Nearly half of U.S. states have passed laws that ban or restrict abortion since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year. As a result, millions of people across the country now face severe barriers in attaining an abortion.
Planned Parenthood, one of the country’s largest providers of reproductive health services, has been working to increase abortion access for decades — long before last year’s Supreme Court decision. With 2023 coming to a close, MedCity News had a discussion with Ambreen Molitor, the nonprofit’s national director of venture and innovation, to learn more about the partnerships Planned Parenthood has launched recently to address barriers to abortion care.
Molitor pointed out that there are numerous startups out there that aim to mitigate abortion access hurdles, but many of them lack the infrastructure or means to scale their efforts quickly and equitably. By pursuing partnerships with these types of organizations, Planned Parenthood helps them expand their scope — all while jointly advancing the shared mission of ensuring better abortion access for all, regardless of where they live, she explained.
After the Supreme Court decision was announced, Planned Parenthood began restructuring the way people search for abortion appointments on its website. With patient access under attack, the nonprofit wanted to ensure users could see appointments that were available not just at Planned Parenthood facilities, but also at other providers. The organization also wanted to make sure users could see appointment options in a range of nearby states.
To help provide these search capabilities, Planned Parenthood teamed up with abortionfinder.org, a site that allows people to find abortion appointments across a wide range of providers and locations. The nonprofit also partnered with Plan C — an organization that helps people access self-managed, at-home abortions through medication — so that users seeking an abortion on Planned Parenthood’s site know this could be an option for them as well.
Planned Parenthood also recently began a new collaboration to address one of the most enduring barriers to abortion access: cost.
“You have 15 weeks to make decisions, so time is of the essence. And we’re seeing a rise in folks needing to travel a little bit further, so the cost is accruing and really rising. Cost is a barrier that has always been ever-present, but more so now,” Molitor declared.
To tackle this problem, Planned Parenthood joined forces with a startup called PiggyBank to incorporate financial assistance into the appointment booking experience. Now, when someone books an appointment on Planned Parenthood’s site, they are linked to a form that allows them to anonymously request financial aid and quickly see what funds they are eligible for — whether that assistance comes from the federal government, a state or local government, or a nonprofit.
The last partnership Molitor highlighted has to do with an incredibly important but sometimes overlooked part of the abortion care process: emotional support. To equip better emotional support services into its care model, Planned Parenthood launched a partnership with Aya Contigo, a Venezuela-based organization.
“It’s an organization that has actually built a really strong infrastructure in Venezuela. We’ve been looking outside the United States to see how other countries are responding to moments such as this — and Venezuela has very tight restrictions on abortion and sexual health rights in general,” Molitor said.
Aya Contigo provides medical information, emotional health resources and virtual chat support with trained educators to people seeking medication abortions. Working with this organization has taught Planned Parenthood a lot about patients’ emotional needs during the abortion care process, Molitor stated.
Patients need emotional support throughout the whole journey, she noted. They need it upfront, when they are deciding whether to have an abortion, as well as after the pregnancy has been terminated.
Photo: Fokusiert, Getty Images
