How To Access Safe Abortion Pills

Where can I find abortion pills?

Since COVID there are more options for receiving quality abortion pills by mail. These options vary depending on the country you live in, the address where you can receive mail, and the laws in your country, state, and city.

Your best bet will always be through a friendly, pro-choice medical provider. They can best orient you with pills.

Clinics like Marie Stopes or Planned Parenthood can also help with pregnancy options in many countries.

In some countries, if someone asks for misoprostol or mifepristone and misoprostol at the right pharmacy they can receive it over the counter.

We advise asking trusted women in your community how women navigate this. Maybe someone knows a safe and trusted doctor, clinic, or pharmacy where you can safely access pills. Do some research to see what is available in your area and what feels like the best option for you.

If you currently need an abortion and choose to self-manage at home with pills, there are a number of organizations listed below that can assist you in getting safe and quality pills. In many communities across the US, there are local abortion funds allocated to help pay for transportation, childcare, hotels, and sometimes part of the cost of an abortion.

PLAN C: The most up-to-date and comprehensive resource on pills-by-mail access, and other resources you will need to access medication abortion in the US.

Hey Jane! (NY, CA, WA, IL, or CO) Get fast, safe, and affordable abortion care from home. Chat with a caring doctor within 24 hours. Medications are shipped daily.

Carafem The leader in client-centered medically-supported telehealth abortion care provided in Iowa, Georgia, Connecticut, Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia

Just The Pill  Offering medication abortion, birth control, and sexual health services for rural Minnesota, Wyoming, and Montana. Providing medication and in-clinic procedures at the Texas border.

Choix  A sexual and reproductive healthcare-focused Telehealth Clinic run by a team of nurse practitioners, doctors, and engineers in California. They offer abortion care, birth control, emergency contraception, and urinary tract infection (UTI) care, to patients assigned the female sex at birth regardless of insurance or documentation status, in California and Illinois.

Planned Parenthood’ A number of clinics are currently providing pills-by-mail. Check online to see if your local Planned Parenthood chapter is participating.

National Network of Abortion Funds is a collective of member organizations working to remove financial and logistical barriers to abortion access. 

Reprocare is a reproductive justice organization that centers communities that are at the intersection of racism, classism, and sexism, with an anti-racist, economic justice, and feminist approach to healthcare and access to care. They provide a healthline that shares medical information about medication abortion, supports low-income callers in accessing funding for reproductive healthcare, and offers culturally appropriate doula support to callers.

AidAccess is a committed team of doctors, activists, and advocates for abortion rights. The purpose of the website and the service is to create social justice and improve the health status and human rights of women who do not have the possibility of accessing local abortion services.

Women Help Women are a global telehealth service that provides information, support, and abortion pills to women around the world and partnerships with local feminist groups around the world to support increased access to abortion pills.

There are many sites that are unlicensed to sell abortion pills  Generally, what they are selling should theoretically be mifepristone and/ or misoprostol, but it may not be a registered brand/manufacturer in the country you are living in. For this reason, the medication is considered a black market, and if detected, could be confiscated by the mail service.

Studies done by Gynuity have shown that many of these pills are in fact mifepristone + misoprostol and that the pills are of good quality. However, if you are buying from a non-vetted website, it’s not 100% sure in terms of quality.

While it is generally advised to get medication in your country from a trusted clinic, provider or pharmacy, if you DO acquire pills by mail from an unverified source, there are a few important things to consider.

How to inspect your abortion pills:

  • Do you see a brand name? If you do, google the name of the pills (i.e. Mifegyn, Medabon, Mifepack, etc) and see where the pills are sold legally on the market
  • Expiration date: are the pills within the expiration and safe to take?
  • Did they arrive in a blister pack? Normally pills should arrive each individually protected in a blister-pack-foil. Mifepristone + misoprostol packs are normally 5 pills, and misoprostol generally comes in packs of 3 or 4 per box.
  • Is the packaging damaged or re-sealed in any way?
  • Misoprostol is generally quite sensitive to heat and can degrade easily. For this reason, pills that arrive in blisters (without punctures, or damage) are important.

Some other interesting articles about abortion pills by mail:

From VICE News: