Dr. Angel Foster

Everywhere in the world, with very, very rare exception, even where abortion is severely legally restricted, if a patient has a complication and gets to a hospital, they're given post-abortion care.

And they're given that care and not turned over to authorities.

They're not thrown out on the street.

They are treated for whatever their medical needs are at that facility.

But what's happening in the United States is that abortion patients and pregnant people in general who are presenting at a hospital with complications are not getting the care that is standard.

And to me, that just continues to be shocking.

So one of the groups of patients that I'm worried about are those patients that are experiencing intimate partner violence in all of its different forms.

We just recently completed a study with the more than 3,000 patients who completed our medical questionnaire and got pills from our service in March of 2026.

And 8% of our patients reported experiencing one or more forms of violence

either in becoming pregnant or during the pregnancy.

So not over the course of their lives, not in the last 12 months, but during the current pregnancy.

And for these patients, being able to get pills by mail is sometimes a lifeline.

It's a way

for them to extricate themselves from abusive relationships.

It's a way for them to sever ties with an abusive partner.

And for some of these patients who are in these violent relationships, they don't have the option of being able to travel across state lines.

We also know that violence kind of co-occurs with financial precarity.

I have a couple of stories from patients that I think are really telling.

This one is from a 23-year-old patient from Oklahoma, and she wrote to us to say, the man I'm impregnated by had assaulted me by strangulation and is being charged with domestic abuse.

I found out I was pregnant when I got rushed to the emergency department.