Virtual abortion pill dispensaries, which operate with little to no oversight, have been expanding their business since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) weakened important safety requirements called REMS on the abortion pill by removing the in-person requirement and enabling the deadly drug regimen to be permanently shipped by mail.
Choix Inc
Choix Inc. is operated in part by “engineers” as well as “nurse practitioners,” according to Ms. Magazine. Founded in October of 2020 by nurse practitioners Cindy Adam and Lauren Dubey, it is now a certified member of the National Abortion Federation (NAF). Dubey formerly worked at University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and Planned Parenthood.
Last month, Ms. Magazine reported that Choix has expanded its mail-order abortion pill business to California, Colorado, and Illinois and has now seen over 2,200 clients, with a majority being around 26 years old.
In the Ms. Magazine January 2022 interview, Adam said that chief medical officer Dr. Aisha Wagner provides “in-person care as a family practice physician and also works for Planned Parenthood doing aspiration abortions.” Wagner previously worked at UCSF’s Women’s Option Center, an abortion facility at UCSF.
Adam told Ms. Magazine that the founders of Choix “received a grant from Plan C to help develop the Access Delivered provider guide to offering telemedicine abortion.”
The group’s telemedicine abortion pill process includes a questionnaire, a consent form, as well as a video and educational handouts, which Dubey admitted “can be a little bit confusing and overwhelming, especially with the heightened feelings of urgency surrounding having an abortion.” Adam claimed communication is “all by text with links to the patient portal.”
Choix ships mifepristone through Honeybee Health pharmacy. It utilizes Rhinogram‘s virtual care platform, according to LinkedIn and Facebook.
“There’s a small subset, who need an ultrasound before proceeding with care with us and an even smaller subset who are just ineligible based on being too far along in pregnancy or having some sort of medical condition that precludes them from safely accessing care with us,” Dubey acknowledged.
To cut costs, Adam claimed Choix has done “fundraising through our partnership with Reprocare. In the past, we’ve had partnerships with NAF.” Adam also told Ms Magazine that Choix will be “offering Medicaid coverage next year in California.” In other words, California taxpayers will pick up the bill for these abortions.
HeyJane
HeyJane (a trademark of Possible Health, Inc) was co-founded by former marketing manager Gaby Izarra, who once “founded, built and managed an electronic music blog,” along with co-founder Kaitlin (KiKi) Freedman, once Senior Manager at UberEATS. The two “raised $2.2 million in an oversubscribed round from a group of investors, including Koa Lab, Gaingels and Foursight Capital Partners,” according to TechCrunch.
Investors in HeyJane include David Garcia, a “Senior Engineering Manager at Airbnb“; Adam Berke, “Co-founder & CEO at WorkPatterns, former President/CMO at AdRoll,” Matt Papakipos, and Erika Papakipos.
HeyJane’s medical director is New York physician Kate Shaw Baron and certified nurse midwife Stephanie M. Bussmann is listed as a “lead provider.”
The website’s initial plan was to launch in California, New York, and Washington to provide the abortion pill to “anyone with a uterus” aged 18 or older. But the website has since expanded to also ship abortion pills in Illinois, Colorado and New Mexico. The company is currently hiring “telehealth practice clinicians” licensed in NY, WA, CA, IL, CO, NM, and MA.
A member of NAF, HeyJane claims to have been “independently certified by LegitScript,” described as “the leading verification system for online healthcare.” HeyJane tells clients, “Prescriptions are provided by US-based medical providers licensed in your state.” The online group utilizes mail-order pharmacy Honeybee Health to ship chemical abortion pills via “UPS Ground” shipping in “plain white envelope[s]” to “protect” client privacy.
“The return address is listed as ‘HH’ to ensure it’s not obvious who the sender is,” HeyJane claims.
Abortion on Demand (AOD)
Abortion on Demand’s (AOD) stated goal is “Abortion by mail on a massive scale.” The NAF member currently offers abortion pills through eight weeks of pregnancy for $239. The organization was founded by Dr. Jamie Phifer. who, according to information published at AbortionDocs.org, once worked at the Cherry Hill Women’s Center abortion facility in New Jersey — a facility associated with a number of abortion injuries and health violations.
The organization’s corporate name is IGH PLLC, appears to be headquartered in New Mexico with a Nevada address for the principle place of business.
In April of 2021, Phifer told Marie Claire that AOD would initially launch in 20 states and Washington, D.C., but indicated the group had plans to expand. AOD operates a clandestine structure and currently claims to ship chemical abortion pills in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington. “Patients in D.C. must provide a Maryland or Virginia mailing address,” AOD states.
“Idaho will probably launch in August, Alaska and Hawaii by the end of 2021 and New Hampshire probably early 2022. Michigan and Pennsylvania are my pie-in-the-sky states,” Phifer told Ms. Magazine last year. “And then Wyoming, gosh, Wyoming. It would be wonderful to provide care because it’s so rural. Telemedicine abortion is not outlawed in Wyoming by any means, but there’s some vague language about practicing outside of the norm. I have to kind of wait on Wyoming, but once I figure that out it will be ready to go,” she added.
According to an interview with Phifer from June 2021, AOD uses American Mail Order Pharmacy (AMOP) based in Warren, Michigan to ship abortion pills. While AOD claims abortion pill clients “do not have to be a resident of the state [they] select but [they] do need to be there for [their] appointment,” they specify that their software “will confirm you are physically in the state you selected at the time of your scheduled video appointment. This state needs to match the state selected for your medication abortion packet sent in the mail.” The site adds that AOD “cannot provide care outside of the specific states we are licensed to practice. We cannot ship to P.O. boxes, UPS boxes or Fedex shipment centers.”
Abortion Delivered, a.k.a. Just the Pill
Abortion Delivered, a.k.a. Just The Pill, started as a Minnesota not-for-profit abortion pill dispensary. They currently charge “$350 (including the pharmacy fee)” for abortion pills. This NAF member’s corporate name is JTP Professional Service Corporation, and records on file with the IRS show an address of 2038 Ford Parkway 444, Saint Paul, MN, 55116.
According to Womenspress.com, Just the Pill’s medical director is Dr. Julie Amaon, who formerly ran the North Austin Planned Parenthood. In a legal brief, Amaon claimed Just the Pill would drive mobile vans into “concentrations of migrant farm workers; areas with high poverty rates; and communities hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, including those with large concentrations of Black, Indigenous, and people of color.”
In December 2020, Amaon described the online process to Minnesota Monthly: “Then the patient has a video visit with me, the physician, to go over their health history, confirm they are a good candidate for our no-touch protocol (no ultrasound or blood work needed), make sure the patient understands how to take the pills, what our 24/7 call line is, discuss their informed consent, and then finally read the 24-hour state-mandated information,” she said.
Then in January, Amaon admitted to Ms. Magazine that she sells pills across the border to clients in more “restrictive states.” The online organization admitting that woman experience abortion pill complications and said they have had clients “who needed a suction in the ER due to heavy bleeding and one who had an ectopic pregnancy and had to have surgery.”
“Just the Pill currently delivers only in Minnesota, with hopes of expanding into other states through current fundraising efforts,” Minnesota Monthly wrote. “After the pandemic, Dr. Amaon plans to grow the mobile clinic’s services to include gender-affirming care, IUD and nexplanon placement, suction abortion procedures, and other primary-care services for rural areas, where access is limited.”
Read more on this organization here.
Honeybee Health
Honeybee Health, which charges $75 for the abortion pill regimen, was the first U.S.-based online pharmacy to distribute the deadly abortion drug regimen directly to women by mail for abortion providers who prescribe it.
The group is now openly promoting the abortion pill, telling clients the “[p]ro-choice advocacy group Plan C has collected providers across the country who can help patients find the medication,” then proceeds to list those providers.
HoneyBee Health pharmacy promoting abortion pills online
Pills by Post
Abortion pill dispensary Pills by Post openly admits to shipping the potentially dangerous abortion pill regimen to teens as young as 14, yet their physician claims she is unavailable during the day for clients experiencing potential emergencies. Pills By Post, LLC was incorporated in Michigan by abortionist Razel Remen after initially being set up in July of 2020, around the same time another Remen owned corporation, Repro Red LLC was also organized. The virtual abortion pill website is currently shipping abortion drugs into Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York, for a cost of $150.
The abortion pill regimen includes mifepristone, a progesterone blocker which thins the lining of the uterus and eventually kills the preborn baby by depriving him or her of nutrients, as well as a second drug, misoprostol, developed initially as an ulcer drug. When used with mifepristone, the second drug causes contractions and heavy bleeding intended to expel the dead baby.
“Our highest volume of customers come from Chicago, NYC, Minneapolis, and Denver,” Pills by Post states online.
“I do also get people from rural areas. They are in their late teens all the way up to their 40s. Some people have had children and for some this is their first pregnancy. It’s all over the place,” Remen claimed in a recent Ms. Magazine interview.
Remen is family medicine physician who believes that abortion – the direct killing of a preborn child – should be “normal,” according to her website. She has been committing chemical and surgical abortions since 2015. She is also concerned that the Supreme Court is “going to say the fetus is a person and therefore abortion should be universally illegal.” Remen along with Drs. Dalia Brahmi, Moira Rashid, and Linda Prine is a Regional Clinical Network Leader for Reproductive Health Access Project (RHAP).
“At 21 I got pregnant by my first serious boyfriend, I knew I wasn’t ready to be a mother so I had an abortion. It was one of the best decisions I ever made,” Remen wrote in a 2019 Tweet under the handle MoTownDoc, adding, “Now I am a doctor who provides abortions and birth control to women.”
Tweet by Razel Remen claiming she had abortion (Image: Twitter)
Live Acton News has previously documented how the Plan C abortion pill referral site encourages clients to lie to get abortion drugs.
Editor’s Note, 3/14/22: This article was updated to add a Pills by Post section.
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