It’s a common assumption that early-term abortions are scary, medically complicated, and require an extensive procedure. These assumptions foster stigma around abortion care, despite the fact that early term abortion is simple, effective, and minimally invasive – and can be offered in a primary care setting. RHAP is working hard to de-stigmatize abortion through education and hands-on activities for clinicians and non-clinicians. By using papayas, an anatomical model for a uterus, we provide workshops to model and role-play patient-centered options counseling, discuss early abortion options such as a medication abortion and procedure abortion, and demonstrate a manual vacuum aspiration (MVA) procedure. These workshops are led by a trained clinical facilitator, and we cover the cost of papayas, arrange facilitator(s), MVA toolkits, printing patient education materials, and shipping (our workshops are available all over the country!).

In 2019, our goal is to do continue expanding our papaya workshops program. We want to provide 30 workshops to over 500 clinicians and non-clinicians.

Here’s how you can support this initiative:

• $120/year or $10/month will provide supplies and equipment to host 1 papaya workshop. Each workshop reaches about 15 learners.
• $396/year or $33/month will help us organize enough papaya workshops to train 60 people.

Make a one-time gift or become a recurring donor and help us de-stigmatize abortion through the power of information and papayas!

If you’re interested in learning more about the workshop or in hosting your own, click here.