I first interviewed Julie Amaon, a family medicine physician and then the medical director of Just the Pill, for a Rewire News Group story in summer 2022, only weeks after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

In that interview, and in subsequent ones in July 2022, Amaon and Just the Pill’s founding executive director, Brooke Bailey, painted an exciting picture of an organization that was pioneering not only telemedicine abortion care, but mobile procedural abortion clinics—the first of their kind.

But on January 17, nearly three-quarters of Just the Pill’s staff were abruptly laid off. Four former employees—all of whom asked to remain anonymous due to concerns about their future job prospects—told me that while they had been informed the organization was facing financial difficulties, the mass layoff came as a surprise. They were only given about two hours’ notice, and two weeks of severance pay.

This week, Amaon, who is now serving as Just the Pill’s interim executive director, told me that Just the Pill was undertaking a two-week “pause” to revamp and restructure. This pause is set to last until February 17.

However, employees alleged that attempts to “ramp down” patient volume ahead of the restructuring were mishandled, with hundreds of requests coming in before the organization closed its online intake form. In response, Amaon acknowledged this process was flawed, but she said every patient eventually got a response and, if needed, a referral. “It just might not have been in our preferred one-hour timeframe,” she said.

But according to the former employees who spoke with me, all of whom were able to confirm the same basic facts, there were more than just financial struggles and a difficult philanthropic climate at play in the organizational crisis. Just the Pill’s operations never lined up with the image its leaders presented to the public, these employees said, alleging widespread internal issues that stemmed from severe mismanagement and the placement of unqualified nepotism hires in key positions.

“Just the Pill has purposely misrepresented what we’ve done to the media,” said one former employee RNG is identifying as Jamie. (All former employee names are pseudonyms.)

“They strung me along,” said Sam, another former employee. “Now, after the fact, I’m like, ‘How did I fall for their bullshit?’”

An optimistic plan—with underutilized staff

Just the Pill was founded in Minnesota in 2020, when Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations still required mifepristone, one of the two drugs commonly used for medication abortion, to be dispensed in person. Amaon and Bailey drove around Minnesota in a van, delivering medication to patients following a telemedicine consult.

When the FDA suspended this in-person requirement—which was later removed entirely—Just the Pill was among the first U.S. providers to begin offering medication abortion by mail, no in-person visit necessary.

In summer 2022, while many abortion providers and reproductive rights and justice organizations scrambled to respond to the catastrophic aftermath of the Dobbs decision, Just the Pill seemed ahead of the curve. They were already building out mobile abortion clinics, Amaon told me at the time, beginning with one equipped to provide medication abortions and another equipped for first trimester procedural abortions.

These discreet mobile clinics would be able to drive right up to ban state borders, reducing the distance patients from states like Texas—where a near-total abortion ban had already been in effect since late 2021—had to travel to access care.

“We hope to be able to go to all the safe states and drive around to offer access,” Amaon told me in early July 2022.

Later that month, I interviewed both Amaon and Bailey for a profile of the Just the Pill that was published in an October 2022 issue of Cosmopolitan. (Bailey was identified by the pseudonym “Amanda” in that story, because Amaon was the only member of the organization acting as a public spokesperson. However, because Bailey is identified by name on public documents including Just the Pill’s IRS filings, RNG is identifying her by name.)

In 2022, Amaon and Bailey told me that one mobile clinic was already providing medication abortions in Colorado, the state Just the Pill had chosen to pilot its mobile clinic fleet. The second clinic, designed for procedural abortion care, would be ready to launch within the next few months, and they were already fundraising for a larger mobile clinic that could house multiple procedure rooms.

But former employees who worked for Just the Pill at that time said they never saw concrete steps taken to make those mobile clinics a reality. The only clinic any of them had ever seen, they said, was the one used for medication abortion, which was more of a mobile pharmacy.

“As an optimistic abortion worker trying to do something a little innovative, I was hoping we would eventually get to the point” of using the mobile clinics, Sam said.

They added that the highly experienced staff was “very underutilized.”

“They would ask for our input, but they never did anything with it,” Sam said.

Untapped horsepower

I spoke with Amaon again in September 2024, for a story following up on the innovative—and outlandish—ideas for post-Dobbs abortion care provision. She confirmed the mobile clinics were not in use at that time, and said that Just the Pill had found that pop-up clinics hosted by local partners worked better for its patients.

Just the Pill had run into a number of challenges in attempting to use its mobile clinics for procedures, she said, including issues with security, parking, medical waste disposal, and community partners being generally less willing to host procedural abortion care compared to medication abortion care.

Former employees echoed this. Contrary to the idea that driving up to ban state borders would be the most helpful approach—for providing abortion pills or procedures—they found that most patients who wanted to travel for in-person care were traveling by plane. This meant it made the most sense to provide care in the Denver area, close to an airport. Having to help some patients who ran into issues on the road, such as flat tires or being pulled over by police, further convinced employees that the mobile clinics weren’t viable.

Speaking to RNG this week, Amaon again confirmed that Just the Pill did build out two mobile clinics for procedural care, one in a van and one larger one with multiple rooms. These are in storage and have yet to be used for procedural abortion care. Just the Pill also provides telemedicine abortion care to patients in Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, and Wyoming.

According to Just the Pill’s website, it has served more than 8,000 patients. Former staff said telemedicine accounted for the bulk of this patient volume. In 2022, they said, the number of patients who traveled to Colorado to see a clinician and get their abortion pills in person was about 30 per month—40 at the highest. But as people became more comfortable ordering pills by mail from services like Aid Access, the number dwindled. By the end of 2024, it was fewer than 10 per month.

Amaon said that Just the Pill’s leaders did everything they could to make the mobile clinics viable.

“We looked at parking the mobile clinics on community partners’ parking lots,” she said. “We looked at buying land to provide the mobile clinics. And really nothing felt like we had the safety and security of our patients locked down, and so that was the reason we kept pushing off the launch of the mobile clinics.”

But former employees said the organization didn’t communicate transparently with staff about these efforts, and failed to take decisive action when it became clear that the mobile clinics were not going to work as planned.

“There were a lot of programmatic choices and ways that we should have been pivoting that we didn’t pivot, and things that we should have changed,” Jamie said. “And we were doing things the way that we were doing them for a while because of funders wanting this idea … the money was really specific to this very transportation-oriented, sensationalized abortion care that people were interested in funding.”

Alleged public misrepresentation

In any new venture, especially one that’s the first of its kind, there are bound to be bumps in the road (no pun intended). But staff members allege that Just the Pill misrepresented how it was providing care to the public. While fully equipped mobile clinics sat unused and pop-up clinics were centralized in the Denver area, press coverage continued to portray Just the Pill as an organization operating along ban state borders. Just the Pill’s own website continued to refer to a “fleet” of clinics, and the organization’s public financial filings suggested it was providing abortion procedures.

Amaon took over as Just the Pill’s interim executive director in June 2024, following Bailey’s departure. Former staff members said Bailey was fired; Amaon said she couldn’t comment on personnel matters.

All four former employees said they had been informed that at one point, Just the Pill had to return money to a funder because the funder had been incorrectly informed that Just the Pill was serving patients along the borders of ban states. Just the Pill’s most recent form 990 financial disclosure, for the fiscal year ending in summer 2023, shows $68,135 in returned grant funds.

None of the employees could confirm with certainty which funder requested the return.

“I can’t speak to what Brooke shared with staff,” Amaon said.

On the same form 990, Just the Pill’s description of its accomplishments says, “In June 2022, we launched two mobile clinics to provide medication and procedural abortion.” But the form was filed on November 27, 2023—a time at which the procedural mobile clinic was not, and had never been, in use, former employees and Amaon confirmed. Just the Pill’s 990 for fiscal year 2024 has not yet been filed.

Digital clues suggest that, at the very least, Just the Pill failed to correct the record when its use of mobile clinics was portrayed inaccurately.

“First providing medication abortion by mobile clinic in Minnesota, Just the Pill has expanded service by mail and by mobile and pop-up clinics in states including Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming, and is now piloting a mobile clinic for surgical abortions, the first of its kind in the U.S.,” read a now-removed page on the Overbrook Foundation’s website, which was live from at least December 2023 to December 2024, website captures from the Internet Archive show. According to IRS filings, the Overbrook Foundation gave Just the Pill $75,000 in 2023.

The page also links to my 2022 Cosmopolitan story and includes one of Amaon’s quotes from it: “We have the ability to be bold and pivot as we learn how to do this. We are laying the groundwork for others to follow.”

The Overbrook Foundation did not respond to a request for comment. RNG contacted all Just the Pill funders identifiable from publicly available documents to ask about the returned grant funds. Only one, Abortion Care Network, responded to confirm it gave Just the Pill general operating support in 2022 and never requested return of funds.

The Internet Archive shows that, in June 2023, Just the Pill’s website said, “We were the first clinic to provide telehealth abortion care in the United States. Now we are operating the first fleet of mobile clinics for abortion care. Our mobile clinics are in Colorado with plans to expand to the Midwest later this year.”

By October 2023, the reference to a Midwest expansion was removed, but the claim about mobile clinics remained.

Media coverage continued to tout Just the Pill’s focus on mobile clinics. A CBS Minnesota segment from December 2023 prominently displays the logo for Just the Pill’s “Abortion Delivered” initiative, which features an image of a van. In the segment, the anchor says Just the Pill “physicians are on the move in a mobile clinic,” and that one mobile clinic is currently in use with “three more on order, with plans to hit the road again in Minnesota, plus Montana and Wyoming.”

An April 2024 NBC News story says, “Just the Pill provides abortion access to women in states with bans using discreet mobile clinics set up just across state lines.”

And as of publication, Just the Pill’s website still says “we are operating the first fleet of mobile clinics for abortion care.”

“It came to Just the Pill’s attention that there were inconsistencies in our data and we have resolved the issues,” Amaon said. “The board and I are committed to strengthening Just the Pill and holding ourselves to the highest standard as a medical provider, as a nonprofit and as an employer.”

Amaon said that prior to stepping in as interim executive director, she didn’t see all of the organization’s grant proposals, reports, or communications with funders, but all of those that she did see were accurate.

‘Nepotism hires’

Amaon also told RNG that she wasn’t aware of the organization’s financial difficulties until she stepped in as interim executive director.

But former staff said they were aware that something was wrong long before. For one thing, there was a pattern of nepotism at the organization. Bailey hired three of her family members—her husband, her sister, and her niece—and former clinic manager Frances Morales hired her sister and sister-in-law.

Laid off employees said it took some time for them to recognize that all of these staff members were related, because only first names appeared in the organization’s slack and email addresses. Few people had formal job titles, making things even more opaque.

“They were all in key positions,” said Sam. “All the experienced people were on the fringe.”

Another laid off employee said the financial assistance department was “entirely nepotism hires.”

“The people who handled money in our organization, that saw budgets, that talked to the accountants, were all nepotism hires,” Jamie said.

It often took days for patients’ financial assistance requests to be processed, the former employees said, which was unusual based on their experience from other clinic settings.

“No one else knew how they were doing it, or what the criteria for assistance were,” said Drew, another former staffer.

The organization never had a formal or transparent revenue recognition system, the former staffers said. In other words, patients were paying and pledges were coming in from other abortion funds in addition to Just the Pill’s own internal fund, but none of this was being appropriately tracked, all four former employees said.

Though Amaon declined to comment on staffing or allegations of nepotism, she said that “one of the projects that is in our two-week revamp and reset is our revenue recognition process.”

Former staff also said that Bailey’s husband was in charge of state abortion reporting requirements—a critical responsibility, because reporting mistakes can jeopardize a physician’s license. Wyoming, in particular, has a highly specific and onerous reporting requirement. Staff alleged that Bailey’s husband made mistakes in this reporting, and that after he was let go in the summer of 2024 alongside his wife, the reporting went undone for a period of time.

“There were some inconsistencies in our data, and we have resolved those issues,” Amaon said.

When contacted this week, Bailey said via text message, “everyone that we hired was capable and competent to do the jobs they were hired for. When we experienced some delays in project launch on borders, we focused on flying patients in.”

“Our operations director at the time had a master’s in nonprofit administration and 20-plus years’ experience in nonprofit management,” Bailey continued. “He was not in charge of state reporting, that is the responsibility of the medical director.”

Bailey confirmed that the operations director in question was her husband.

“We started as a small group of family and friends giving our time to create an organization,” she said.

Eventually, Just the Pill’s human resources head came to refer to these staff members as the “familial cluster,” former employees said. After repeatedly raising concerns about the behavior of some members of the “cluster” toward fellow staff as well as patients, Just the Pill Workers United, the employees’ union, sent a letter about the issue to the organization’s board of directors on January 22, 2024.

“It seems that decisions about the direction of the organization are made based on the feelings of the ‘familial cluster’ employees, rather than on what is good for JTP,” the letter, which was shared with RNG, says. “It is clear to staff that the family employees are not held to the same rules as general staff and that they are not being held accountable for their mistakes.”

According to the former employees, Bailey’s sister was let go a few months after Bailey and her husband, employees said. Morales was dismissed around the same time. The rest of the “familial cluster” remained employed at Just the Pill until the recent layoffs. Amaon declined to comment on any personnel matters.

A murky future

The former staffers said that during a series of meetings beginning in September 2024, Amaon told them that as things stood, Just the Pill would not survive until the end of its fiscal year in the summer of 2025. Amaon allegedly said management was considering all options, including selling the mobile clinics.

“We did everything we could to make organizational changes, before we needed to lay off staff,” Amaon told me this week. “We did the best we could to be able to retain as many staff as we could, but it was important that we took this two-week pause to restructure so that we could continue to provide services for the future.”

In September, Amaon told me that using the mobile clinics for services like intrauterine device and contraceptive implant placement, cancer screenings, and vaccines was “still on the horizon.”

“We were asking for that, as staff,” said Sam. Drew added that many on staff had advocated to use the mobile clinics to provide ultrasounds in abortion ban states, where ultrasounds are hard to come by in clinics that aren’t “crisis pregnancy centers.”

Most of all, staff said they tried to help, offering their expertise to help get critical systems back on track.

“I’m like, ‘Okay. All hands on deck, finally,’” Sam said. “Then, let me tell you, it was not all hands on deck.”

Though Amaon had been transparent about the organization’s steep financial shortfall, laid off employees said she had previously told them no staffing changes would come before March.

Their union had asked for access to the organizational budget for about six months, the employees said. The layoffs “really felt like union busting, because they came after our demands to be allowed back into the budget, as the board had promised us we would be,” said Adrian, another former employee.

“This firing was just a tool to keep us in our place and rehire us at lower rates,” they continued.

In response, Amaon said, “as its members agreed, there is no formally recognized union that represents the workforce as a whole at Just the Pill.”

“We also value our employees and strive to support them,” she continued, listing benefits including employer-paid health insurance, remote work stipends, and unlimited paid time off.

According to Just the Pill Workers United, management formally recognized their union on June 9, 2023. Union members said most of the non-management staff who weren’t included in the union were part of the “familial cluster.”

Amaon declined to say what Just the Pill’s future would be until after its organizational “pause.” Several of the former employees said they suspect it may relaunch with a focus on telemedicine only.

Another person who had direct knowledge of Just the Pill’s operations in 2022—but is not one of the recently laid off employees—said they were “heartbroken,” but unsurprised to hear of Just the Pill’s struggles.

“They had the idea, they just didn’t know how to build the scaffolding to support the idea, or how to be leaders,” they said. “They didn’t know how to manage.”