As I was leaving for vacation.

[laughs] And, you know, we had been watching this case closely.

We had a lot of contingency plans in place for what we would do if mifepristone, if we were no longer able to provide mifepristone as part of our practice.

And so we spent that weekend kind of doing a major pivot to be able to provide patients with a single-drug regimen, which is the use of misoprostol alone.

And this is a regimen that our team has a lot of experience.

We've worked with misoprostol alone, uh, internationally for decades, and we are very confident in the safety and efficacy of, of misoprostol alone.

So we're, we're grateful that we have an alternative.

Well, Angel, I had a wonderful time talking to you, but I always like to end wrapping with not just like things are bleak or this is what's happening, but with what can our audience do? So how can the audience get involved in this moment?

We will keep fighting."

fighting."What do you feel like that fight is going to look like next? Where do you think the anti-abortion movement is going to attack next? Well, I certainly think there's gonna be a sort of multi-pronged attack on medication abortion pills in general, and on mifepristone in particular.

But the thing that I'm watching, and again, I say this as a non-lawyer, but as someone who's been following what's going on in state legislatures, what, what I see in terms of anti-abortion movement rhetoric, is that I fear that there's going to be a continued push to criminalize the abortion patient.

And, you know, 10 years ago, this was almost unthinkable, um, that the anti-abortion rights movement would say out loud that a strategy for reducing the number of abortions was to put, um, abortion seekers or abortion patients in jail.

But now we're seeing, we're seeing more and more of this conversation in the press, and we're also seeing state legislatures kind of taking this up.

And, you know, that is just- that's just devastating.

That's just so awful.

Thank you.

I'm wondering, what have those last few weeks been like for you?

It has been a tough two weeks.

So the Fifth Circuit's decision was released on May 1st, which was a Friday.

We had already sent packages to patients that afternoon before the decision was announced.

Packages of abortion pills.

Packages of abortion pills that included mifepristone and mesoprostol.

So over that weekend, we were really working with three different groups of patients.

If it becomes no longer possible for abortion providers to mail abortion pills, what patients, are there particular groups of patients that you're most worried about?

Packages of abortion pills.

Pa- packages of abortion pills that included mifepristone and misoprostol.

So over that weekend, we were really working with three different groups of patients.

The first were the three hundred and fifty or so patients that we had sent packages with mifepristone and misoprostol to in the previous few days, so on the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday before the decision was released, and those patients hadn't received their packages yet.

And so we were inmi- inundated with questions about, you know, "Am I gonna get my pills still? Is the post office gonna intercept my package? Can I take the mifepristone once it arrives?" But the second group of patients, which is the group that we spent the most time with over that weekend, were those who had already been approved for our service but who hadn't yet paid for the pills by the time the, the Fifth Circuit's decision was released.

And it's actually pretty common for our patients to request pills in the last week of the month but then not pay for them until after the first, because that's when people get paychecks.

And so over that weekend, we had about two hundred people who were kind of in this limbo stage.

We will keep fighting." What do you feel like that fight is going to look like next? Where do you think the anti-abortion movement is going to attack next?

Packages of abortion pills.

Pa- packages of abortion pills that included mifepristone and misoprostol.

So over that weekend, we were really working with three different groups of patients.

The first were the three hundred and fifty or so patients that we had sent packages with mifepristone and misoprostol to in the previous few days, so on the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday before the decision was released, and those patients hadn't received their packages yet.

And so we were inmi- inundated with questions about, you know, "Am I gonna get my pills still? Is the post office gonna intercept my package? Can I take the mifepristone once it arrives?" But the second group of patients, which is the group that we spent the most time with over that weekend, were those who had already been approved for our service but who hadn't yet paid for the pills by the time the, the Fifth Circuit's decision was released.

And it's actually pretty common for our patients to request pills in the last week of the month but then not pay for them until after the first, because that's when people get paychecks.

And so over that weekend, we had about two hundred people who were kind of in this limbo stage.

We will keep fighting." What do you feel like that fight is going to look like next? Where do you think the anti-abortion movement is going to attack next?

Packages of abortion pills.

Pa- packages of abortion pills that included mifepristone and misoprostol.

So over that weekend, we were really working with three different groups of patients.

The first were the three hundred and fifty or so patients that we had sent packages with mifepristone and misoprostol to in the previous few days, so on the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday before the decision was released, and those patients hadn't received their packages yet.

And so we were in- inundated with questions about, you know, "Am I gonna get my pills still? Is the post office gonna intercept my package? Can I take the mifepristone once it arrives?" But the second group of patients, which is the group that we spent the most time with over that weekend, were those who had already been approved for our service but who hadn't yet paid for the pills by the time the, the Fifth Circuit's decision was released.

And it's actually pretty common for our patients to request pills in the last week of the month but then not pay for them until after the first because that's when people get paychecks.

And so over that weekend, we had about two hundred people who were kind of in this limbo stage.

We will keep fighting."What do you feel like that fight is going to look like next? Where do you think the anti-abortion movement is going to attack next?

Packages of abortion pills.

Pa- packages of abortion pills that included mifepristone and misoprostol.

So over that weekend, we were really working with three different groups of patients.

The first were the 350 or so patients that we had sent packages with mifepristone and misoprostol to in the previous few days, so on the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday before the decision was released, and those patients hadn't received their packages yet.

And so we were in- inundated with questions about, you know, "Am I gonna get my pills still? Is the post office gonna intercept my package? Can I take the mifepristone once it arrives?" But the second group of patients, which is the group that we spent the most time with over that weekend, were those who had already been approved for our service but who hadn't yet paid for the pills by the time the, the Fifth Circuit's decision was released.

And it's actually pretty common for our patients to request pills in the last week of the month but then not pay for them until after the first, because that's when people get paychecks.

And so over that weekend, we had about 200 people who were kind of in this limbo stage.

We will keep fighting." What do you feel like that fight is going to look like next? Where do you think the anti-abortion movement is going to attack next?

Foster, what about for you?

Our experience was quite similar.

So at the MAAP, we care for between three thousand and three thousand five hundred patients a month.

And over the weekend, we were really, uh, responding to three different groups of patients.

The first group were the three hundred and fifty or so patients whom we had already sent a package with mifepristone and misoprostol, um, but they hadn't yet received the package.

So we were getting a lot of panicked, uh, emails, uh, contacts from our patients, you know-Will the postal system interfere with my package? Is it still legal for me to take mifepristone if I receive it in the mail? Will I get in trouble if I take mifepristone? So we were managing that and responding to those queries.

The second group, and very s- s- very similar, um, to what Leah said, was the patients who had already been approved for our service but who had not yet received medication abortion pills.

Foster, briefly, what kind of follow-up do you have with patients who are prescribed abortion drugs remotely?