COLLEGE STATION, Texas — “Mysterious Dolphin” needed an emergency contraception pill dropped off on a porch outside of town.
Allison Medulan, a sophomore at Texas A&M University who had just come from biology class, saw the request on her cellphone via an anonymous text hotline. She gathered a box of the one-dose contraceptive, a pregnancy test, and a few condoms from her apartment and headed over. Inside a bewildering development of modest townhomes, Medulan tucked the plastic delivery bag next to the doormat.
Closing the car door, she stared ahead and took a breath. Medulan, 20, didn’t know the woman’s real name. It had been converted into a moniker by another volunteer operating the hotline.
“I’ve done what I can,” she said.
In this college town in farm country about two hours north of Houston, Medulan and other volunteers for Jane’s Due Process, an Austin-based nonprofit, are trusted allies for panicked young women scrambling for a solution after contraceptive failure or unprotected sex.
Sexual health advocates have long sought to expand access to emergency contraception — over-the-counter medications that prevent fertilization if taken within days of sexual intercourse — with the aim of preventing unplanned pregnancies that can derail educational and professional goals for women and teenagers. A bill that recently passed the Illinois General Assembly would requir …