Americans stockpile abortion pills and hormones ahead of ‘reproductive apocalypse’ under Trump

When the presidential election results were handed down on Wednesday, Rebecca Gomperts, the founder of Aid Access, the No 1 supplier of abortion pills by mail in the United States, was huddled in a Paris apartment with her team of eight American physicians and 15 support staff. The group – which usually operates remotely, shipping out more than 9,000 abortion pills a month – had convened in person before the election, knowing they might have to spring into action.

They were right: as news of Trump’s victory spread, the website received more than 5,000 requests for abortion pills in less than 12 hours – a surge even larger than the day after Roe v Wade fell. “I can see all the new requests ticking in as we’re talking,” Gomperts said in a phone call on Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve never seen this before.”

The scenario repeated itself across the country as news of Trump’s victory broke, with women’s and trans health providers getting inundated with requests for services that their patients feared might be banned in a Trump administration. The telehealth service Wisp saw a 300% increase in requests for emergency contraception; the abortion pill finder site Plan C saw a 625% increase in traffic.

“Clearly, people are trying to plan for the reproductive apocalypse that we anticipate will be happening under a Trump presidency,” said Elisa Wells, the co-founder of Plan C.

Dr Crystal Beal, meanwhile, was dealing with an influx of emails on Wednesday from trans patients concerned about their access to hormones and hormone-blocking therapy. Beal runs a site called QueerDoc, which provides estrogen, testosterone and hormone-blocking drugs. Trump is hostile to trans rights, vowing to punish doctors who provide gender-affirming care to minors, and Beal’s patients wanted to know how to protect themselves from a second Trump administration.

By early on Wednesday afternoon, QueerDoc had already received more messages that day than it would in a typical week.

“Some of it is ‘How can I safeguard my access to medication?’” Beal said. “Some of it is ‘Should I change [the gender on] my legal documents back so I’m safer? Should I stop taking medication so I’m safer?’”

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Source: The Guardian, 7 November 2024