All Aboard the Abortion Bus!

As usual, I have meant to send out a newsletter for many months and forgotten, because it’s the thing that always gets bumped to the bottom of my to-do list. However, now that we are facing down the likely demise of Twitter, I am going to try to make this newsletter a bit more frequent. But don’t worry: I will simply never have time to spam you.

First up, I’m very excited to share one of my biggest features yet, a story for Cosmopolitan that was on newsstands last month in the lovely issue pictured below, and is now online!

It was my immense privilege to share a peek inside operations at Abortion Delivered, the country’s first fleet of mobile abortion clinics. You might have heard a lot of fanfare about Planned Parenthood rolling out mobile clinics in a few states recently. As is often the case, it was an independent abortion provider (meaning one not affiliated with Planned Parenthood) who took this bold and creative step first—and with far fewer resources, I might add.

The dream team behind this effort is the staff of Just the Pill, which began as a telemedicine-only clinic. However, mobile clinics were their ultimate goal all along, even before Roe fell, so they were ready to meet this moment. The first clinics have deployed in Colorado and they’re already eyeing expansion to other states. Crucially, they are providing medication abortion and procedural (sometimes called in-clinic or surgical) abortions.

My original dream for this feature, which I first pitched in April (!), was that I would fly out to Colorado and get to actually see the clinics. We hoped there might even be a photo and video component. But due to concerns about safety given the history of violence toward abortion providers, and a desire to protect patient privacy, the Just the Pill/Abortion Delivered team made the very understandable choice not to have media visit the clinics. In fact, no one knows exactly what the clinics look like or exactly where they park until they need to know. I’m grateful that this truly inspiring team trusted me to write about them anyway, answering all the questions they could within the bounds of safety. I hope you’ll read the feature to learn more.

(And yes, the headline, “All Aboard the Abortion Bus” was indeed under consideration for a moment. Alas, writers rarely get to pick our own headlines.)

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Moving on to things I have podcasted lately! The most recent two full episodes of ACCESS are two of my favorites.

• For episode 16, I put a call out to clinic workers to tell us what happened in their clinics the day the Supreme Court overturned Roe. I also asked people who’ve had abortions to tell us how the decision made them feel. The episode is all of those voice memos, stitched together. It’s equal parts heartbreaking and hopeful and you should listen now.
• Our 17th episode is all thanks to a listener named Nikki, who I first happened to connect with on Instagram. Nikki has both placed a child for adoption and had an abortion. Her abortion experience wasn’t traumatic, she says, but her adoption experience haunts her every day. We took a deep dive into why adoption isn’t an alternative to abortion, featuring Nikki, an adoptee named Susan who has also had abortions, and the sociologist Gretchen Sisson. Listen now!

And now for a quick roundup of other things I’ve written since my last newsletter. There have been a lot (oops).

• For Truthout, I wrote about (most) Democrats’ failure to connect abortion to the economy in the lead-up to the midterm election. Come for my light roasting of Bernie Sanders, stay for the brilliant Morgan Hopkins in one of her first interviews as president of the reproductive justice organization All* Above All.
• For Rewire, I took a look at how misinformation is confusing and delaying abortion seekers right now, when the stakes couldn’t be higher. The most disturbing story I heard: That a crisis pregnancy center lured an abortion seeker to travel to Colorado from out of state, believing she had an appointment at a real abortion clinic.
• Imagine being a therapist and being expected to keep track of up to 600 patients (!!!) at one time. That was the norm for therapists at Kaiser Permanente facilities in California. For Truthout, I talked to some Kaiser therapists in CA and their colleagues in Hawaii about why they went on strike. The California strike ended with some good wins; the Hawaii strike is ongoing 12 weeks later.
• For Rewire, I wrote about the new abortion clinic opening up in my home state, Wyoming, despite a looming trigger ban and an arson.
• Could an abortion ban put your life in danger? For ELLE, I looked into some of the alarming stories of people being denied needed medications and emergency medical care due to abortion bans, and what you need to know about your right to medical care under federal law.
• For Rewire, I looked at the abortion clinics that are picking up and moving from ban states to legal states.
• A month later, I talked to staff at clinics that are staying put in ban states, trying to offer non-abortion services. What they are doing is so important, and they need a lot more support than they’re getting. Please read and learn what you can do to help!
• Clinic workers in ban states are losing their jobs, and workers in nearby legal states are burned out, overworked, and overwhelmed. I wrote about how hard things have been on them at Truthout.
• Finally, in another one for Truthout, I wrote about why medication abortion will never be enough to solve the abortion access crisis. Yes, please keep sharing that good info about how to have a safe abortion with pills! But read this to understand why that doesn’t help everyone who needs an abortion.

If you made it this far… thanks for reading and see ya next time, maybe without such a long email.

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