Love Holt, a reverend and single mother of five, was rushed to an emergency room in Missouri last year after her mother found her passed out in her car and “covered in blood.” When Holt arrived at the hospital, fear filled her instead of relief. “I just kept saying over and over, ‘Don’t f---ing die. Don’t say you took those pills,’” Holt told NBC News. “I was in fear, honestly, that I was going to be carted away from my hospital bed to a jail cell had they found out.
She attempted to make an appointment for a medication abortion in Illinois, but there was a four-week wait. Holt would need a surgical abortion by then, which would require more resources — like time off from work and money — which she did not have as a single working mother, she said. In order to terminate her pregnancy she needed a “discrete, private and affordable” option, which led her to order the pills online.