healthcare

'Thank You, Mike Johnson!' Says Morning-After-Pill Company

 

To mark Inauguration Day, Cadence OTC has launched “Thank You, Mike Johnson!,” pledging to donate its Morning After Pill contraceptive to community health clinics and college-campus vending machines in the House Speaker’s home state of Louisiana every time “Mike and his colleagues try to shut down access, spread misinformation or spew anti-contraception messaging.”

On a microsite connected to its home page, Cadence OTC says that “easy access to contraception” is a “no-brainer” except for when Johnson and Congressional colleagues “keep spreading misinformation and anti-contraception rhetoric while voting against key legislation to make it available.”

Citing such incorrect assertions as calling morning after pills “abortion pills,” Kate Voyten, Cadence OTC’s senior vice president of commercial, tells Marketing Daily that “We want to take and transform any messaging that restricts contraceptive access or information into tangible support for women by donating emergency contraceptives.”

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Mike Johnson has been the “most vocal” in “leading some of the legislation to restrict women’s autonomy and healthcare rights,” Voyten explains. But he’s hardly alone in making the kind of inflammatory statements that can spur Cadence OTC’s Morning After Pill donations, she notes.

“We will support and donate on behalf of any politician that makes statements that look to restrict emergency contraceptive access.”

Voyten says Cadence OTC will be monitoring the news for such items, as well as  relying on the public to share via the site any anti-contraceptive rhetoric that they’ve missed. Consumer can also make their own donations via the site.

 So, while the campaign now benefits women in Louisiana, Voyten says “our push is to have a national activation.”

But “this particular start dare is just the beginning,” she states. “As we have this change in administration, we’re going to engage more of the public. We want to have the conversation front and center.

“It’s part of a broader movement that we’re trying to create over the next decade to make sure that women have better access to care,” she continues.

Cadence OTC launched its Morning After Pill last year, with a focus on serving what Voyten says are “about 23 million women living in areas that have limited access to emergency contraceptives.”

Cadence OTC has made it its mission to increase access by bringing its product into convenience stores like 7/11 and Circle K, but “often, misinformation makes it very difficult” for women in those “healthcare deserts to understand where that product is and how easy it can be accessed.”

While morning after pills were approved by the FDA for over-the counter-sales some 15 years ago, “We’ve essentially created a new channel of distribution,” Voyten says. “Women identify that they can find the product in their neighborhood.”

“One of the opportunities we have is…the Morning After Pill has to be taken right away, and these locations [convenience stores] are often open late,” she notes.

“When you go to a convenience store, most of them have condoms,” she adds, stating that Cadence OTC wants every store that carries condoms as a contraceptive item to also carry morning after pills.

“Contraception is essentially healthcare, and we need to underscore that.”

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