Hours after Donald Trump was elected president for the second time, Dr. Clayton Alfonso received two messages from patients wanting to replace their IUDs. Over the next few days, three women asked to have their tubes tied.
They all said the election was the reason they were making these choices now.
Requests for long-term contraception and permanent sterilizations have increased across the country since the election, doctors told The Associated Press. And companies that sell emergency contraception and abortion pills say they are seeing significant spikes in requests from people stockpiling the drugs; they saw a 966% increase in emergency contraception sales from the previous week, in the 60 hours after the election.
“I saw this bump after the Trump election in 2016” and after Roe vs. Wade was destroyed in 2022, said Alfonso, a gynecologist at Duke University in North Carolina. “But the patients seem more scared this time.”
Although anti-abortion advocates are pressing Trump for more restrictions on abortion pills, it is unclear what will be done during the second Trump administration regarding access to any form of contraception. Trump told a Pittsburgh television station in May that he was open to supporting contraceptive regulations. But following media reports about the interview, he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that he “never and never will” advocate limiting birth control and other contraceptives.
Alfonso said his patients want to replace the still-effective IUDs and “restart” the 3-to-12-year clock before the inauguration. He also said women are particularly concerned about IUDs, which have come under attack from abortion opponents who believe life begins when an egg is fertilized. Experts believe the devices work mainly by blocking fertilization, but can also make it more difficult for a fertilized egg to implant in the uterus.
A patient who requested a tubal ligation on Tuesday told Alfonso that she does not want children and is “just absolutely terrified of a forced pregnancy or the inability to access birth control.”
Pittsburgh OB-GYN and abortion provider Dr. Grace Ferguson said more of her patients are planning IUD insertions or stocking up on emergency contraception, telling her in advance that this is “due to the upcoming change in administration.”
One patient, Mara Zupko, said she wants prescription emergency contraception because she is about to reach the weight limit for Plan B, the best-known over-the-counter type. Her husband is getting a vasectomy.
“We were always in two minds about whether we wanted children or not,” says Zupko, 27. “But as the world has become increasingly scary, we realized we didn’t want to bring a child into that environment. And I also have several health risks.”
Women are also turning to companies that sell emergency contraception online or offer abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol via telehealth — something that was happening before the election but that some companies say has accelerated.
A study earlier this year found that abortion pill provider Aid Access received approximately 48,400 requests from across the U.S. for so-called “advance provision” pills from September 2021 through April 2023 — with requests peaking immediately after news had leaked about Roe’s recall, but before the formal announcement. Other research found that more women had their tubes tied after Roe, with the largest increases in states that ban abortion.
Mifepristone has a shelf life of about five years and misoprostol about two years, according to Plan C, an organization that provides information about medical abortions. Plan B typically has a shelf life of four years.
Telehealth company Wisp saw orders for abortion pills increase 600% between Election Day and the next day. And between November 6 and 11, the company saw sales of its emergency contraceptive and birth control products increase by 460%.
At Gen Z-focused Winx Health, which sells emergency contraception under the name Restart, company executives saw a 966% increase in sales in the 60 hours after the election compared to the week before. Sales of Restart ‘value packs’ – four doses instead of one – have increased by more than 7,000% in the past week.
“Morning after pills” are legal in all states, but Cynthia Plotch, co-founder of Winx, said many people seem to be confused about what emergency contraception is compared to abortion pills. In a 2023 survey by health policy research organization KFF, a majority of respondents said they know these two things are not the same, but only 27% say they know that emergency contraceptive pills cannot end a pregnancy.
Doctors agree that the confusion surrounding “morning after” pills may explain some of the stockpiling. But Duke’s Alfonso suspects that most people do this for the same reason they seek longer-term birth control methods: to prevent abortion by preventing pregnancy in the first place.
Alfonso predicts that the rise in birth control and abortion pills will level off, as they did in 2016 and 2022. If the new administration “doesn’t immediately focus on health care,” he said, “then I think it will go to the back of the world will go. people’s minds until it surfaces in the media.”
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
