Teens are Driving the Demand for Online Abortion Pills Via Telehealth – New Research
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Originally published The Conversation on March 25, 2026.
Teens in the U.S. are obtaining medication abortion pills through telehealth, and young people age 18 to 24 are ordering medication abortion at much higher rates than older adults.
Those are the key findings of a new study that my colleagues and I published in the journal JAMA Health Forum.
We examined requests for medication made to an online telemedicine service – one of the few to support people in all 50 states, without age restrictions. We compared average weekly request rates both before and after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in June 2022. Over time, we examined request rates across three age groups (15-17, 18-24 and 25-49) and by the severity of state-level abortion restrictions.
After Roe was overturned, researchers expected the number of abortions across the U.S. to fall. Intuitively, this makes sense, as most states have at least one law substantially restricting abortion services, which limits access at a clinic.