The Rise of "Just in Case" Abortion Pills

5.22.26

Click to skip ahead: Planned Parenthood Affiliate Will Offer Advance Provision Pills; Iowa Further Restricts Abortion Medication; Trump May Cut a Check to Clinic Harassers; In the States: Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Montana; Veteran Group Sues Trump Over Abortion; Texas Is Still Trying to Punish a New York Abortion Provider; Pennsylvania AG Moves to Reverse Pro-Choice Win; AED in the News; Thanks To: New York Sen. Erik Bottcher

---

Planned Parenthood Affiliate Will Offer Advance Provision Pills

This is so exciting! For the first time ever, a Planned Parenthood affiliate is offering advance provision abortion medication—pills to have on hand just in case you ever need them. Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai‘i, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky (PPGNHAIK) is calling the initiative, “Just in Case Abortion Pills.”

You all know that I’m a big fan of advance provision pills, and have been shouting from the rooftops for years that anyone with the ability to get pregnant should have them in their medicine cabinet. That’s especially important now, as attacks on mifepristone ramp up in the courts and state legislatures.

President Rebecca Gibron tells NPR, “this really is the right time for us to step into this space.”

The program will be available to patients in Hawai’i and Washington; the organization won’t be shipping medication into states where abortion is illegal. I imagine that’s in part because of the extra legal scrutiny Planned Parenthood is under, especially in that region. (Seriously, Indiana’s AG is on a personal anti-abortion mission.)

Still, it’s a truly huge deal for a Planned Parenthood affiliate to make this jump. From Plan C co-founder Elisa Wells:

“The idea that you can get abortion pills by mail or that you can get them in advance is really new to a lot of people. So having a group like Planned Parenthood that does have such trust and name recognition adding those services is really important.”

So don’t forget to tell your friends—online and off—that you can have abortion pills shipped to all fifty states. To find out how, check out I Need An A, Aid Access, Plan C Pills, or the other groups listed on AED’s resource page.

Iowa Further Restricts Abortion Medication

Speaking of why advance provision is so important right now—let’s talk about Iowa. Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law this week requiring patients to have an in-person visit with a provider before they can obtain abortion pills. In practice, it’s a telehealth abortion ban. (This is on top of the fact that abortion in Iowa is already illegal after about six weeks.)

There’s a lot to hate about this law, but what gets me most is the shamelessness of pretending it’s about protecting women. Maggie DeWitte, president of Pulse Life Advocates, calls it “a step in the right direction to protect Iowa women from this dangerous drug,” and says she wants “the woman to be seen by a doctor and also be given follow-up care.”

And then there’s Republican state Rep. Devon Wood, who said during floor debate: “We are providing a private clinical sanctuary where an expert can look them in the eye and ask, ‘Are you safe?’”

Are you fucking kidding me? “Private clinical sanctuary” is bad enough, but since when do Republicans—the party that loves to cut funding for domestic violence and sexual assault services—care about women’s health?

The law goes into effect on July 1.

Trump May Cut a Check to Clinic Harassers

By now you’ve probably heard about Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund”—the settlement money he’s using to pay out anyone Republicans claim was wrongly targeted by the Biden administration, including January 6th rioters.

But as Alice Miranda Ollstein at POLITICO reports, the fund could also be used to cut checks for anti-abortion clinic attackers. In fact, Ollstein reports, the settlement text specifically cites extremists convicted of violating the FACE Act—the federal law that protects abortion clinics from violence and obstruction.

None of this should be a surprise, I suppose. Trump pardoned two dozen violent anti-abortion extremists during his first week in office, rebranding them as peaceful protesters. Last month, his DOJ released a 900-page report reiterating the same—claiming the Biden administration had “weaponized” the FACE Act to “advance a pro-abortion agenda” and target activists “with traditional Christian views.”

The timing is infuriating: it was just this week that the National Abortion Federation released its annual “Violence & Disruption Report,” which found that death threats, threats of physical harm, and stalking against providers and clinics more than doubled in 2025.

It’s not enough that the Trump administration has been emboldening these maniacs—now they want to pay them, too.

In the States: Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Montana

For the fourth year in a row, Louisiana Republicans have refused to permit abortions for rape and incest victims—even for victims who are children. Rep. Delisha Boyd has been bringing this legislation forward year after year, and Republicans kill it in committee every single time.

“I stand before you again today asking that we think about the life of the baby who got raped and what they have to endure,” Boyd said during a hearing. “I think it’s a tragedy that we would force children to carry the babies of their rapist.”

It must be exhausting to continually introduce legislation you know will fail. But I’m so appreciative of Boyd for keeping the issue in the spotlight—and forcing Republicans to put their cruelty on the record.

Mayday Health was in Alabama last week, driving around a digital billboard that read: “Mifepristone & Misoprostol. Still available.” With all of the confusion around abortion pills by mail over the last week, this campaign couldn’t have been better timed.

“The headlines about abortion pills have been genuinely confusing,” executive director Leo Raisner told the Alabama Reporter. “When the news is murky, people can make decisions on what they think is true, and we want people to make decisions working from accurate information.”

Speaking of Mayday, Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman is still investigating the group over their gas station ads—which simply say, “Pregnant? Don’t want to be?,” and direct people to Mayday’s website. But Coleman is framing the organization like drug dealers, telling Kentucky Today that his plan is to “dismantle the network.”

While Coleman tries to stop women from having abortion pills shipped into the state, Kentucky activists are getting some patients out of the state. WUKY spoke to a 70-something anonymous woman who volunteers with the Kentucky Health Justice Network, driving patients to Cincinnati for care:

“It’s a chance to be there, to talk to somebody in their weaker moments, to tell stories, to keep them amused and occupied, to tell jokes, to make somebody laugh, to be able to make a difference both by getting them the access that they need and by making sure that I’m helping them emotionally by just being supportive.”

The group pays for the procedure, and gets women there and back. This is one of the things that bring me so much hope, despite the onslaught of attacks. There are activists like this—teenagers and retirees, alike—in every single community.

Unfortunately, not everyone is a superstar pro-choice volunteer. Some people are assholes. Maybe even a quarter of the population of Tennessee. A new poll from Vanderbilt University’s Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions reports that nearly one in four voters in the state would support charging abortion patients with homicide. In Tennessee, that could mean life in prison or the death penalty.

The Tennessean reports that 10% of respondents said they would “strongly support” charging abortion patients with homicide, and 14% said they “somewhat” supported it.

Vanderbilt hasn’t released the full poll yet, so I’m interested to see how they worded this question. Especially because we know from previous polls that the majority of Tennessee voters oppose the state’s abortion ban. These latest numbers don’t contradict that, but they do show the creeping normalization of pregnancy criminalization.

We shouldn’t be surprised: it wasn’t so long ago that Tennessee Republicans proposed a bill to punish abortion patients as murderers, with ‘abolitionists’ flooding the press with all sorts of disinformation.

Finally, our last bit of state news: the man who planned to assassinate a Montana abortion provider is moving forward with a mental health defense, Montana Free Press reports. It’s tough, because obviously anyone who plans to kill another person is unwell. But in a moment when violent extremists are being emboldened, it’s hard to feel a lot of empathy.

Twenty-year-old Charles Felix Jones confessed to showing up at the provider’s home with a gun, watching from outside as the doctor and his wife ate dinner, and then changed his mind at the last moment. Jones also admitted to shooting the front door of a Montana clinic in 2023, planning to bomb a Whitefish clinic in 2024, and to kill the CEO of Planned Parenthood.

I’ll keep you updated as the case moves forward.

Quick hits:

• Missouri lawmakers approved legislation to broaden access to birth control;

• The New York Times digs into the pro-choice loss in the Georgia Supreme Court race;

• And a Texas man has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of performing an abortion and injury to a child after surreptitiously slipping his partner abortion pills.

Veteran Group Sues Trump Over Abortion

Minority Veterans of America is suing the Trump administration over its ban on abortion and abortion counseling for veterans and their families. In the suit, the group accuses the administration of betraying its promise to veterans to “provide them and their families with quality, comprehensive, and equitable health care.”

AED did a deep dive into this in January, but here’s the short version for those who need a refresher: Over the holidays—when the administration thought no one would be paying attention—the Department of Veterans Affairs reversed a Biden-era rule allowing abortions in cases of rape, incest, and health- and life-threatening pregnancies. Now, the VA can’t even counsel on abortion.

One of the veterans cited in the suit, “Member A,” is pregnant and at high risk of needing an abortion to preserve her health. But under this ban, the VA can’t even talk to her about ending the pregnancy.

“VA’s ban on abortion care and counseling is a direct threat to my health and my ability to parent my existing children and a betrayal of the sacrifices I have made for my country,” the plaintiff said in a statement to MS NOW.

Texas Is Still Trying to Punish a New York Abortion Provider

Texas hasn’t given up on attacking New York abortion provider Dr. Maggie Carpenter. This started back in 2024, when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Carpenter for “unlawfully providing abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents in direct violation of state law.”

When he tried to file a summons ordering her to appear in a Texas court, Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck refused—more than once. So Paxton went after Bruck himself. That didn’t work either.

Now Texas is back, appealing a New York court ruling that found Bruck was right to refuse. That’s because New York has shield laws that exist precisely to stop this kind of attack—to prevent state officials from being conscripted into out-of-state campaigns to punish abortion providers.

Bruck isn’t backing down, but says it’s not political:

“In rejecting the Texas filing, I was simply following the law of this State. The issues in this case at stake are legal in nature; I trust the courts to decide them.”

Pennsylvania AG Moves to Reverse Pro-Choice Win

Pennsylvania’s Republican attorney general doesn’t want poor people to have their abortion care covered—and he’s taking that fight all the way to the state Supreme Court.

Last month, a court struck down the state’s ban on public funding for abortion as discriminatory. The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ruled that the state constitution contains “a fundamental right to reproductive autonomy,” and that the ban violated the state’s Equal Rights Amendment. It was a massive victory, and the result of years of work from abortion rights advocates.

Now Attorney General Dave Sunday wants to undo that win. He’s appealing the decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, saying, “My responsibility as Attorney General is to defend the rule of law and defend statutes without interference of personal opinion or political posturing.”

Are we meant to believe that this appeal is not political posturing?

Signe Espinoza, executive director of Planned Parenthood PA Advocates, doesn’t buy it either:

“It’s clear that Dave Sunday wants to play politics with abortion care. Every day that passes while people are unable to access that critical care with their Medicaid coverage is on him.”

AED in the News

This is very cool: Columbia Journalism Review profiled Abortion, Every Day in their “Laurels & Darts” column! Don’t worry, we were under ‘laurels.’ 😉 Seriously, though, it’s really meaningful to be recognized by CJR. Kylie and I are working incredibly hard not only to catch every attack, but to cover this issue in a way that respects the activists and patients who trust us enough to share their stories.

AED also got a super kind shout-out from author Caro Claire Burke, whose novel Yesteryear—about a tradwife influencer who wakes up in 1855—is taking the country by storm. When The Atlantic’s Hanna Rosin asked what gives her hope in the middle of our current misogynist shitshow, Burke said something that made my husband tear up:

“The thing that really encourages me is writers like Jessica Valenti, who cover the abortion fight, who just provide so much information. I think that there is the work that is being done, which is basically just standing in the face of that tidal wave and trying to hold your ground. I think that that means more than we might be able to know at the time, and even if you’re not stepping forward right now, if you’re holding strong, that will have a lot of value five to 10 years from now.”

Listen to the full conversation here.

Thanks To: New York Sen. Erik Bottcher

You may have seen this viral video of New York Sen. Erik Bottcher laying into Republicans for their attacks on mifepristone.

“If women legislators were getting together behind closed doors to determine what men could do with their bodies—if women judges were getting together to decide what men could do with their bodies—all hell would break loose.”

Bottcher made the remarks at a press conference held by New York lawmakers urging for the passage of the privacy protections for abortion providers and patients. Under S8544/A9217, abortion providers, patients, and dispensers could keep their name and address off of prescription labels for abortion medication. (Red states like Louisiana and Texas have used prescription labels to target providers in pro-choice states.)

It’s especially important legislation in the wake of broad legal attacks on telehealth access to mifepristone. Julie Kay, founder of Reproductive Futures, says, “Women are depending on New York lawmakers to make sure telemedicine abortion is protected within our state.”

Watch Bottcher’s remarks below: