Study pushes expansion of telehealth abortion nationwide

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

Authors, who are biased toward abortion then push the expansion of telehealth abortion nationwide.

Study Intro

The research letter entitled "Distance to Care and Telehealth Abortion Demand After Dobbs" was submitted to the JAMA Network, by authors deeply invested in expanding abortion.

Authors 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 is a Netherlands-based virtual abortion pill dispensary, founded in 2018 by study co-author  Rebecca Gomperts, which previously admitted to be ‘leveraging’ shield laws to exploit pro-life states.

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

Setting the Timeline

The study examined mail order abortions requests between November 2021 and February 2023. Ironically, it used data from international abortion pill provider Aid Access, rather than examining virtual dispensaries located inside the United States, during a time when U.S. mail order abortions had been approved.

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

• December 2021: Biden 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: Biden FDA announced it would allow retail pharmacies to dispense the drug. 

Study Authors

The study entitled "Distance to Care and Telehealth Abortion Demand After Dobbs" was  published in JAMA Network, and authored by pro-abortion activists, some who previously promoted "advanced provision" of the abortion pill.

Rebecca Gomperts, Author :

• 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, Author:

• Former Planned Parenthood intern who 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, Author:

• 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, Author:

• The study's conflict of interest disclosures claimed, "Dr Myers reported unpaid advisory work with the #WeCount Advisory Committee and the Power to Decide Research Advocacy Group; she 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, Author:

• Involved in University of Washington’s (UW) “Access Delivered” whose mission seeks to "advance community-guided research and expand 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.

Author Claims

The authors, each clearly motivated to expand abortion, claimed that "Geographic distance has become an increasingly critical determinant of abortion access."

They suggested that "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."

• "[]we 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," Seattle Times reported.

While media is pointing to the high rate of requests "in counties located 100 miles or more from an abortion facility" 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, authors added that:

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."

Study Funding

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

•  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.

• SFP's website claims "fellows are uniquely suited to establish new Ryan Residency Training Programs." As previously stated, Ryan Residencies have trained thousands to commit abortion.

• The official journal of SFP is 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 even further back. Both Packard and Buffett were investors in the manufacturers of the abortion pill, namely either Danco Laboratories or the generic GenBioPro — regular exhibitors and sponsors at SFP events.

The SFP website advocates absolutely 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.

Summary

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 due..."

In other words, we have to take their word for it as there is no way to confirm or review the findings.