It’s not birth control or contraception, and it’s not Plan B. It’s FDA-approved abortion pills that are accessible through the mail in all 50 states of the U.S. as a fully sanctioned activity, regardless of reproductive healthcare restrictions. This comes from lifted restrictions on these pills by the FDA last year, allowing patients to receive a mailable prescription via a telemedicine appointment with a health provider, removing the need for in-person pickup.
Starting with the Dobbs v. Jackson leak on May 2, and launched the day of the June 24 decision to override Roe v. Wade, co-founder Nathaniel Brooks Horwitz and his team have been diligently working on Mayday, a health education nonprofit aimed at providing information about abortion pills, how to access them, and the possible risks associated with receiving an abortion through the mail.
The nonprofit works to fill an educational gap in a “novel and complementary” way to educational reproductive resources that already exist, without being redundant, said Horwitz. He notes about this educational gap that nine in 10 Americans are not aware that abortion pills exist, or confuse them with the Plan B morning-after pill. Mayday hopes to raise awareness for abortion pills to about 90 percent, which is about where birth control awareness is today, according to Horwitz.
“The goal is to empower people with the information that they need to make their own decision about their own bodies … We wanted to ensure people had the healthcare resources, the legal resources, and the awareness that safe and effective abortion pills exist,” said Horwitz.
In order to gain tools to lessen that gap, the Mayday team spoke with dozens of medical professionals, reproductive health, rights and justice experts, and civil rights attorneys on the safety, access, and availability of abortion pills. The site then works as a platter to serve that information in a distilled and easy-to-digest way, giving anyone the resources to make their own reproductive decisions.
Horwitz told The Times these pills are 97 percent effective through the first trimester, and are 99.4 percent safe to take, according to the FDA, sending fewer people to the hospital than Tylenol. Essentially, the pills stop the continuation of pregnancy by ceasing the production of progesterone, and causing contractions. These pills range from $150 to $250 from telehealth providers, which he said is 10 times cheaper than the cost of traveling to a clinic in another state for an in-clinic procedure.
While there are associated risks and costs, Horwitz called it “a pretty potent antidote to the risk of a federal restriction on the right to choose,” and “the best of bad options in an era where over 60 million people have lost access to clinics in their states and in their communities.” Horwitz also said the most effective way to fight “states trying to restrict abortion at various capacities with no limitation on what those restrictions can look like, because Roe v. Wade is gone,” is by having access to these medicines in advance.
The Mayday team is made up of four core members that bring in a crockpot of skills: Olivia Raisner, Sam Koppelman, Kaori Sueyoshi, and Horwitz. Raisner, who used to be President Biden’s traveling digital director, is Mayday’s head of creative as a digital and creative expert. Koppelman, New York Times best-selling author, is head of communications. Sueyoshi, once a director of innovation at Planned Parenthood, is head of strategy for Mayday as a lifelong reproductive rights activist. Horwitz, currently serving on the board of eight healthcare and biotech companies, oversees Mayday’s generalized operations, including managing the website and fundraising to legal documents and the setup and creation of the nonprofit itself. Horwitz is also a 2014 Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School graduate and a Harvard alum, who grew up on-Island but is now based in Boston. He stays at his family’s home in West Tisbury when he comes back to the Island.
Beyond this set team, need-based volunteers work with Mayday on a variety of aspects for gathering and presenting information to the public, and with fundraising, taking place offline with foundations and philanthropists. Horwitz notes other consultants provide legal support to the organization, advocating for shield laws and free speech, aiding a key premise of Mayday’s work: While people can try to ban abortion, certainly, information cannot be banned.
“Everything Mayday does is legal, and we have incredible pro bono representation by top litigators across Hogan Lovells, Davis Wright Tremaine, and Morgan Lewis’ litigation team. These include some of the top lawyers in the country, and some of the top experts in free speech, which is what, fundamentally, Mayday is about: the free speech of education information,” said Horwitz.
The Mayday website first presents any viewer with legal, healthcare and digital privacy resources, then general facts about the safety, legality, and effectiveness of abortion pills, before going into the three-step process to get them mailed to anyone’s door. Horwitz said this is meant to provide the user with the option to learn everything that is relevant to the process before making any decisions.
The presentation of information is meant to “present high-accuracy usable information in the most accessible way possible,” said Horwitz. The Mayday team worked toward this by sticking to simplicity, making the language easily understood at a fifth-grade level, with an option for Spanish translation. Additionally, according to Horwitz, every line on the website has been vetted by experts in relevant areas, including medicine, reproductive healthcare, and justice and civil rights.
When visiting the website, one thing to note is the distinctive color scheme, the main color being a rich but cool purple. This became Mayday’s defining color after Raisner noted on the team’s first call that fear is what people are feeling, and what the team will have to deal with most. From this, Raisner and Koppelman, with the help of Robyn Kanner, graphic designer and head of Studio Gradients, chose this color to pop and compel its viewers, according to Horwitz. He said, “People are anxious they’re doing something that they may have been taught is wrong, even if it’s perfectly right for them to control their own reproductive healthcare, so we wanted to make sure the aesthetic was comforting … like a warm hug.”
Another notable aspect of the website is the “quick exit” button on the top right. Upon clicking that button, the page instantly changes to a weather website, with no visible trace of Mayday or anything abortion-related. Horwitz said that this design is inspired by websites that work toward helping survivors of domestic violence. It puts a level of protection around the user in cases where caution around friends or family members might be necessary.
What takes the cake on privacy is that the Mayday website does not track any data from any individual user, including no tracking on IP addresses or cookies, making it so no personally identifying information can be captured. There is not even a contact or donate button. Horwitz said the goal for this is to make it so that if Mayday were to be hacked or subpoenaed, the website could not be used against any user, calling it “the anti-Facebook,” as the opposite of standard tracking tools.
“We wanted to follow our own version of the Hippocratic oath, which in medicine is first and foremost to do no harm. We didn’t want Mayday to be used against anybody, so it was important that even if we tried, we’d never be able to tell who visited the site,” said Horwitz.
What the website does track is zip codes, how long the website is open, and whether the page gets closed altogether, or if additional links are clicked on. From this, from the website’s launch in June, the Mayday team could tell that the most hits they got were from Texas, but that people in every state with abortion restrictions were reached. Additionally, in the aftermath of the launch, telehealth providers featured in Mayday infographics through social media reported a 26-fold increase in web traffic. Overall, Horwitz reported, more than 25 million people were reached in the first 48 hours of the site’s launch.
As for reaching the local community on-Island, neighbors of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Martha’s Vineyard, Lexi and Corby Reese, hosted a public gathering to learn about Mayday following the church’s reproductive rights clothesline event. There, Horwitz spoke to a crowd about his organization and the work of Mayday. Horwitz will also speak at the church for its August 21 sermon.
To visit Mayday’s website, go to mayday.health. You can also check out Mayday’s Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter pages. Additional informational resources can be found through the Mayday website.
Thank you Nathaniel, I’m more optimistic for the future of women’s reproductive health knowing that your team has taken on this monumentally important task of filling the education gap with regard to the legality and availability of the abortion pill. It’s all hands on deck since Dobbs and I’m grateful your hands are joining with ours.
I was one of the 9 in 10 Americans who didn’t know about the existence of abortion pills until recently. This is a terrific initiative and important information to get out there! Thank you Nathaniel and team.
Nathaniel and team:Thank you so much for the critically important work you are doing! I consider myself a well-informed individual but I had confused Plan B with an abortion pill. I am very heartened to learn of your efforts!
This story provides excellent and necessary information. But the tone of the story is so harsh, as if abortion restrictions were illegal, when they are protecting the lives of unborn children.
Perhaps effort could be added to promote safe, legal, inexpensive and readily available methods of birth control so that abortions would be less likely to be considered.
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