The post-Roe abortion option that no one knows about

Pregnant people in Texas, or in any other U.S. state, can visit an array of websites that will mail them two pills—mifepristone and misoprostol—that will induce a miscarriage when used in the first trimester of pregnancy and possibly even later. The so-called self-managed abortion is therefore an option at least six weeks further into a pregnancy than the controversial new Texas law’s six-week “heartbeat” cutoff for an abortion at a clinic. Though people in other states have several websites to choose from, Texans can visit Aid Access, a website that provides the pills for $105, or less based on income.

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Only 5 percent of Americans have heard of Aid Access, though, and only 13 percent have heard of Plan C, a website that provides information on different mail-order-abortion services by state, according to a new Atlantic/Leger poll. Some people may vaguely know that medication abortions exist, but don’t know the names of the organizations that mail them. However, most poll respondents said that they weren’t aware of any backup options for abortion if a clinic is not accessible. The poll surveyed a representative sample of 1,001 adults across the country from September 24 to September 26, and its results mirror my experiences interviewing two dozen random young Texans recently: None had heard of Aid Access, and the few who had heard of Plan C were confusing it with Plan B, the morning-after pill.

The results also jibe with the experiences of Plan C’s founders. Though they’ve seen a large increase in web traffic, particularly from Texas, since Texas’s abortion restrictions went into effect, “we know that the biggest challenge is to try to get this word out,” says Francine Coeytaux, one of the site’s co-founders. The doctor behind Aid Access, Rebecca Gomperts, told me that according to her own research, 60 percent of her clients did not know about abortion pills before they found her service.

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