PLAN C documents the work of determined women in the United States expanding access to medication abortion by any means necessary. The abortion pill, RU486 or “Mifepristone,” used in conjunction with “Misoprostol,” safely and effectively ends a pregnancy up to 12 weeks according to the World Health Organization. It has been approved by the FDA, since 2000 and yet few Americans have heard of it.
Meet FRANCINE COEYTAUX. Francine has been working in public health for decades. She successfully fought for Plan B to be available over the counter. She explains that few people know about the abortion pill because access has been so severely, and unnecessarily, restricted. In 2014, Francine and her partners founded the organization they call Plan C, with the goal of spreading the word about this alternative to in-clinic abortion.
The film follows providers and access advocates who devised creative ways to follow the “letter of the law.” If doctors must dispense directly from a clinic and patients can’t get to a clinic, especially in rural areas, they asked,“What if we bring the clinic to them?” The startup Just the Pill organized mobile vans to serve as clinics. Patients were texted directions that sent them to an unmarked van in a parking lot. It’s like an illicit drug drop for a pill that’s safer than Tylenol. The van never visited the same place twice. Some patients drove for hours. In small towns, off the highway, they waited their turn in their cars, and ran to the van when texted, to grab their white bag. This is what legal dispensing looks like when mailing is not allowed. By the fall of 2021, Texas’s draconian “aid and abet” ban on abortion after the 6th week of pregnancy went into effect, with the first-ever instance of bounty-hunter style enforcement by average citizens. Abortion support networks were more strained than ever. Francine traveled to west Texas to spread the word about pills by mail. She and a new member of the team visited college campuses putting stickers in bathrooms that read “Need to be Unpregnant?” The stickers have a QR code that, when scanned, goes straight to information about how to find pills. Francine organized a mobile billboard to be driven throughout the south and southeast: “Missed Period? There’s a pill for that.” But while Francine got louder, Texas advocates were forced to pull back in order to avoid being sued by some vigilante for “aiding and abetting” an abortion.
When the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision was leaked in May 2022, everyone planned for what now seemed inevitable: Roe would be overturned, and abortion would be outlawed in at least nineteen states. An anonymous distributor in the U.S. is enlisted to send pills to patients in red states. Pills were and continue to be shipped to states where telemedicine has become illegal, and abortion is criminalized. But Plan C’s message is that no matter where you live, you can still access pills by mail: either in a matter of days, or weeks, if ordering from overseas providers.
Distribution is risky business in the U.S: a direct action that may have dire consequences for those involved. The United States is more divided today than ever about many things, including abortion. As blue states work to protect and expand access, red state politicians work to criminalize it. What is the responsibility of those in blue states to support their red state neighbors – and what are the risks? Who gets criminalized and who stays safe? Who will support pregnant people and their providers despite the risk and who is left to fend for themselves? Who will die, and who will live, and who will choose?
