The Abortion Pill’s Secret Money Men

The untold story of the private equity investors behind Mifeprex—and their escalating legal battle to cash in post-Dobbs.

HANNAH LEVINTOVA
Mother Jones, MARCH+APRIL 2023 ISSUE

In 1993, a group of activists rented a warehouse in suburban Westchester County, New York. It was smaller than they’d hoped and had limited ventilation, but the two other locations they’d tried to rent belonged to universities and required jumping through too many bureaucratic hoops—the exact sort of paper trail this group was trying to avoid.

Led by renowned pro-choice activist Lawrence Lader, their goal was to replicate RU-486, the revolutionary abortion pill developed in the 1980s by French manufacturer Roussel-Uclaf—which was unwilling to navigate American abortion politics to bring the pill stateside.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/01/abortion-pill-mifepristone-mifeprex-roe-dobbs-private-equity/

USA – With telehealth abortion, doctors have to learn to trust and empower patients

January 17, 2023
MARA GORDON

Like many pandemic-era remote workers, Robin Tucker starts her work day sitting on her sofa with a laptop, wearing soft pants and a T-shirt. But the Washington, DC-area nurse practitioner and midwife doesn't have a typical work-from-home job. She provides abortions over the Internet, a service that has only become available in the United States in the last few years.

Her career, she says, has turned out to be very different from what she learned in midwifery school, where she'd spend long shifts in a high-intensity labor and delivery unit, helping patients give birth.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/17/1140778856/with-telehealth-abortion-doctors-have-to-learn-to-trust-and-empower-patients

USA – For-Profit Abortion Telemedicine Start-Ups Are Proliferating in Wake of “Roe”

Garnet Henderson, Truthout
November 26, 2022

In 2020, a federal judge ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must suspend its requirement that patients pick up mifepristone, one of the pills used in medication abortion, in person. After some back-and-forth under the Trump administration, the FDA permanently repealed the rule, which had long been decried by medical experts as unnecessary, in 2021.

This opened the door for providers to send abortion pills by mail in all but the 19 states that outlaw provision of abortion via telemedicine. (Many of those same states now ban abortion entirely.) This regulation change, along with increased popular interest in abortion access following Roe’s overturn, has led to a proliferation of telemedicine companies offering abortion pills. Some of these companies are run by people with prior experience in abortion care and connections in the reproductive health, rights and justice movements; others are not. Regardless, some abortion access advocates are raising concerns about whether the rise of for-profit telemedicine companies is the best way to serve abortion seekers.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/for-profit-abortion-telemedicine-start-ups-are-proliferating-in-the-wake-of-roe/

‘Necessary to Disobey Harmful Laws’: These ‘Abortion Pirates’ Want Equal Access to Abortion Pills Worldwide

A colorful crowd of doctors, researchers and women’s activists convened in the Latvian capital to explore ways to use pills to circumvent anti-abortion laws.

By EMILY SCHULTHEIS
11/26/2022

RIGA, Latvia — For two sunny, crisp autumn days in mid-September, Riga’s Stradiņš University felt like the epicenter of a self-styled global civil rights movement: to give every person, in every culture or country, regardless of laws, access to abortion pills.

In the hallways, women pored over posters showing the latest research on the effectiveness of abortion pills and other developments in abortion and contraception care. Representatives from pharmaceutical companies enthusiastically pitched their medications and products to doctors sipping coffee and tea during a break between panels. There were graphic novels about an at-home medical abortion and T-shirts printed with women’s self-stated reasons for ending a pregnancy; there were slogans printed on T-shirts like “Make Abortion Legal Again” and a video promoting abortion rights to the tune of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.”

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/11/26/global-abortion-rights-movement-latvia-00069224

26.11.2022

abortion pills at home

abortion pirates

Abortion Support Network

Abortion Without Borders

Family Planning Advisory Service

National Network of Abortion Funds

Plan C

Rebecca Gomperts

self-induced abortion

self-managed abortion

Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project

Galvanized by Dobbs, more doctors are distributing abortion pills by mail

A new president could reverse an FDA rule change that made it possible.

By RUTH READER
09/21/2022

Doctors at online and brick and mortar primary care companies are slowly starting to prescribe medication abortion pills via telemedicine in states where it’s still legal following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision ending the constitutional right to the procedure.

The FDA has yet to update its rules to make way for large retail pharmacies to dispense medication abortion, limiting how patients can get pills. In the meantime, these companies are leaning on two mail-order pharmacies to fill their prescriptions.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/21/dobbs-abortion-pills-roe-00057877

Americans scramble for abortions in states that have banned it

New avenues are emerging, but logistical hassles are everywhere

By RUTH READER and BEN LEONARD
July 11, 2022

Demand for pills that end pregnancy has skyrocketed in states that have restricted abortion since the Supreme Court decision last month, and abortion clinics are reporting a rush for appointments in towns bordering those states.

Aid Access, a virtual abortion clinic based in the Netherlands, saw a 256 percent increase in people coming to its site in the 24 hours after the court’s June 24 decision.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/11/teleabortions-high-demand-abortion-pill-00044005

US conservatives vow harsh restrictions to curtail abortion pills

Discreet and available by mail, abortion-inducing pills could make conservative abortion bans challenging to enforce.

By Brian Osgood
1 Jul 2022

The US Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that enshrined the legal right to abortion in the United States in federal law, reversing nearly 50 years of precedent and inflaming a sharp ideological divide.

The ruling last week was the result of decades of relentless organising by conservative anti-abortion rights groups in the US, which are now setting their sights on the fight to shape the post-Roe landscape.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/1/conservatives-seek-restrictive-measures-to-penalize-abortion-pills

USA – This Virtual Clinic Can Help You Get An Abortion

As we brace for a post-Roe world, telemedicine companies like Hey Jane may be the future.

BY ROSA SANCHEZ
JUN 10 2022

Abortion rights are under attack in the United States, and for the first time since the passing of Roe v. Wade in 1973, the Supreme Court is dangerously close to removing abortion as a constitutionally-protected right.

If that happens, state governments will have the ability to either ban or protect abortion rights for their residents. That puts people wishing to end an early pregnancy in a conservative state in a dangerous situation—not only because they could be criminalized for getting an abortion, but because they could end up resorting to getting an unsafe abortion if no established medical professionals in their state are able to help. Another possible outcome, if abortion is banned in conservative states, is that pregnant people from those states wishing to have an abortion will travel to liberal states to get one—which could result in an impossibly high demand for established abortion clinics.

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a40255620/virtual-clinic-help-get-medical-abortion-hey-jane/

10.06.2022

self-managed abortion

telemedicine abortion

Inside the Effort to Promote Abortion Pills For a Post-Roe America

BY ABIGAIL ABRAMS AND JAMIE DUCHARME
MAY 31, 2022

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this summer, as a leaked draft opinion suggests it may, abortion will likely be banned or severely restricted in about half of the United States. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the country will return to a world before 1973, when the landmark Supreme Court case enshrined a constitutional right to abortion.

Abortion pills, which can be ordered online and delivered by mail, have already fundamentally changed reproductive rights in America. The regimen of two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, can in theory be safely taken anywhere, including in the privacy of people’s homes, eliminating the need to undergo a procedure, travel out of state, take time off work, or confront protestors outside of a clinic. In part because of this convenience, abortion pills—also known as medication abortion—are now the most common method of ending a pregnancy in the U.S.

https://time.com/6181162/abortion-pill-access-roe-v-wade/

31.05.2022

abortion pills by mail

Aid Access

Bixby Center for Global and Reproductive Health

Food and Drug Administration

Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline

nnovating Education in Reproductive Health

Physicians for Reproductive Health

Plan C

Repro Legal Helpline

Reproductive Health Education in Family Medicine

Roe v. Wade

self-managed abortion

social media and abortion

telemedicine abortion

USA – The Mail-Order Abortion Boom Is Here

Inside telemedicine’s rocky road to bring abortion care into the 21st century.

Ali Pattillo
Updated May. 28, 2022

As Roe v. Wade hangs in the balance, telemedicine startups offering mail-order abortion pills are scrambling to meet surges in demand for remote abortion care across the United States. These sleek, modern tech companies like Hey Jane, Just the Pill, and Carafem claim to offer safe, seamless, and effective abortion care at a distance.

Leah Coplon, a nurse midwife, abortion provider, and director of clinical operations at tele-abortion company Abortion on Demand, told The Daily Beast that countless patients remind her of the essential nature of this digital approach—patients who are living with abusive partners and are stealthily obtaining pills, patients in rural areas of the country where travelling to a clinic poses challenges, young people who do not feel safe disclosing their need for care, and those with common everyday obstacles like getting time off work, childcare, or transportation.

Continued: https://www.thedailybeast.com/telemedicine-is-paving-a-post-roe-path-for-abortion-through-mail-order-medication