Helping users figure out their options

If you’ve used INeedAnA.com/search recently to find abortion providers, you may have noticed a significant new feature. We’re calling them Option Cards, and we’d like to explain a little bit about how they work and why we built them

Option Cards are a new way of interacting with provider search results. They describe, in broad terms, the major options users have for accessing abortions. And they are linked to our pre-existing filters to allow users to quickly compare between providers accessible via different methods.

How Option Cards work

Let’s take an example: a user in Houston, Texas trying to find the best abortion provider for them. Their search results will be a mixture of brick-and-mortar providers in Kansas and New Mexico; flight recommendations to Denver, St. Louis and Albuquerque; and telehealth providers that can ship pills to their home. All of these are great options for different users, but each comes with significant differences in cost and experience.

Our Option Cards provide an easy way to compare these different experiences before users delve into the specifics of different providers. We provide a snapshot of cost, how much time it will take, and the legal risk of self-managing an abortion. Then we connect these cards to our pre-existing filters so that if a user knows they want to drive out of state, they can quickly filter out providers that don’t meet their needs.

We show different Option Cards to different users depending on what abortion options are available to them. A user far away from a major airport won’t see our Flights Option Cards, and users in states where abortion is less restricted will get different content on their Option Cards.

Why Option Cards matter to users

Our new Option Cards are a great example of how we think about designing tools for abortion seekers. We want to balance two competing needs. We want to provide as little friction as possible to users so that they can more quickly get to the information they need. At the same time, we don’t want to overwhelm users by blasting them with information that isn’t relevant to them. We think Option Cards are a great step toward meeting both of those needs.

Users are free to browse the unfiltered search results, and they are still only required to enter a location (that we don’t store) in order to get valuable information. But by carefully designing our content and inserting the Option Cards above the search results, we allow users to more easily find the information most relevant to them without forcing them to fill out a questionnaire or read pages of research.

So far the feedback we’ve received from users and advocates has been almost uniformly positive. But we’d love to hear your opinion. If you’ve used ineedana.com/search recently and experienced the Option Cards, please let us know what you think.

There are many ways for people (including non-residents and people without insurance!) to get free or low-cost abortions in California.

If you live in California and have private insurance, it’s most likely your insurance is required to pay for your abortion. It’s always best to call and confirm with your insurance provider as to what’s covered under your plan.

If you don’t have insurance, there are many ways to still get a free abortion in California via Medi-cal or the “Uncompensated Care program.”

The “Uncompensated Care program”

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, California committed large amounts of government funding to help cover abortion care. This includes funding for abortion procedures and for practical support like transportation, lodging, and child care. Best yet, the funding is available to pregnant people who live in California and people traveling from out of state. The program includes undocumented immigrants and migrants.

The first step is to see if you qualify for the program based on your "household income." Use the chart below to learn if you’re eligible.

Income requirements for California's free abortion program

To access funding, you’ll need to book an appointment at a participating provider (list below). Different providers have different means of screening, but no matter the provider, you’ll need to let them know you need financial assistance when you schedule your appointment (this is generally a good first step if you need financial assistance no matter what).

Below is a list of California providers that have asked us to let you know they're participating in the program (it’s not comprehensive yet - to find all of your options, head to ineedana.com/search):

Medi-cal abortion coverage

The “Uncompensated Care Fund” is a limited-time program, but thankfully California has other permanent programs and policies that help with abortion costs. One way is to be emergency approved for Medi-Cal. You can call 1-800-433-2611 or find more information and apply here. Your clinic may also be able to screen you for Emergency Medi-Cal at the time of your appointment.

Abortion access on campus for California students

If you’re a student at a public university in California and have campus health insurance, your school’s health center is required by law to offer you abortion pills (medication abortion). Unfortunately, not all universities are making this information easily available. Talk to your campus clinic directly.

Additional support

If you need logistical support for an abortion, check out ACCESS Reproductive Justice. As California’s only state-wide abortion fund, they have funds from the state to help with transportation, lodging, and more. They also have a health line, legal information, and lots of helpful abortion resources on their site.

Individual clinics may also have their own funding and logistical support programs. If you’re worried about being able to afford your abortion or navigate getting there, it’s helpful to let them know.

What’s most important is to remember you’re not alone. There are abortion funds and support organizations ready to help you!

The I Need An A Team has received feedback from ACCESS RJ, abortion providers in this program, as well as other California state based organizations to create this article. If you know of a provider that should be added to this list or have feedback suggestions for this article, please email team@ineedana.com

There's no place like home.

We’re excited to share we’ve released the biggest update to the ineedana.com landing experience since its inception!

Our goals with this redesign were to

#1 have a landing page that Google likes better

#2 Give folks who may not need an abortion today some clear ways to learn more about their options and how they can support ineedana.com

Goal #1 - being friendlier with Google

We designed ineedana.com to be as small of a digital footprint as possible. You can find everything you need to know to get an abortion on *one url.* This feels really good to us as people who’ve had abortions. We know that there are many reasons people may want to keep their abortion search private and also forget to use incognito or another tool to protect their privacy.

Unfortunately, the algorithms at Google *hate* this. To them, they think the thousands of people who come to I Need an A every day are “bouncing” because they never go “deeper” in the website (forget they’re averaging 18 minutes actively using it according to our privacy-minded Plausible analytics).

This means Google doesn’t “trust” ineedana.com and ranks it lower than it should be. Which means fewer abortion seekers benefit from the comprehensive and easy-to-understand information we offer. We’ve tried other strategies to combat this like buying Google ads and releasing search engine optimized state and city landing pages (like this one for Texas and this one for Dallas) and they helped some, but not as much as we’d hoped.

So, this new homepage has users click through to search. The entire search experience will still be done on one url - ineedana.com/search. Nothing has changed there. We still aren’t collecting the data you input. Everything is personalized and prioritized. It’s just going to take most folks an extra click to get there. Our hope is that by making this change, we’ll be able to reach more people. We’ll be closely monitoring our privacy-minded Plausible analytics and our search engine rankings to see what happens.

Goal #2 - being friendlier with people who don’t need abortions today

“Don’t worry - I didn’t actually use the search myself.”

We can’t count the number of times we’ve had supporters, friends, and potential funders say this to us. For the record - there’s nothing you can do to hurt the search! You don’t mess up any of our data, because we’re not collecting anything!

Regardless, we heard this enough that we starting to ask ourselves “what’s really going on here?” And our hypothesis was that these were people who wanted to know about I Need An A or the state of abortion access in their area, but we hadn’t designed a clear way for them to find that info. We’ve been so focused on designing for abortion seekers, we kind of ignored everyone else (oops!).

This new homepage has clear calls to action for these people.

We’re hopeful this new information gives people more insight on what it takes to get an abortion Post-Roe and how they can help make that easier.

As always, if you have feedback, questions, or ideas - don’t hesitate to let us know! team@ineedana.com

Sharing is caring!

We’ve released an easier way for people to share and save the information they find on ineedana.com: A share button!

Every abortion provider listing now has this button, no matter if it’s on the ineedana.com general search page, ineedana.com/advanced-search, or if it’s linked from a "How to get an abortion in your city" guide like ineedana.com/us/texas/waco.

When users click it, they’ll be prompted with a modal that allows them to copy that direct link to that abortion clinic.

We’ve designed the ineedana.com search experience to create as small a digital trail as possible, but we know that’s made it harder to share information directly with people who may need it. Our hope is this allows abortion seekers and supporters alike to more easily access the information we have curated about verified abortion providers while still reducing information stored in browser history. For help on clearing your browser’s history, check out ineedana.com/privacy.

If you have questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email team@ineedana.com

Today, we’re excited to announce we’re launching a feature on ineedana.com… it’s a place to announce things! We have two goals with this new section of the website -

Goal #1
The first is for it to be a place to update you, our supporters and partners, on the updates we make to the ineedana.com abortion seeker experience as we make them. Since 2022, we’ve scaled up our team and released a *ton* of new features, but they can be easy to miss given how we design the website to be a guided, personalized experience for abortion seekers.

Some examples of recently released features:

• 🧮 We released a total cost calculator in 2023 that helps abortion seekers figure out their exact costs to travel to a specific clinic. This calculator is now embedded on every clinic listing.
  

• 🔎 In October 2023, we added more filters to our main search and advanced search so users can see clinics that are open on certain days or are known to have appointment availability
  

• ✈️ In February 2024, we added flight destination cards to our search results to help people that are further away from clinics understand where they may be able travel to.
  

Goal #2
It’ll also be a place where we begin to publish content that may be helpful for people to access outside of the full ineedana.com user flow and/or helpful for search engine optimization. Imagine posts about frequently asked questions like “How much will my abortion cost?” and “How do I know if my self-managed abortion worked or not?”

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Have feedback? Suggestions? Let us know at ineedana@protonmail.com 💜