Hey Jane founder Kiki Freedman introduced a virtual abortion care startup in early 2021 after the last abortion clinic in Missouri, where she attended college, closed. Following the June Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down the constitutional right to abortion under Roe v. about raising awareness about abortion pills and fighting incorrect information that she says is widespread on social media. He spoke to CBS MoneyWatch about the merits of telemedicine and how Hey Jane is helping patients with abortion pills. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CBS MoneyWatch: What encouraged you to discover Hey Jane and give abortion pills to patients at a virtual health care clinic?
Kiki Freedman: Hey, Jane, she was asked to stop by the last abortion clinic in Missouri, where I went to school, which was almost closed. It seemed tremendously dystopian that there was a state without access to abortion. In retrospect, it has become a comparison to who we are today.
What attracted you to telemedicine?
I was interested in the rise of virtual clinics and how they build access to stigmatized products in a convenient and discreet way, basically for erectile disorder and hair loss. I sought to know how this might apply to access to abortion care.
What kind of patients does Hey Jane serve?
Our patient population closely mimics the abortion population as a whole. This distorts the decline in revenue: 50% of our patients earn less than $25,000 a year. Patients already have children and are making a conscious decision about how to plan for their family’s future. To date, we have seen more than 15,000 patients.
How did the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. Has Wade (known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization)?Is Hey Jane looking at a building in demand for its services?
In the days following the closure of Dobbs, traffic to our site increased 10-fold. We’ve seen a 10,000% increase and traffic to our site and our patient call has doubled. We have noticed sustained and much higher levels of incoming patients than before.
Do you have the composition of your patient population at all?
Instead of a demographic change, we detected a change in tone: we detected a marked increase in anxiety in our patients. We see this in the way they rely more on our team as a beacon of help and hope when they can’t speak. about the remedy with their in-person support networks.
And the emphasis is much more on confidentiality and discretion. This has been very important, but the fears around it have been amplified much more. So, we’re doing more to highlight how we protect patient knowledge and keep it private.
Where do you work and who is eligible for care?
We work in seven states (California, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Washington) and patients must be physically in one of those states to get treatment with Hey Jane. They don’t want to be residents.
Think of it like a stop at a doctor’s office when you travel. Our fee is $249, we have an excellent abortion budget in all of our states to offer financial assistance to those in need.
What are the merits of telemedicine to download abortion pills?
We are completely virtual and meet the full diversity of patient needs. Patients have medications that are shipped to their door 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Most importantly, we provide emotional and network support. We need to make sure patients feel normalized, supported, and validated in every element of their journey.
One of the benefits of being virtual is, for example, that we had a patient who lived in a small town and other people from nearby clinics were close to the patient’s circle of relatives. The patient expected a lack of privacy at the local clinic so he came here to see us.
Another patient was unfortunately pregnant as a result of a sexual assault and did not need to be touched or leave her home. So this is another case where we found telemedicine to be helpful.
What are the demanding situations you face today?
Our clinical team has found that many patients end up in crisis pregnancy centers. That’s where they start and place us. Before Dobbs, there were 4 times more crisis pregnancy centers than abortion clinics. This is even more exaggerated now.
These are entities that offer themselves as abortion clinics but are propaganda weapons of devout organizations that deter others from having abortions by offering false medical data and coercive practices, adding guilt and shame.
They are ubiquitous and can be very persuasive. And now, since there really are abortion clinics to compensate for them, when other people look for data online in hostile states, that’s where they end up.
We are verified on social media platforms, but we are challenged through opposition to other people seeking to censor our content.
One of the main efforts we are focusing on lately is to raise awareness about the protection and efficacy of abortion pills. Before Dobbs, only one in 4 people knew about the abortion pill. We try to raise awareness that this is an effective option for many other people.
What recommendation would you give to patient care in states where abortion is not legal?
It actually depends on the user and the resources they can access. It is vital to know that it is still legal in other states where it is admitted. Seventeen states have “protection” legislation that protects patients and providers if they are under investigation similar to reproductive health care.
That said, traveling to another state is rarely a very viable option for everyone, as it’s expensive. There are resources like abortion budgeting that offer practical support, that can help make travel easier, that are valuable.
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