After 50,000 Mail-Order Abortions, Clinic Waits on Supreme Court

Late last month, the telemedicine abortion startup Hey Jane passed a major milestone, serving its 50,000th patient in three years. In a few weeks, it will confront a major threat to its existence: a Supreme Court case challenging its ability to mail out abortion pills at all.

Abortion pills prescribed by phone, video, or messaging apps and delivered by mail are an increasingly popular way to access abortion in the U.S., offering patients privacy, comfort, and speed. But a conservative activist organization is challenging a Federal Drug Administration policy that allows one of these medications to be dispensed via mail. If it succeeds—a distinct possibility, given the conservative makeup of the court—it would be one of the most devastating blows to abortion access since the court overturned Roe v Wade.

When Kiki Freeman, an early Uber employee and budding entrepreneur, first conceptualized Hey Jane in 2018, providing abortions entirely online seemed like a pipe dream. Medication abortions were becoming more common—accounting for more than half of all abortions in the U.S. by 2020, according to the Guttmacher Institute—and enterprising startups were using the web to deliver everything from hair loss products to Viagra. But official FDA policy on mifepristone, one of two drugs used in a medication abortion, required it to be dispensed in person, making supplying it by mail nearly impossible.

Read more at The Daily Beast.