It's free, it's confidential, and it’s helping people who have questions about abortion and miscarriage.
Brut spent a day with a volunteer at the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline.
Brut spent a day with a volunteer at the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00When you're this early on, the passing of the pregnancy is kind of like a heavy period.
00:04It's totally fine that you vomited after 45 minutes.
00:06It should still be effective.
00:08If you have any medical questions, once you get the pills, you can definitely call or
00:12text us back.
00:13We are a group of about 70 clinicians, so we're a group of doctors, nurses, midwives,
00:32and we answer texts and calls from people kind of all around the country who maybe have
00:36questions about miscarriage, about abortion.
00:53So the pills don't actually show up on the blood test.
00:56What they'd be looking for is a pregnancy hormone level, but there's like no real test
01:01for the pills.
01:02No problem.
01:03Take care.
01:04We're just confirming that the pills that they took can't be detected on the blood test,
01:09which they can.
01:10I think right now, everybody kind of lives in a world of fear, whether they live in a
01:15state where medication abortion is legal or not.
01:17When you're this early on, the passing of the pregnancy is kind of like a heavy period.
01:22So you probably are not going to see anything besides kind of bleeding and blood clots.
01:27If it's helpful for us to be on the phone with you when you start taking the medications,
01:32we can do that.
01:46Just thinking about the restrictions in our country is terrifying in a lot of different
01:50ways.
01:51We help to bridge the gap between people who want abortion services, but may not be able
01:56to receive them safely in the state that they live in.
02:00We don't sell the pills, but we do guide people to the Plan C website where they can order
02:04pills online if they'd like.
02:05A lot of what we do is reassurance, like, yes, your process is going okay, or, you know,
02:10where to get pills or, you know, things like that.
02:30You start off by taking Mifepristone, which is one pill.
02:37And then typically what we'll tell people is 24 to 48 hours later, they can go ahead
02:42and take misoprostol.
02:44Some places will do medication abortion only up until 10 weeks.
02:48Some places do up to 12 weeks, but we do know that these pills are really safe to take even
02:52beyond that.
03:00Last week, when we first heard about Mifepristone, we had a slew of people calling and being
03:20like, I don't know what to do.
03:21How do I prepare for the future?
03:23When it comes to Mifepristone, this is something that we as clinicians have been using in a
03:28way that is evidence-based, meaning, like, science has shown that it works the best
03:32this way at this dose.
03:45I prescribe a lot of medications, and these are some of the safest medications that I
03:49prescribe.
03:50I've admitted a lot of people in the hospital who have kidney injury from taking ibuprofen,
03:54which is over-the-counter.
03:55I think it's important to protect people's reproductive autonomy so they can choose whether
04:00or not they want an abortion and what kind of abortion they want.
04:11There are people who call and who say, like, I tried to go to my local Planned Parenthood,
04:17and now that we have a six-week ban, I wasn't able to receive the pills because I'm six
04:21weeks and two days, which is ridiculous.
04:23You can see how you're doing in the next couple of hours.
04:26If your bleeding hasn't picked up or anything like that, you could definitely take the mesoprostol
04:30that you have left just the way that you took it before.
04:33You're welcome.
04:34Take care.
04:35As a primary care physician, I deal with a lot of things from diabetes to high blood
04:39pressure to chronic pain, and I think some of those conditions can be so hard to kind
04:45of treat, and this isn't like that.
04:47Like, the patient comes in, they either leave the office not pregnant or will be not pregnant
04:52in the next couple of days.
04:53I don't think that happens in a lot of different other aspects of medicine.
04:57I think the kind of grueling part is how do we do this work that we know is safe and effective
05:04in this world that we live in.