Mayday Health has launched a campaign promoting the abortion pill at rural gas stations in West Virginia and Kentucky. (Courtesy photo)
Advertisements promoting the abortion pill will be at gas stations across West Virginia and Kentucky over the next few weeks.
Mayday Health, a New York-based health education nonprofit, will run the ads at 104 rural gas stations through Sept. 7. The campaign started Aug. 11.
The advertisements say “Pregnant? Don’t want to be? Learn more at Mayday Health.”
Executive director Liv Raisner said it’s crucial to advertise at gas stations, which serve as community hubs in rural areas.
“Many rural counties in West Virginia and Kentucky have few or no OB-GYN providers. Some have lost their only hospitals, their only clinics,” Raisner said. “So routine education and preventative reproductive health information is much harder to access through traditional medical channels. And so that’s why we decided to advertise at gas stations.”
The organization started after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion in 2022.
“We heard this sobering statistic that only 10% of Americans even knew what abortion pills were,” Raisner said. “And with clinics closed, reproductive options became very limited for women across the United States. We knew that a massive education campaign needed to be executed to inform people that they still have options.”
According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2023, medication abortion accounted for 63% of all abortions in the United States, up from 53% in 2020.
In 2022, West Virginia lawmakers passed a law banning abortion with narrow exceptions. Earlier this summer, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ban in a challenge brought by abortion pill manufacturer GenBioPro.
Despite abortion being illegal in West Virginia in most cases, Raisner said the organization does not fear legal repercussions from the campaign.
“We don’t have concerns about advertising because we don’t sell, distribute or package abortion pills,” they said. “We’re merely spreading First Amendment-protected free speech. So if anyone wants to come after us, what they’re coming after is the First Amendment.”
Earlier this year, Mayday Health launched a digital billboard and poster campaign in Tennessee and an aerial campaign above the Indy 500.
While abortion is mostly illegal in West Virginia, states with abortion bans may have trouble prosecuting out-of-state providers and entities mailing pills to people within their borders.
Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe V. Wade, 22 states and Washington D.C. have enacted shield laws that protect patients, providers and people assisting in abortion from the reach of states where it’s illegal, according to KFF. Some shield laws protect providers who send abortion pills to people in states with abortion bans.
Earlier this year, the West Virginia Senate passed a bill aimed at out-of-state providers that would have made it a felony to prescribe or distribute medications used for abortion to people in West Virginia unless the abortion is legal. The bill was not taken up by the House of Delegates.
West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey recently signed on to a letter urging Congress to ban shield laws, calling them “blatant attempts to interfere with states’ ability to enforce criminal laws within their borders.”
“People in [states with abortion bans] should be and are empowered to make their own decisions,” Raisner said.
The website directs people to sites where they can order abortion medication.
People who visit Mayday Health are also linked to a helpline where they can get free, private advice on state specific abortion laws, they said. The group encourages website visitors to reach out to a hotline where a group of doctors provide free advice.
Raisner said it’s also important for people to know that abortion pills are safe and effective.
“There’s so much misinformation peddled by the anti-choice movement about the dangers of abortion pills, and it’s just not true,” Raisner said. “Abortion pills are so safe that they are even sold over the counter in some foreign countries.
“Clinics are closing across the country, but people everywhere still have the power to make the choices that are right for their reproductive health,” they said.
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Author: Lori Kersey
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