The mission of the Reproductive Health Access Project (RHAP) is to expand and protect access to reproductive health care for everyone – this includes people of all gender identities and expressions. For us, expanding and protecting access means ensuring clinicians have the training and resources to best serve the reproductive health needs of their entire community. This means…
Linda Prine MD, Natalie Hinchcliffe DO, Shauna Gallagher MD How many times have we heard the refrain: “We don’t need to do abortions in our family medicine practice, we have a XXX (fill in the blank with the name of your local abortion care clinic) in town.”? Too many times. Comments like these reflect…
Starting next year, Oregon and California will be the first two states in the nation to offer birth control without a prescription. Women living in these states will be able to purchase birth control at the pharmacy after undergoing a short health screening performed by their pharmacist. The laws differ somewhat in the two states.…
Linda Prine, RHAP’s medical director, moderates the Access List, a clinical listserv with more than 1,000 subscribers all dedicated to providing abortion care within family medicine and primary care settings. This blog regularly features Linda’s postings to the Access List. I was shocked by the hurt in her voice when our patient started telling us…
Last week I saw the film After Tiller, a documentary that explores third-trimester abortion care in the United States by focusing on the only four doctors publicly known to offer this procedure. The screening was hosted by the Reproductive Health Access Project and the film was followed by a Q&A session with the filmmakers, Martha…
This post was written by RHAP’s field organizer in Texas, Jenny Horton. She was at the state capital during the July special legislative sessions to vote on a bill that contained sweeping restrictions on abortion access in Texas. Senator Wendy Davis’s filibuster to prevent passing the bill mobilized reproductive health/rights/justice advocates in the state and…
When I give a presentation about the abortion services we provide in our family medicine clinic, people often ask, “Do you have a counselor to meet with your patients to help them?” I’m a bit put off by this question. I want to say, “It’s my patients with a new diagnosis of diabetes or high blood…
I work once a week at a high volume abortion site. When I’m there I often don’t have the chance to have much of an interaction with the patients in the minute or so that I see them before the anesthesia takes effect. But the other day, I had a quick conversation that really stuck…
As part of my work with the Reproductive Health Access Project, I am a doula for women undergoing reproductive health procedures like colposcopies, IUD or implant insertions or manual vacuum aspiration. A doula, in essence, is someone who provides emotional support. At first, I was not sure how I was going to be able to…
Since I came out—over a decade ago, which was about the same time I started doing reproductive justice work—my straight friends have asked me why, as a lesbian, I care so much about abortion rights. For a long time, I couldn’t answer their question with anything more than: I’m a lesbian; I’m a feminist; I’m…