Looking to expand access to medication abortions in Illinois, Planned Parenthood will allow people to request the drugs without seeing a doctor.
Patients up to 10 weeks pregnant can fill out screening questions on Planned Parenthood’s “Direct” app and provide an Illinois address where medication abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol would be mailed if they qualify. That could be a house or a hotel.
Some Planned Parenthood affiliates already are mailing pills to patients but require at least a virtual visit with a medical provider first.
“This is just for us the next step in reducing barriers for folks who don’t want to make it all the way to a health center or who need the privacy of being able to do it from their home,” said Dr. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer for Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region .
She says a provider will review a patient’s answers via the app within 24 hours and, if it’s approved, mail the medication without a visit with a doctor.
McNicholas’ Planned Parenthood affiliate is implementing the program for all patients in Illinois.
She says Planned Parenthood affiliates in Maryland, Washington state and Hawaii provide this service via the PP Direct app too, and that other providers and companies across the country do so.
The move comes as the Supreme Court weighs whether to block access to mifepristone, which is part of a two-drug combination to end a pregnancy. If that happens, McNicholas says her providers would move to offering misoprostol only.
The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade nearly two years ago, ending the constitutional right to an abortion. Since then, more than a dozen states have banned or heavily restricted the procedure. Many of these states are in the Midwest and the South, fueling a pipeline of patients to Illinois.
McNicholas works at a clinic in Fairview Heights in southern Illinois, just across the border from Missouri, where abortion is banned.
Illinois was among states seeing the biggest surges in abortions from April 2022 to December 2023, according to a new report from WeCount, an organization that tracks abortion trends. There also was a big surge in Florida, which recently banned most abortions after six weeks.
McNicholas says she hopes the new service in Illinois will open up appointments for patients who want or need to have an abortion at the Fairview Heights clinic. If more people use the app, she says, they might not seek an in-person appointment.
Since Florida banned most abortions May 1, there have been more calls for appointments, and wait times for a procedure are creeping up to a week, according to McNicholas. She says once waits reach a week, her team would decide either to work longer days or to add more days when they provide abortions.
“Not there yet, but we are getting close again,” McNicholas says.
The new service via PP Direct will cost $200 and isn’t covered by insurance, though McNicholas says Planned Parenthood is trying to get insurers to do so. Patients already use PP Direct for other services such as birth control or treatment for urinary tract infections.
