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In April, a young woman named Maya found herself in a Barnes & Noble bathroom in California, staring at a positive pregnancy test. Twenty-one years old and not ready to raise a baby, Maya knew “instantly” what she needed to do: Schedule an abortion. Her first call was to Planned Parenthood, but the local clinic’s next available appointment was three weeks away and would cost her $575.

Maya’s next call was to her mom, who immediately turned to Google to find other options for her daughter. She sent Maya an article about companies like the startup Hey Jane that provide abortion pills via mail. Maya didn’t know how to vet an abortion pill company, but she had heard of Hey Jane before. “I actually noticed them on TikTok. I had seen a couple of their videos, which made me trust them,” she said. “They looked reliable.”

So she signed up for Hey Jane’s service and began texting one of the company’s in-house doctors. She paid $249 and within four days the pills had arrived at her apartment. She curled up in her pink-painted bedroom, queued up “New Girl” on Netflix and swallowed the first pill. Twenty-four hours and four pills later, the abortion was complete. She was back at work the next day.

Since 2021, when the Federal Drug Administration lifted requirements that abortion medications be administered only inside licensed medical clinics, stories like Maya’s have become increasingly common. Today, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 54% of abortions are induced with pills, which, as proponents often cite, are as safe as Tylenol. While many of these abortions take place in a clinical setting, Hey Jane has mailed pills to over 15,000 patients in seven states, including New York and California, over the last year.

There are many reasons why investors might be interested in this sector: the booming demand for abortion pills as clinics close around the country; the medicine’s sterling efficacy and safety records; the ease and efficiency of sending pills by mail; and the low cost to patients of the abortion meds themselves, often one-half to one-third the price of a surgical procedure.

And yet, despite all of this, abortion pill providers have not attracted the levels of funding or interest from Silicon Valley investors that other high-growth health-tech businesses regularly receive.

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