Abortion care in your living room
  May 5, 2026 Good evening, Meteor readers, I stayed up until midnight reading the absolutely batshit conclusion of Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear. All I’ll say now is that it had me squeezing my baby extra-tight in the morning, and that I’m more than ready for our Meteor roundtable—remember to ping us if you want in! Today, we’re digging into just how much a restriction on the most commonly-used abortion pill will affect pregnant people in every state. Plus, three questions for Iceland’s First Lady, Eliza Reid, and some positive parenting news. Ready for that tradwife horror movie, Nona Willis Aronowitz  WHAT’S GOING ONAn “essential” pill: It was late summer 2022, only a couple of months after Roe v. Wade was overturned, when Alex, then 33, realized she was pregnant. She had two young children, and she and her husband had already made the decision not to have a third. “The difficult part,” she says, “was figuring out how to have an abortion.” She lived in upstate New York, a state she presumed was safe from the fallout of Dobbs, so she was “shocked” when the process turned out to be convoluted. Neither her OB/GYN nor her primary care doctor provided medication abortion, which Alex figured was the best method for her early stage of pregnancy. Both doctors referred her to a local Planned Parenthood, but the clinic wasn’t able to see her for weeks—maybe, she speculates, because of the increase of out-of-state patients from abortion-hostile areas of the country. Frustrated, Alex posted this gif from “Veep” to friends in her group chat:  She didn’t want to wait around feeling more and more hormonal, nauseous, and tender. Her husband did a quick Google search and found HeyJane, a telehealth service that mails abortion pills. Alex chatted with a doctor and got the medication in the mail three days later. “Feeling relieved!” she texted the group chat. After a stressful few days, ordering the pills online ended up being “safe, super-effective and very straightforward,” she told them. Alex is one of hundreds of thousands of patients who have gotten abortion medication through the mail since 2020, when the FDA temporarily lifted the in-person requirement on mifepristone, the most common abortion pill (it made the move permanent the next year.) It’s a change now under legal threat, as the Supreme Court mulls whether to uphold an appeals court’s decision to revert mifepristone’s regulations back to its pre-2020 state. That might sound arcane, but there’s a huge amount at stake: Abortion pills now account for almost two-thirds of abortions nationwide. And by mid-2025, more than 1 in 4 abortions nationally—and virtually all abortions in states with bans—were provided through telehealth doctors. The expansion of telehealth is a major reason that abortion numbers have climbed steadily despite bans across the country. And getting a telehealth abortion—with pills and without an office visit—isn’t just important for women in states with extremist laws. Today, like Alex, patients in every state seem to value the privacy, efficiency, and flexibility of accessing the pills online.  ALEX WITH HER BABY DAUGHTER ON THE DAY SHE TOOK THE ABORTION PILL, FEELING “JOY” AND “RELIEF.” (COURTESY OF ALEX) Telemedicine has “been so essential,” says Dr. Keemi Ereme, an OB/GYN in Washington State and a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health. Unlike organizations like Plan C, Dr. Ereme is not able to ship abortion pills to ban states. But the option has filled a crucial need in her “safe” state, too. “It’s a [method] that patients really appreciate,” she says. “It’s so nice to talk to patients in the comfort of their own homes with their loved ones around them and not [require them] to come into an office space, which for a lot of people is not a safe place to be.” In other words, as another telemedicine patient put it to The Meteor, ordering online is just “less emotionally complicated.” Dr. Ereme says she sees a “stark difference” from the care she provided in 2019, when patients were required to take mifepristone (the first step in a medication abortion) in the office. Because of work, childcare obligations, transportation issues, or straight-up fear of the doctor, patients were “showing up when they could—which typically is later on in pregnancy—when they could have had a very safe medication abortion at home.” After the restriction was lifted, she says, more people have been able to avoid a torturous waiting period, or a later-term surgical abortion. Like many other providers, if the Supreme Court does ban telehealth use of mifepristone, Dr. Ereme plans to shift to a misoprostol-only regimen (rather than a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol) for telehealth patients. But while safe, she notes, this method is “significantly less effective” than using both medications: Miso-only regimens have an effectiveness rate as low as 78%, as opposed to 95% for the combo method. There can be more side effects and pain. And, Dr. Ereme points out, miso-only is especially ineffective for very early abortions—precisely the kind telemedicine has facilitated. Meanwhile, doctors like Dr. Ereme will continue to spread the word about how safe mifepristone is. “It seems like we’re battling people who don’t know what they’re talking about,” she says. “It is honestly criminal and immoral to block patient care like this … So there’s a lot of anger and frustration, but also a lot of will to keep fighting because we have to. Our patients need this care.” —Nona Willis Aronowitz AND:
 LAUREN WASSER, SINÉAD BURKE, AND AARIANA ROSE PHILIP AT THE MET GALA 2026 (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 Three Questions about…Being a Modern First LadyEliza Reid, former First Lady of Iceland, on this quintessential “soft power” roleBY CINDI LEIVE  FIRST LADY OF ICELAND ELIZA JEAN REID AND HER HUSBAND, FORMER PRESIDENT GUDNI JOHANNESSON, IN 2017 (VIA GETTY) Eliza Reid was living her life as a writer and mom, having moved from her native Canada to Iceland with her history-professor husband, when suddenly, her spouse decided to run for president. And won! The next eight years were, for her, an experiment in trying to hang on to her identity while also serving a country she had come to love. (She famously googled how to curtsy. She also wore a suffragette-white pantsuit to meet Mike Pence.) Now, with her husband having stepped down, she’s written a memoir, The First Lady Next Door, which will make you want to hang out with her. We did—and we had questions. You were the First Lady of a country known for its gender equality. But some of the rules you were expected to follow feel pretty archaic. Why is this particular role so slow to evolve? I wouldn’t necessarily say archaic rules, because there really are no rules for this unofficial role. There were, however, expectations that aligned with what I felt could be outdated stereotypes of female spouses of male heads of state. Having said that, the positive side of serving as first lady of the country that is closest in the world to closing the gender gap meant that I felt more comfortable in speaking up about those contradictions. I think one of the biggest mental obstacles I had to overcome was simply deciding that I should be active and outspoken with the platform even though I only had it in the first place because of something my husband (and not I) had achieved. How do the First Ladies (and Gentlemen) of the world communicate? Please tell me there’s a Signal thread and an annual girls’ weekend in Tulum. (And while you’re at it, who is a fantastic First Lady all our readers should know about?) I wish there was a huge group chat! I am so fortunate to call several current and former FLGs (that’s often our shorthand!) friends…I’d recommend people in general pay closer attention to the spouses of world leaders; they will find an interesting and diverse gang, and one whose members have more influence than you might think. I will call one person out: Olena Zelenska of Ukraine. She has been using her platform as FL to bring together other FLGs, which in turn highlights the incredible “soft power” that these people have to tackle various issues. In her case of course that involves vital fundraising for important work connected to Ukraine’s war effort. One memorable passage in the book is about how at first, people would repeatedly walk right by you in receiving lines, rushing to get to your husband. What did you learn from that? I learned that if I didn’t tackle even the “small” stuff, such as the microaggression of people not noticing me enough to shake my hand even though I was standing right next to my husband, then it would fester into greater resentment. The good news is there was a quick fix: assertively and cheerfully sticking out my hand to make sure no one missed it – and make sure that I occupied the space I deserved.  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
