Posted by:
summer
(
)
Date: April 09, 2023 02:02AM
One thing that I didn't realize is that medication abortions are now the most common way of performing an abortion in the U.S., at more than 50%. These abortions are self-managed at home, in the same way that an early miscarriage would be self-managed at home. In the U.S., the FDA has approved use of the medication through 10 weeks of pregnancy. The WHO approves it through 12 weeks, or the end of the first trimester.
But the drug has been successfully used abroad in the second trimester as well (emphasis mine) --
"To understand what medication abortion looks like in the second trimester, we have to look outside the U.S., to countries where records are kept and data carefully gathered. In Scandinavia, the same two drugs are routinely used for the second trimester abortions in the hospital. ***One hundred percent of abortions in the second trimester are performed with medication in Sweden***, says Kristina Gemzell Danielsson, an ob-gyn at the Karolinska Institute. Historically, she explains, few doctors there were taught to perform second-trimester surgical abortions. Swedish researchers were on the forefront of developing medication abortions, though, and the mifepristone-plus-misoprostol protocol quickly became the default in hospitals once it was codifed. Medication abortion can be used in the second trimester in U.S. hospitals too, but it accounts for only a single-digit percentage of such abortions here."
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/06/how-late-can-you-take-abortion-pill/661437/Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2023 02:03AM by summer.