About SASS, a Project of Women Help Women

Women Help Women (WHW) is an international non-profit activist organization that works to expand knowledge and resources to support access to self-managed abortion and change the discourse around abortion and the culture of abortion provision. WHW runs a telehealth service that is both an information resource and a service delivery model, responding to more than 120,000 emails a year and providing abortion pills in more than 50 countries. WHW’s counselors are based on four continents and offer email counseling and support in six languages, 365 days a year, to people around the world who are using abortion pills. WHW also partners with more than 40 organizations in 25 countries to expand abortion access and build local capacity to provide safe abortion care, regardless of the legal context.

WHW launched SASS (Self-Managed Abortion; Safe and Supported) in 2017 to support people in the United States who choose to have an abortion with pills outside of the healthcare system. The goal of SASS is to ensure that people in the US can get accurate, up-to-date information about how to self-manage an abortion with pills safely, with dignity, and with minimal legal risk.

People in the US may choose to self-manage an abortion with abortion pills because it is difficult to get to an abortion clinic or because they prefer to self-induce their abortion on their own. Self-managed abortion is safe and effective if the person has accurate information about how to use abortion pills and can ask questions. It is also important to understand the legal issues.

SASS provides information and support around self-managed abortion to reduce the use of unsafe abortion methods and to ensure that self-managed abortions are medically and legally as safe as possible. SASS coordinates its activities with a broad network of allies in the US to build the movement to demystify, demedicalize, decriminalize, and destigmatize abortion with pills, by raising the visibility of the safety and prevalence of self-managed abortion.