Women Across the Country Are Stockpiling Contraceptives Post-Election
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In the wake of last week’s election, many young women are coming to terms with their new reality: reproductive rights, and access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, will almost certainly be affected when Donald Trump and JD Vance take office in January.
If conservatives get their way, contraceptives of all kinds could become far less accessible and/or far more expensive nationwide, and abortion could be banned altogether (more on those plans below). In response, many women across the country have decided to stock up on birth control pills and emergency contraceptives (like Plan B) now to ensure that they—and their loved ones—never run out of the medication they need.
"I'm going to ask my doctor about my prescription and am planning to get more Plan B," Renee, 35, tells Cosmo. "I don't trust this new admin." Nicolette, 23, has already put her plans into motion: "I'm going to get my IUD replaced early and have ordered some Plan B just in case." Sydney, 25, says she went on the morning of Election Day to get her birth control prescription refilled and picked it up immediately. "I have about six extra months stashed away now."
Other women are choosing to place orders for the abortion pill, aka mifepristone, which has been available by mail via telehealth since December 2021.
"My next steps are to replace my IUD and then figure out how many abortion pills I can keep on hand," says Abbey, 25. "I know they'll be available for the immediate future, but obviously seeing Roe overturned combined with the possibility of losing Obamacare next year...I want to frontload myself with options."
Tamarah, 33, is postpartum with her first child, and is now fearful about having a second baby during Trump's next term. "Am I overreacting thinking about buying abortion pills, god forbid I need them, if I were to have a miscarriage next time I get pregnant?" she says. "Do I go back on birth control? It's so f*cking scary to have to think about all of this."
These women aren't alone—Americans in general are worried about their reproductive futures, and the numbers back them up.
Yes, the election results have triggered a massive general uptick in purchases of birth control and abortion medication and services.
According to Planned Parenthood, traffic to their website soared on November 6th, the day after the election. Compared to the previous day, visits to its page about tubal ligation (tube tying) increased by 1700%, traffic to its page about vasectomies increased by 1200%, and clicks to pages about general IUD information and how to get an IUD increased by 500% and 1200%, respectively.
In-person appointment bookings also spiked, Danika Severino Wynn, CMN, vice president of care and access for Planned Parenthood, tells Cosmo. Compared to the previous day, scheduled vasectomy appointments increased by 1200%, IUD appointments increased by over 760%, birth control implant appointments increased by 350%, and gender-affirming care appointments increased by 140%.
Over-the-counter and direct-to-consumer contraceptive brands also noticed a dramatic rise in demand. Wisp, for example, saw orders for medical abortion rise 600% between November 5th and 6th. On November 6th, emergency contraceptive sales were up almost 1000%, with birth control sales up 50%, and new patient emergency contraceptive sales up 1650%
Winx Health, which sells the morning-after pill Restart, tells Cosmo that they sold 7x more of the product on November 6th than in the week before. 75% of those purchases were value packs, rather than single dose. Cadence OTC, another DTC brand, saw a 70% increase in traffic to their website on November 6th, and had 5x as many orders in one day than they usually see in a week.
History is repeating itself—and people are more prepared for it than ever.
Planned Parenthood tells Cosmo that they saw similar trends in 2022, after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which ended the constitutional right to abortion, and in 2016, after Trump was elected into office for the first time.
“When Roe v. Wade got overturned, I went online and bought a bunch of Plan B to have just in case, for myself, my friends, family, strangers even,” content creator Kelsey Kotzur shared on November 7th in a TikTok post that’s since garnered nearly 200k views.
Many women also turned to long-acting birth control methods, like IUDs and implants, at increased rates in 2016 and 2022.
“When Trump won in 2016, I went that week to get an IUD after being on the pill,” remembers Charlotte, 24. “I was a senior in high school and a lot of my top college choices were in states that he had won and are notoriously conservative. I didn’t want to risk not being able to access birth control and figured it was a safer bet.”
All that said, interest in long-acting birth control, emergency contraceptives, and abortion pills seems to be higher this past week than ever before. "[Demand] is higher than it was after Dobbs," a representative for AidAccess, a non-profit that provides access to medication abortion by mail, tells Cosmo.
Is stockpiling birth control medication and scheduling long-term reproductive care measures necessary?
There’s definitely certainly cause for concern, and it doesn't hurt to be prepared.
Throughout his campaign, Trump was wishy-washy at best about whether or not he will limit access to reproductive healthcare. In May, he said he was “looking at” policies that could restrict an individual’s right to contraceptives in some states, but then walked it back on social media. In an April interview with TIME, he said he would leave it up to the states to decide whether or not they want to monitor pregnancies, or criminally prosecute women for getting abortions.
As a reminder, Trump proudly accepted responsibility for the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which left 21 states with full or partial bans on abortion. In several of these states, doctors can be punished with prison or fines for providing abortion care.
In the TIME interview, Trump also mentioned that he would be coming out with a “big statement” on the future of mifepristone, and whether or not women women should have access to it. He promised the statement would come out in 14 days, but it never did. In a press conference in August, he still refused to rule out restrictions on mifepristone as a possibility.
Then, there's Project 2025, the ultra-conservative policy playbook, which Trump claims not to know about, despite more than half of its authors having been part of his administration and/or campaign and transition teams. The extensive document, written by the far-right think tank The Heritage Foundation, proposes cuts to medication abortion, denying access to abortion care even in emergency situations, and removing public funding for contraceptives. (You can read more about the plan and how it will affect reproductive health here.)
Even if access to birth control, emergency contraceptives, and the abortion pill remains unaltered, these medications could become far more expensive than they are now.
Trump has, again, been unclear on whether or not he will dismantle the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), a reform law that has guaranteed no-cost birth control for all women in the U.S. since 2012. If it is changed or overturned (as Project 2025 recommends) 55 million women may lose access to free birth control and other preventative services, according to the National Women’s Law Center, and 48 million women may lose free emergency contraceptives, per the Center for American Progress.
What to know if you're planning to stock up on birth control yourself:
In a recent Instagram post, Dr. Jennifer Lincoln said you should order what you feel you need. "Be prepared, but don’t harm access for others." She suggests looking at the Plan C Pills website for information on getting mail-order abortion pills in every state. Similarly, AidAccess tells Cosmo: "There are enough abortion medicines, so people don’t have to panic."
If you're planning to gather any medication in response, be sure to do some research on its shelf life, and take a look at the expiration date before stashing it away. In general, birth control pills have a shelf life between 1-5 years, emergency contraceptive pills have a shelf life of 3-4 years, and abortion pills have a shelf life of 2 years.
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