Less than a month into the new Trump administration, Republicans have already come for repro rights—including removing reproductiverights.gov, plus any other page containing the word “abortion,” and reintroducing a bill to repeal the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. Now, it’s more important than ever to call out antiabortion extremism while supporting birth control access: Cadence OTC’s new donation drive “Thank You, Mike Johnson” accomplishes both.
Cadence OTC is a California-based public benefits company working to make combination birth control pills available over the counter and expand over-the-counter access to emergency contraception, including in states facing legal pushback to contraception access. (Currently, only non-combination/progestin-only birth control pills, without estrogen, are available over the counter, while emergency contraception is only available at some pharmacies.)
In the new campaign, whenever House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) or another political figure spreads misinformation or anti-contraception rhetoric, Cadence OTC donates emergency contraception to U.S. women—including in Johnson’s home state of Louisiana—in his name.
Besides having some of the strictest abortion laws in the country, Louisiana was the first state to reclassify abortion medication as a controlled substance, forcing hospitals to keep it under lock and key and harder for doctors to access, even in emergencies such as when a woman is hemorrhaging after giving birth. Johnson was an attorney at the Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal force behind dozens of ultra-restrictive antiabortion laws in the U.S., which also challenged the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.
The team at Cadence OTC is working to track false and misleading statements by Johnson and other antiabortion politicians, setting up Google alerts and monitoring social media to keep donating emergency contraception and protest the spread of misinformation.
Besides the “Thank You, Mike Johnson” campaign—which has donated $100K of EC so far—Cadence OTC is working to keep EC pills accessible by placing them in convenience stores.
“There’s been a spike in misinformation about contraception causing abortions,” said Cadence OTC CEO Samantha Miller, citing the common antiabortion tactic of conflating birth control and Plan B emergency contraception pills with medication abortion to try to limit women’s access to them. “Mike Johnson is an important public figure who’s really propagating misinformation and he’s particularly propagating misinformation about emergency contraceptives causing abortion.” (For the record, they don’t.) “And this is really a damaging message because it encourages restrictive states to try to block emergency contraceptives and it influences retail chains to not want to carry emergency contraceptives and even individual stores and women are getting confused about it.”
“We’re expanding every month and we have a particular passion for getting them into the restrictive states,” Miller said. By working with retailers, the company has placed products in almost 10,000 convenience stores, including thousands of stores in states like Texas and Florida and major convenience store chains like 7-Eleven and Circle K.
Nineteen million women currently live in “contraceptive deserts,” where large pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS that sell emergency contraception can be extremely hard to come by, and 1.2 million women live in counties without a single health center. At the same time, there are 150,000 convenience stores in the U.S., and they’re open for long hours. For this reason, it’s crucial that emergency contraception and over-the-counter birth control pills are available not just at pharmacies but also at corner stores like 7-Eleven.
According to Miller, “the goal is that female contraceptives should be as easy to find as condoms. The world has done such a great job making condoms easy to access. The next step is to make female contraceptives equally easy to access.” Many stores—even small convenience stores—have five or six or seven different brands of condoms. Cadence OTC asks the stores it works with to place their emergency contraception next to the condom section to make them as easy to find as possible. (Their website also has a store locator where people can find EC near them.)
Miller explained that emergency contraception pills are inexpensive to make and have a long shelf life of two to four years, so there’s no reason why stores shouldn’t sell them as readily as condoms. Cadence OTC’s emergency contraception retails between $19 to $25. Besides EC, Cadence OTC is working to make their combination birth control pill available over the counter and as easily available as their morning-after pill.
When I asked how people can help support contraceptive access (besides donating to “Thank You, Mike Johnson”), Miller said, “Just spreading accurate information in any form is very useful.” Besides creating baseless fear that EC causes abortions, the misinformation that Johnson and other politicians spread keeps real information from reaching a wider audience.
Besides getting EC into women’s hands, “Thank You, Mike Johnson” is spreading awareness about the far-right’s lies about contraception. “We really want to get other people involved in this effort in an important way and in a fun way so people can flag not only what Mike Johnson says but what other public figures say,” Miller said. “These people have a responsibility to be accurate and to be supportive of current laws and current sentiment.”
