With abortion in America under threat, the nonprofit Plan C, which is committed to continuing access to the information and pills necessary for medication abortion, has become a vital resource. Launched in 2016 by artist, web designer, and activist Amy Merrill and public health advocates Francine Coeytaux and Elisa Wells, the organization marries the founders’ respective backgrounds in the service of spreading knowledge. “Amy is the genius of utilizing websites and social media, while Francine and I bring the public health perspective,” Wells says. Plan C offers an online directory of medication-abortion-by-mail resources along with information on how to find legal, medical, and even emotional support.
As legal challenges to abortion pills grow, the site, which drew 2 million visitors in 2022, has escalated efforts to keep women and pregnant people informed through guerilla campaigns that fuse Coeytaux and Wells’s public health expertise with Merrill’s knack for attention-grabbing storytelling. After Texas implemented the so-called heartbeat bill in 2021, outlawing abortion as early as six weeks, the Plan C team mailed out more than 3 million stickers to supporters nationwide. They were emblazoned with the slogan “Need to be un-pregnant?” and a QR code linking to Plan C’s website. The trio partnered last year with the art collective Future Front Texas to create a series of eye-catching educational videos from nearly two dozen Texas-based creatives raising awareness around medication abortion. The nonprofit also hit the airwaves, broadcasting ads on iHeartRadio stations in particularly restrictive states. And the three founders feature in the documentary Plan C from director Tracy Droz Tragos, which tracks the rise of telehealth abortion and mailed pills during the pandemic and post-Roe. It premiered at Sundance in January, accompanied by a 50-foot snow drawing by conceptual artist Michele Pred of the mifepristone and misoprostol abortion pills.
With the fight for abortion access intensifying, Plan C has become a direct target. One proposed bill in Texas aims to prevent Plan C and other websites from sharing information about self-managed abortions by requiring internet service providers to block access to them—and inviting citizens to sue the ISPs if they don’t. But Coeytaux, Wells, and Merrill have no intention of changing course. “Knowing makes you powerful,” Coeytaux says, “knowing that [medical abortion] exists, where to go, what to do, how to access it.”
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