Vox: “Eighteen months after the Dobbs v. Jackson decision that overturned the constitutional right to abortion, and with a new Supreme Court challenge pending against the abortion medication mifepristone, confusion abounds about access to reproductive health care in America. Since the June 2022 decision, abortion rates in states with restrictions have plummeted, and researchers estimated last month that the Dobbs decision led to “approximately 32,000 additional annual births resulting from bans.” Journalists profiled women who carried to term since Dobbs because they couldn’t afford to travel out of their restrictive state. The total number of abortions in the US, however, has increased since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, driven by more people ending pregnancies in states that have laws friendly to abortion care. And often lost in this conversation is the fact that access to medication abortion has actually expanded in significant ways since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, both in terms of lower costs and avenues to obtain the pills quickly. The problem is many people who would be able to take advantage don’t know about it. Taking a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol within the first 12 weeks of a pregnancy was already the most common method for abortion in the United States before the Dobbs decision, partly due to its safety record, its lower cost, diminished access to in-person care, and greater opportunities for privacy. The popularity of medication abortion has only grown since then: A poll released in March found majorities of Americans support keeping medication abortion legal and allowing women to use it at home to end an early-stage pregnancy. Another survey found 59 percent of voters disapprove of overturning the FDA’s approval of abortion medication, including 72 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of independents, and 40 percent of Republicans…”