data about where abortion patients live from another organization, the Guttmacher Institute, to complement their own findings.
“There are thousands of people living in Missouri who have needed an abortion since the total abortion ban came into place, and those people have been and are accessing medication abortions via telehealth from providers based in states with shield laws,” #WeCount Co-Chair Alison Norris said. “What this really tells us is that people sometimes need to terminate a pregnancy, and that people will go to the length that they need to to take care of themselves.”
State officials banned abortion in Missouri shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. But providers in other states are allowed to prescribe pills that induce abortion that are sent to Missouri residents through the mail.
Missourians also can travel to Illinois and other states that have expanded access to abortion to have the procedure.
Most other states with abortion bans saw a similar increase in the number of people getting the procedure, the report found.
Fueled largely by the increase in telehealth abortions from providers in the protected states, Missouri saw an approximately 14% increase in the number of reported abortions among its residents in July to December of 2023 compared with six months of 2020, according to the data.
Telehealth accounted for 11% of the more than 6,500 abortions in that six-month period, according to the report.
The expansion of telehealth and virtual doctors visits during the coronavirus pandemic has made people much more comfortable with using telemedicine for abortion care, said Jennifer Smith, an OB-GYN and cofounder of Missouri Healthcare Providers for Reproductive Rights.
“We’ve learned historically that women find a way to get the health care that they need, whether it's legal or illegal,” she said. “Now, with the web and telemedicine, women are more easily able to get a hold of medical abortions and the medication for that.”
While the WeCount report tallies the number of patients abortion providers that have been sent the abortion-inducing medication, it’s possible patients ordered the medicine but decided not to take it.
State officials in Missouri, Idaho and Kansas have sued the federal government in a federal court in Texas seeking to limit access to mifepristone, which is commonly used with another pill, misoprostol, to induce abortions.
The suit claims the Food and Drug Administration should not have expanded access to the drug. The federal agency in 2021 dropped the requirement that providers prescribe the drug during in-person visits.
