Patients rush to get reproductive care before Trump takes office
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Patients are flooding doctors offices and pharmacies seeking IUD replacements, backup contraception and abortion pills before the Trump administration takes office and Republicans control Congress.
Why it matters: Republicans have vowed to restrict abortion care and experts say access to reproductive health care more broadly could erode, especially under a conservative Supreme Court.
- Millions of women of reproductive age could be impacted if the cost of care increases or access to contraceptives is limited.
Driving the news: Google searches for contraception spiked in the wake of the election, and Planned Parenthood North Central States has seen a 150% increase in scheduled appointments for long-acting reversible contraception such as IUDs.
- In Kentucky, health clinic appointments for contraceptives increased by 66%. There's also been an uptick in demand for permanent surgical sterilization, including tubal ligation, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.
- In Massachusetts, patients with contraceptive implants and IUDs, which can remain in the body for three to 10 years, are asking Boston-area clinics if they can replace the devices early, Axios' Steph Solis reports.
"I think that this is going to continue over the next few months and even years down the line, as people try to take some control over their bodies," Brittany Cline, an OB-GYN at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, told ABC News, adding she'd used all the IUDs she had in her office in the days following the election.
Between the lines: People have also been rushing to delete their digital footprints, including menstrual cycle tracking apps, out of fear the data might be used by law enforcement in states with abortion bans.
- Women have begun stocking up on emergency contraception, also often referred to as the morning-after pill.
- Telehealth company Wisp saw orders for the drug, which doesn't need a prescription, double the week after the election, the New York Times reports. The bulk of those orders came from new patients and were for multipacks of the pills, the company told the Times.
- Some states, such as Oregon, have recently begun stockpiling the drugs used for medication abortion, joining others that created their own reserves in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision.
Flashback: There was also a rush for IUDs in advance of the first Trump presidency, years before the overturn of Roe v. Wade. There was another surge just before the Dobbs decision was handed down.
The big picture: Experts say the next administration is likely to restrict access to medication used for abortion by applying a 19th century anti-obscenity law known as the Comstock Act to prevent mailing drugs used for abortion.
- Congress could also attempt to pass a national abortion ban.
Meanwhile, contraception is expected to become more expensive and more difficult to get.
- Access to contraception could erode if Congress targets expanded Medicaid coverage as well as the Affordable Care Act itself, which requires plans to make no-cost birth control available.
- That could put pricier methods, including IUDs or emergency birth control, out of reach for many women, Liz Taylor, senior federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told Axios.
There is also an ongoing challenge over a provision in the ACA that requires employers to cover certain preventative services, including contraception, points out Zachary Baron, director of the Health Policy and the Law Initiative at Georgetown University's O'Neill Institute.
- The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, but the Trump administration could petition the court to withdraw the case, leaving a lower court decision that the federal government does not need to enforce the ACA's preventative service coverage requirement.
- Broader religious and moral exemptions could also be granted to employers, who could opt out of paying for birth control, and to health providers, who could then refuse to prescribe or dispense the medicine.
Reality check: All of these restrictions and changes could be challenged in the courts.
- "All that would be subject to litigation, and there are other obstacles to actually accomplishing" these scenarios, Baron said.
What to watch: The future of fertility care is unclear. Trump said on the campaign trail that he not only supported IVF, but would back government coverage for it.
- But Republicans may not be aligned with him: GOP members of the House sent a letter to the Armed Services Committee on Friday questioning the ethics of the procedure and calling for coverage of it to be stripped from military benefits.
- Fertility care is "the big test of if we could trust any of the rhetoric from the campaign versus what the true policy actions are going to be," Taylor said.
