February 2018

Spotlight on a Donor: Tangerine Cleaning Services

Tangerine Cleaning Services is a women-owned and led cleaning service business. Our paths crossed recently when the Reproductive Health Access Project (RHAP) moved into our new office space and our neighbors recommended Tangerine. We quickly inquired about their commercial cleaning services and after speaking with them about our needs, our organization, and our mission to expand access to reproductive health care, they decided to donate a year’s worth of their service. 

“Ever since my wife and I moved to New York City, we have worked in the cleaning services industry. We were both employed by an independent company for seven years. During that time, we acquired the experience and capacity to deliver a high-quality service, and the eagerness to create our own company. In order to move forward, we sought help and guidance for how to establish a company. LaGuardia Small Business Development Center and volunteer attorneys from Goodwin Procter LLP guided us through the process of establishing our own company –all for free.” Because of the help and support they received when looking to establish their business, Tangerine decided to extend a helping hand to RHAP while we are also transitioning into our new space.

“Since we are a company created by women and the majority of our employees are Latin-American women, we identify with the cause of RHAP and want to support it. We received assistance from an organization during the founding of our company, and we feel that now is the time for us to provide support in return.”

We are thankful that Tangerine chose the Reproductive Health Access Project as the organization to support. We are honored to stand next to them in solidarity.

 

Rise Up for Roe: A Recap

On Wednesday, January 24^th, the Reproductive Health Access Project (RHAP) and Reproductive Health Education in Family Medicine (RHEDI) celebrated the 45^th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. Although this landmark decision recognized and reaffirmed peoples’ constitutional right to an abortion over 45 years ago, many states continue today to pass legislation that limits access to reproductive health and abortion services. In 2017 alone, over 19 states adopted 63 new restrictions on abortion access.

Over the course of the last year, RHAP has been working on developing and providing storytelling trainings for our providers in collaboration with Speech/Act, a collective of professional storytellers that train advocates in storytelling skills for activism. At these trainings, participants have learned how to shape their personal stories into powerful narratives as well as how to further develop these stories for different audiences and contexts. To commemorate Roe’s anniversary, RHAP and RHEDI sponsored a storytelling panel with physician advocates who spoke about the importance of Roe in both their professional and personal lives. Four physicians sat on the panel including: Dr. Marji Gold (RHEDI’s Director), Dr. Linda Prine (RHAP’s Medical Director), Dr. Seema Shah (RHAP Fellow), and Dr. Ivonne McLean (RHAP Fellow). To introduce the panel, Katherine Bodde, Policy Counsel at the NYCLU, spoke about the legal landscape of abortion rights in New York State as well as actions attendees could take to protect access to care. During the panel, each provider presented a different form of storytelling, including short form, medium form, and long form. From short form pitches for lobbying to longer form stories for educational panels, each story highlighted the importance of storytelling in reproductive health advocacy. Panelists told stories ranging from their own experience providing pre-Roe abortion care in their OB/GYN rotation to accessing legal abortion care in the Midwest during the 1960’s. Their stories stressed not only the importance of ensuring that abortion care remains legal and accessible, but breaking down the stigma around abortion as well.

We are extremely grateful to the talented panelists and dedicated volunteers and supporters who came out to celebrate Roe’s anniversary with us. May we continue to celebrate many more!

 

Black History Month

Black History Month is the official kickoff to RHAP’s year-long campaign: A Common Thread: Weaving reproductive health, rights, and justice. We are excited for our readers to get to know some of the amazing individuals we will be profiling throughout the course of the month, and throughout the rest of the year. The Reproductive Health Access Project strives to be more inclusive in our efforts of incorporating voices from communities who continue to be marginalized in the movement for reproductive health and rights. From Kimberlé Crenshaw, the professor, legal scholar, and mother of intersectionality, to Edward Bass Keemer, Jr., a pioneer abortion provider pre-Roe, we look forward to sharing more about these leaders who have, and continue to aim to dismantle systems of power that promote injustice and inequality. If you want to read about some of the individuals profiled in 2017, check them out here!

 

Focus on a Cluster: Southern California 

RHAP’s Southern California Cluster, led by Dr. Shayne Poulin, is the newest addition to our Network. Dr. Poulin, a primary care provider at Planned Parenthood, became more involved in reproductive health access after moving from Boston to Southern California. She says she made a life change and decided to center reproductive health as a primary care provider rather than keeping it on the “back burner.” After making this decision, she reached out to the Reproductive Health Access Project hoping to become more involved. At that time, RHAP’s Reproductive Health Access Network, our community of 1,700 primary care providers across the country, only had a local Cluster in Northern California. The landscape of reproductive health in primary care in Southern California is a bit different than the Bay Area, so Dr. Poulin felt that there was a need to build a stronger community in the Los Angeles and surrounding areas. In September 2017, Dr. Poulin became the Cluster leader of the brand new Southern California Cluster. In developing the Cluster, Dr. Poulin says she hoped to create a space where like-minded colleagues would be able to come together, support one another, and make actionable steps toward ensuring that they are able to provide the best reproductive health care possible to their patients.  

At their first meeting, the Southern California cluster identified the specific reproductive health needs of their area. The most prominent issue the Cluster identified was the need for more abortion training in family medicine residencies. One of their goals moving forward is to find ways to offer these trainings to as many family medicine residents as possible. This includes hosting their own training workshops and connecting with Medical Students for Choice in order to create more training opportunities. Additionally, they are interested in creating a network of mentors and mentees in the Southern California Area. Dr. Poulin believes that developing mentor-mentee relationships would be very beneficial as mentors would be able to offer mentees guidance and support as they plan their careers in the field of reproductive health and advocacy.

We are very excited and grateful for all of the hard-work done by the Southern California Cluster and we look forward to supporting them as they work towards their goals. If you would like to be connected to the Southern California Cluster, please email Laura Riker, Senior Program Manager, at laura@reproductiveaccess.org.