With little more than two months until Donald Trump returns to the White House, interest in abortion medication has skyrocketed in the U.S., according to organizations that prescribe and supply abortion pills, as women prepare for the uncertainty of abortion access during Trump’s second term.
The Washington Post reported that Aid Access, one of the largest suppliers of abortion pills by mail in the U.S., said it received 10,000 requests the day after Trump’s win was called, in contrast to the 600-odd requests on a typical day.
Wisp, a reproductive telehealth organization, saw a 300% increase in requests for emergency contraception, and Plan C, a website that provides information on how to access abortion pills, had a 625% increase in visitors to their site, The Guardian reported.
In recent years, demand for abortion medication and emergency contraception has surged in correlation with major political events. After Trump was first elected in 2016, there was a swell in women seeking long-term birth control options like IUDs. Requests for birth control, emergency contraception and abortion pills also increased in 2022 after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The landscape of reproductive rights is likely to undergo yet another dramatic shift in Trump’s second term. The president-elect has waffled on whether he supports a national abortion ban, but he most recently said that he would not sign such a law as president. JD Vance, the vice president-elect, has likewise supported a federal law restricting abortion in the past but has since adopted Trump’s stance of advocating for states to decide.
“Because of those inconsistencies, policy experts said, there’s no clear road map for the future of abortion in a second Trump administration,” NBC News reported.
Abortion rights was widely seen as a major issue in this year’s election. Democrats made abortion access central to their pitch, and many anti-abortion Republicans — including Trump, who once boasted of his role in Roe’s downfall — grew quiet on the issue.
In 10 states where abortion rights were on the ballot, a majority of the measures passed.
In his second term, Trump may seek to strike a balance between widespread public support for abortion access and the internal pressure he’s likely to face from anti-abortion advocates in his party. Experts have raised concerns about the ways an administration staffed with Trump loyalists might find to further erode reproductive health policies without taking on abortion more directly.
