All abortions should be safe and easy, including ones women have at home | Jessica Valenti

Whether women opt for a home procedure because they lack access to a facility or prefer to avoid medical settings, access to good care is key

While the pro-choice movement is fighting to keep abortion clinics open so that women can have access to reproductive health services, some women are taking their right to an abortion into their own hands. But they’re not just taking the abortion pill from their doctors and going home; experts believe that more women are skipping the doctor all together – both for economic reasons and personal ones.

It’s not a new idea. In Katha Pollitt’s 2014 book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, she noted how much she wished there was some easy, non-invasive way for women to get abortions without medical professionals (and government interference):

I find myself daydreaming, there is something, some substance already in common use, that women could drink after sex or at the end of the month, that would keep them unpregnant with no one the wiser. Something you could buy at the supermarket, or maybe several things you could mix together, items so safe and so ordinary they could never be banned, that you could prepare in your own home, that would flush your uterus and leave it pink and shiny and empty without you ever needing to know if you were pregnant or about to be.

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