With new and ever-increasing restrictions on abortion, Dr. Brent Monseur, a third-year Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Fellow, was curious to know if these illicit businesses are selling medications such as mifepristone and misoprostol as well as birth control pills through the dark web. It’s a project that received the 2022 Ted Adams Scholarship Award at the annual Pacific Coast Obstetrical and Gynecological Society Annual Meeting. Well-deserved as Monseur’s study is the first of its kind to examine family planning medications on the dark web.
Using a historic database from 2011-2015, the team found that there were several marketplaces — 25 listings in total — that offered birth control pills as well as mifepristone and misoprostol.
Monseur hypothesizes that as a result of stigma, limited access, and increasingly restrictive legislation, patients will increasingly use illegal means of obtaining family planning medications despite significant risks of using drugs without a prescription (e.g., counterfeit, contamination, and presence of untested substances). The study team is working on collecting updated data given the new post-Roe legal landscape we currently find ourselves in.
With new and ever-increasing restrictions on abortion, Dr. Brent Monseur, a third-year Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Fellow, was curious to know if these illicit businesses are selling medications such as mifepristone and misoprostol as well as birth control pills through the dark web. It’s a project that received the 2022 Ted Adams Scholarship Award at the annual Pacific Coast Obstetrical and Gynecological Society Annual Meeting. Well-deserved as Monseur’s study is the first of its kind to examine family planning medications on the dark web.
Using a historic database from 2011-2015, the team found that there were several marketplaces — 25 listings in total — that offered birth control pills as well as mifepristone and misoprostol.
Monseur hypothesizes that as a result of stigma, limited access, and increasingly restrictive legislation, patients will increasingly use illegal means of obtaining family planning medications despite significant risks of using drugs without a prescription (e.g., counterfeit, contamination, and presence of untested substances). The study team is working on collecting updated data given the new post-Roe legal landscape we currently find ourselves in.
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