'Abortion activists' behind Honeybee Health, the first online pharmacy abortion pill dispensary, successfully "attempted to convince the FDA to suspend its in-person requirement" for the drug mifepristone (200mg)/Mifeprex during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since that time, the company has claimed to dispense hundreds of thousands of abortion pill prescriptions, all while its profits skyrocket.

Key Takeaways:

• Honeybee Health didn't start out dispensing abortion drugs, but it exponentially increased its profits once it decided to focus largely on the abortion market. From 2018 to 2021, after starting to dispense abortion drugs, the company increased its revenue by nearly 52,000%.

• According to the LA Business Journal, "by mid-2021... one-third of Honeybee’s overall revenue" was from abortion drugs, "which was about $15 million for that entire year."

• Unsurprisingly, Honeybee co-founder, pharmacist Dr. Jessica Nouhavandi, has now "emerged as a leading national spokeswoman for efforts to increase access to medication abortions."

• Honeybee was among those who influenced the FDA to suspend its in-person requirement for the abortion pill during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Nouvahandi told the media that Honeybee is no longer just a mail-order dispensary for abortion pills, but is now "much more involved in shaping the future of access, by working with legislators. We’ve written several amicus briefs to the Supreme Court."

• The pharmacy claims to have dispensed "hundreds of thousands" of abortion pill prescriptions by mail thus far, with "thousands" being sent out each month.

The Details:

The 'Abortion Activists'

Honeybee Health was the first online pharmacy to ship abortion drugs after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the Biden administration's eroded REMS safety requirements for the drug mifepristone during the COVID-19 pandemic to allow for mail-order and pharmacy dispensing.

At the time, the company considered the move “a momentous achievement for Americans.”

The pro-abortion online pharmacy is headquartered in Culver City, California, and was co-founded by pharmacist Dr. Jessica Nouhavandi and Peter Wang in 2017. The two were labeled "abortion activists" by the LA Business Journal in 2023, with good reason.

The media outlet explained:

Honeybee Health is also working with abortion rights activists to move legislation in Sacramento granting a liability shield to medication and surgical abortion providers in California who make treatment or pills available to residents of states where abortion is now outlawed.

And, as the public face of Honeybee Health, Nouhavandi has emerged as a leading national spokeswoman for efforts to increase access to medication abortions, which, according to several reports, now comprise roughly half of intentional pregnancy terminations.

In 2022, Time.com spoke to the company's founder about their decision to dispense the abortion drugs, reporting:

When Nouhavandi and her co-founder Peter Wang launched Honeybee Health in 2018, abortion access was not particularly on their minds.

They’d been operating a regular community pharmacy outside Los Angeles and thought a new, online, mail-order pharmacy could help lower prescription drug costs by offering generic medications from wholesalers without going through health insurance.

But in 2020, everything changed as Honeybee Health entered the abortion business.

Time.com called the fact that larger pharmacies failed to jump into the abortion dispensing marketplace a "boon to Honeybee’s business, which increased its revenue from just $27,000 when it launched near the end of 2018 to more than $14 million in 2021" (emphasis added).

That's nearly a 52,000% increase (yes, you read that correctly) in revenue in just three years.

Influencing the FDA

LABusinessJournal.com wrote in 2023:

... At that time, Honeybee kept quiet about its online sales of abortion pills, choosing not to mention it for a previous Business Journal story in late 2021. Nouhavandi said recently this was an intentional policy aimed at avoiding a political outcry as Honeybee, along with other medication providers, attempted to convince the FDA to suspend its in-person requirement for the dispensing of mifepristone during the pandemic emergency.

The FDA paused its in-person clinic requirement in May 2020, a move that was upheld by a judge in July of that year. After some back-and-forth over the next year, the suspension was made permanent in late 2021.

That suspension cleared the way for Honeybee Health to sell mifepristone legally. Because of its head start, Honeybee quickly became one of the nation’s largest providers of online medication abortion pills. By mid-2021, sales of medication abortion pills comprised roughly one-third of Honeybee’s overall revenue, which was about $15 million for that entire year.

Nouhavandi considered selling abortion pills a "no brainer," telling the LA Business Journal in June 2026 that abortion providers like Planned Parenthood had urged her to enter the abortion business in 2020:

My relationships with lots of clinics, Planned Parenthood, providers – they were like, “Can you do this? We can’t. Patients can’t come into the clinic.”

I’m also crazy and a big risk taker, so I was like, “Yeah, let’s figure it out. Let’s figure out how we’re going to do this.”

... It was a no-brainer decision for me to do it...

In 2023, the year FDA made the permanent decision to remove in-person dispensing, the Soros Economic Development Fund had granted Honeybee Health $650,000 to increase abortion access to women with "limited access."

1st Trimester Abortion | The Abortion Pill | What Is Abortion?

Shaping the Policies

In an interview with LABusinessJournal.com, Nouhavandi explained the process of ordering abortion pills:

There are levels of purchasing. There are wholesalers, there are distributors, there are manufacturers. It really depends on how much you’re purchasing, and where it makes the most sense to get in and get the best pricing.

So as we’ve grown, we’ve been able to use our patient basis leverage to negotiate better pricing. And yes, that is on a drug-by-drug basis.

For example, for a medication for blood pressure, we’ll say, “We just spent 60,000 units of these a month. So what’s the best price you can give us?” And it’s really like shopping. We have a whole procurement team and all they do all day is try to find the best pricing.

She added (emphases added):

If you want to protect access and patient access, it’s not just about filling the prescription. We do that really well. But you have to be willing to shape the policies that determine whether those prescriptions can be filled in the first place.

The ability for us to even order Mifepristone from a manufacturer and getting access to the drug and being able to distribute that to people, that’s a whole other world, right?

... We’ve gone from simply taking that chance on dispensing the medication to being much more involved in shaping the future of access, by working with legislators. We’ve written several amicus briefs to the Supreme Court.

I’m now writing a document to the FDA in support of continued access to the main medication in medication abortion.

Honeybee Health claims online that mifepristone is "97% successful overall when taken in combination with misoprostol." Yet this is misleading, because the success rate varies depending on gestational age — something even makers of the drug point out.

Behind The Scenes:

In its April 2026 amicus brief filed in State of Louisiana v. FDA, Honeybee Health wrote:

Honeybee’s business has relied heavily on the FDA’s determination that dispensing mifepristone by mail is safe and effective.

Every month, Honeybee delivers thousands of orders of mifepristone to patients, some of whom would not otherwise be able to access this medication at all.

For example, people who do not live near clinics often turn to Honeybee for assistance, as do those who cannot afford the costs of in-person care and associated travel.

Reinstating the in-person dispensing requirement would eliminate this aspect of Honeybee’s business and prevent it from providing a safe, essential, and effective medication to patients.

In a separate amicus filed in GenBioPro v. Louisiana, Honeybee claimed that "The in person dispensing requirement eliminates a significant portion of Honeybee’s business and jeopardizes the viability of mail-order pharmacies more broadly."

It claims in its footnotes:

Honeybee has implemented a system whereby specific medications have “Shipping Rules,” which define the states in which those medications are permitted to be shipped. In Honeybee’s system, mifepristone is only shipped to states that have permitted the use of such medication via applicable state laws and regulations.

According to Nouhavandi:

As Honeybee’s volume of medication abortion patients increased, it became increasingly inefficient and costly for our staff to manually record the mifepristone serial number and relay it back to each prescriber.

We therefore decided to make a substantial financial investment in developing a special, HIPAA-compliant “dashboard” that would enable us to streamline the process of relaying the serial number to mifepristone prescribers, as the REMS requires.

In 2023, Bloomberg Law noted that "Nouhavandi said [Honeybee]’s infrastructure served as a model to help GenBioPro and Danco develop the new rules, which include that pharmacies certified by Danco or GenBioPro may only dispense mifepristone directly to patients upon receipt of a prescription from a certified prescriber."

It is important to note that, as Live Action News previously documented in part two of its "Dear FDA" series, prescribers who appear to flout the FDA's REMS seem to remain certified without any action from the manufacturers.

In its May 2026 amicus filed in GenBioPro v. Louisiana, Honeybee Health claimed that "when filling prescriptions for mifepristone, the Honeybee team adheres to the FDA’s REMS requirements."

The online abortion pill pharmacy then claimed it has...

devoted significant resources to developing systems and processes that comply with the FDA’s evidence-based regulations, and reinstating the in-person dispensing requirement would cause Honeybee substantial harm.

It adds in the footnotes: "Through its relationship with GenBioPro, Honeybee also completes annual audit questionnaires to ensure REMS compliance."

By The Numbers:

The generic abortion pill maker, GenBioPro, lists Honeybee Health among three "national" abortion pill pharmacies.

According to the April 2026 amicus brief, Honeybee has "dispensed hundreds of thousands of orders of mifepristone to date":

It dispenses the highest volume of mifepristone by mail of any mail-order pharmacy in the United States.

Honeybee currently ships mifepristone to patients in [31] states and the District of Columbia, all of which permit delivery of mifepristone to patients by mail.

Each month, Honeybee dispenses thousands of mifepristone prescriptions by mail and has safely dispensed hundreds of thousands of orders of mifepristone to date.