Study authors push for nationwide expansion of telehealth abortion

Despite the fact that the federal Comstock Act prohibits mail-order abortion, Aid Access telehealth data was openly published in a research letter which claimed there has been a "doubling in monthly teleMAB [telehealth medication abortion] requests across 18 states post-Dobbs."

The authors, who are biased in favor of abortion, endorse the expansion of telehealth abortion nationwide. The research letter, "Distance to Care and Telehealth Abortion Demand After Dobbs," was submitted to the JAMA Network by authors deeply invested in expanding abortion.

They conducted a "repeated cross-sectional study to examine Aid Access asynchronous teleMAB service requests before and after Dobbs, stratified by distance to the nearest abortion facility."

Aid Access, a Netherlands-based virtual abortion pill dispensary founded in 2018 by study co-author Rebecca Gomperts, has admitted that it is ‘leveraging’ shield laws (which protect abortionists in pro-abortion states from prosecution when illegally mailing the abortion pill to pro-life states).

Authors examined Aid Access data from "18 states and 743 counties."

Key Takeaways:

• A study published by the JAMA Network and authored by researchers deeply embedded in the profitable abortion industry claims that since Dobbs in June of 2022, monthly requests for telehealth abortion pills have doubled.

• They have not made their data public.

• The study was funded by the Society for Family Planning, a pro-abortion organization.

• Despite the data coming from states where telehealth abortion pills were legal, the authors claim that there is a "need to expand" this abortion pill access "nationwide."

Setting the Timeline:

The study examined mail-order abortion requests between November 2021 and February 2023. Instead of examining virtual dispensaries located in the U.S., the study used data from international abortion pill provider Aid Access.

• April 2021: Under the guise of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden FDA temporarily enabled abortion pill distribution and expanded the FDA's REMS safety regulations to limited mail-order pharmacy distribution. 

• December 2021: Biden's FDA further weakened the REMS by eliminating the in-person dispensing requirement and enabling the abortion pill to be permanently shipped by mail.

• June 24, 2022: Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade.

• October 2022: Glamour Magazine described the Aid Access process this way:

“In states where medication abortion is legal, patients who use its website are referred to local doctors who prescribe the pills, which an online pharmacist fills...In states where abortion is illegal, the requests come into Gomperts herself. She writes the prescriptions, making use of her Austrian medical license. A distributor in India ships the medication into the United States."

• January 2023: The Biden FDA announced it would allow retail pharmacies to dispense the drug. 

The Study's Authors:

The study was published in JAMA Network, and authored by pro-abortion activists, some who previously promoted "advanced provision" of the abortion pill. Below is a list of the study's authors:

Rebecca Gomperts:

• Dutch abortionist, co-founder of Women on Web and Women on Waves

• Founded Aid Access in 2018 to utilize telemedicine for abortion, shipping the drugs across the United States

• Licensed to practice medicine in Austria (not the U.S.) and reportedly obtained her medical degree from the University of Amsterdam

Anna E. Fiastro:

• Former Planned Parenthood intern

• Leads the “We Won’t Go Back” Initiative, “a University of Washington program to mentor and support primary care clinicians and staff to implement or grow abortion and reproductive health services in UW Medicine” which launched the “Medication Abortion Access in Primary Care Learning Collaborative” to “support clinics to provide medication abortion”

• Oversees UW’s “Access Delivered” program, which “collaborates with clinicians to integrate telehealth abortion care into routine services” and “partners with advocacy organizations, local clinics, and clinicians in 20 states to expand telehealth medication abortion services across the U.S.”

Emily Godfrey:

• Oversees UW’s “Access Delivered” program (described above under Fiastro)

• Society of Family Planning (SFP) Fellow

• Faculty of UW’s Complex Family Planning Fellowship” — an abortion training program usually operated in conjunction with Ryan Residency programs

• Serves as a “current member of the expert committee on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)”

Caitlin Myers:

According to the study's conflict of interest disclosures:

• "Reported unpaid advisory work with the #WeCount Advisory Committee and the Power to Decide Research Advocacy Group"

• "Reported consulting work for the Urban Institute and Planned Parenthood Federation of America on matters related to the effects of abortion policy and access"

Erin K. Thayer:

• Involved in University of Washington’s (UW) “Access Delivered” with the mission of "advanc[ing] community-guided research and expand[ing] medication abortion services in the primary care setting and beyond, with a focus on telehealth."

UW, which has multiple School of Medicine locations in Seattle:

• Operates an abortion training program and is listed as a Ryan Residency program location.

• UW’s “Complex Family Planning” fellowship’s mission is to “develop obstetrician gynecologist leaders in complex abortion and contraception through training in clinical care, research, and education.”

In addition to Thayer, authors Godfrey and Fiastro are also involved in UW's abortion program while author Amy K. Willerford's LinkedIn notes she is a medical student at the school.

The Authors' Claims:

The authors, each having motives to expand abortion, claimed that "[g]eographic distance has become an increasingly critical determinant of abortion access."

They suggested "delays in care and the cost of accessing an abortion—factors that may eliminate access altogether."

Additional claims:

• "Between November 2021 and February 2023, Aid Access completed 16,154 teleMAB requests across 18 states and 743 counties."

• "There were 4545 requests pre-Dobbs, and 11,609 after."

• "The average monthly teleMAB request rate rose across all counties post-Dobbs, from 2.4 to 4.5 requests per 100 000 women aged 15 to 44 years per month. On average, this rate increased the further individuals lived from brick-and-mortar facilities."

• "The teleMAB request rate tended to be highest in counties located 100 miles or more from an abortion facility both before and after Dobbs. A 100-mile increase in distance was associated with a 13% increase in requests per capita (95% CI, 7% to 19%) pre-Dobbs and an 8% increase (95% CI, 3% to 13%) post-Dobbs."

• "... [W]e observed a doubling in monthly teleMAB requests across 18 states post-Dobbs, with most requests occurring before 6 weeks of pregnancy and the highest rates among individuals living further from in-person abortion care."

While some states had "trigger laws" essentially banning abortion once the Supreme Court had overruled Roe v. Wade (June 24, 2022), other state restrictions did not take place immediately due to ensuing lawsuits.

But, in this study, the authors "used data from 18 states where teleMAB was legal 8 months before and after Dobbs to ensure comparability across jurisdictions and to minimize legal and reporting variability."

"In those 18 states, researchers found telehealth abortion requests jumped about 155% in the eight months after Dobbs, as compared to the prior eight months," the Seattle Times reported.

While the media is pointing to the high rate of requests "in counties located 100 miles or more from an abortion facility," the authors were clear that "increases" were "not statistically different from one another" in the pre-Dobbs requests v. post-Dobbs requests.

 Regarding limitations in the study, the authors added:

An important study limitation is the reliance on data from states where abortion remained legal post-Dobbs, which may have included persons traveling from restricted states for care. Still, our findings align with growing evidence that teleMAB is essential for those living far from in-person care, and its availability enables individuals to receive treatment at early gestations, thereby reducing complications that can occur with delayed care

So, despite the data coming from states where "teleMAB was legal" the authors are using their results to "highlight the critical role of teleMAB in reducing geographic barriers to care and underscore the need to expand teleMAB access nationwide."

The Study's Funding:

The study was "supported by the Society for Family Planning Research Fund," the funding arm of the Society of Family Planning (SFP), which:

• Was founded in 2005 with a “generous contribution” from the David & Lucile Packard Foundation.

• Oversees Complex in Family Planning programs which train in universities across the country.

• Claims on its website that "fellows are uniquely suited to establish new Ryan Residency Training Programs." (Ryan Residencies have trained thousands to commit abortion.)

• Has an official journal, Contraception, which publishes numerous abortion studies often cited by the media or court briefs.

In recent years, abortion philanthropist Warren Buffett (the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation) poured over $15.3 million into SFP and millions more in earlier years. Both Packard and Buffett have been investors in the abortion pill's manufacturers, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, which are regular exhibitors and sponsors at SFP events.

SFP's website advocates for zero restrictions on the killing of preborn children, for any reason, at any time, as documented previously by Live Action News.

"In the past 3 years, Drs Godfrey, Fiastro, and Myers have received funding from the Society of Family Planning to support research on abortion access outside the submitted work," the study's conflict notice added.

The Bottom Line:

How trustworthy is the data compiled and reviewed by pro-abortion zealots? One may never know, given that the study supplement clearly noted that the data "are not publicly available."