Telehealth and Abortion Care 

August 18, 2026

Technology can facilitate sexual freedom. We at the Woodhull Freedom Foundation know this to be true. The internet provides us access to pleasure, information, and community. And critically, in the age of an abortion crisis, the internet can allow folks to access healthcare.

People across the U.S. can obtain medication abortion through telehealth, which is documented to be “safe, effective, and acceptable.” Telehealth meets a very critical need to expand abortion access for people who cannot travel to an in-person provider: with telehealth, people can request and receive pills by mail. But as Klaira Lerma and Ellen Schenk report for Rewire News Group, telehealth is far from a “solution” to the abortion crisis.

Who actually can use telehealth? It depends. First, there is the issue of whether a state’s abortion ban prohibits telehealth abortion; in a slew of states, pills can’t legally be mailed. Second, assuming it’s legal, Lerma and Schenk highlight that using telehealth still isn’t a viable option for a lot of people. Telehealth requires things that many people lack: “reliable internet, a private physical space, a safe mailing address, and the capacity to manage a medical process, potentially without nearby clinical support.” And, assuming telehealth is a legal, viable option, it remains that it should not be the only option for abortion care. That is, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution, leaving those who may prefer, or need, in-person care or procedural abortion with a far-from-ideal choice.

We at Woodhull firmly believe that the more options for abortion care, the better. We fully agree with Lerma and Schenk’s critique: when fighting for sexual freedom, we cannot frame sole options as solutions. In their words, “[true] reproductive justice means decriminalizing the full spectrum of abortion care and working to restore what’s been lost: reopening clinics, improving workforce development, protecting providers and patients, ensuring that Medicaid and insurance cover all kinds of abortion care—and, yes, offering telehealth, too.”