FM: Abortion Updates
15 October 2022
Dear all,
I cannot believe it’s been 6 weeks since my last Abortion Update email. Rest assured, I’m back in action! Happy belated midwifery week, especially to everyone in the abortion community out there! There’s a lot to discuss so let’s get right to it!
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Midwest Access Project’s Clinical Training Application is now open for midwives and all advanced practice clinicians to apply for procedural abortion training at Partners in Abortion Care! Students and providers of any specialty can apply anytime before 11/11 for training at MAP sites, including Partners, for rotations occurring March through August 2023. This is HUGE news for midwives and APCs who have very limited procedural training options. Donate to MAP here to support our mission including training providers. And share this clinical training application widely!
This means that Partners in Abortion Care is open! The only midwife-physician partnered and woman-owned and operated abortion clinic in the US. They are continuing to fundraise for operate costs and have this wish list of clinic needs in case you’d like to support them this way.
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This Tuesday, October 18th from 6-7:30pm CT I am going to be joined in conversation by my dear friend Dr. Mary Bowman, telemedicine abortion provider at Choix. The title of their presentation is “Easy-Access Abortion: Choix and the Future of Care,” which will be followed by us talking and then inviting Q&A. Register here. While I will be recording, some portions of the conversation will be publicly shared by Choix at a later date. Register here! For more information about Choix, check them out here and on Instagram!
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Myself, one of my professors, and one of my fellow classmates wrote a blog post for the primary bioethics journal about teaching abortion ethics. Check it out in full here, and here’s an excerpt:
Healthcare Ethics Scholars Must Uphold Abortion Scholarship And Advocacy by Stephanie Tillman, Yolonda Wilson, and Lou Vinarcsik for Bioethics Today
Excerpt:
“…Many of us who find ourselves working for or studying in conservative religious institutions are told that we need to keep quiet about our firm support of abortion access and reproductive justice, or that abortion access is an inappropriate topic of discussion, or that we need to change our positions outright. We are told that we knew what we were signing up for when we joined such an institution. To be sure, we often have some idea of the politics of the institutions where we work and study. But the notion that we can all choose where to live, work, and study based on alignment with an institution’s moral and political identities (or a state’s moral and political identities for that matter) reflects a misunderstanding of economic, political, and geographic reality for many. Analogously, as conservative institutions, including conservative religious institutions, purchase more and more hospitals, patient care decisions are governed not by patients and their providers, and not by sound medical practice, but by the political views of hospital owners, churches, and other conservative institutions–even if those decisions are harmful to patients. The trigger laws exacerbate and expand this phenomenon, essentially punishing people for where they live by restricting access. But these laws will not keep the body politic, nor its scholars and advocates, quiet.
We know firsthand the pressure that institutions can levy against their members to selectively engage with real-world topics. As an intellectual/academic topic, the conversations we have in classrooms are far removed from people’s lived experiences – we talk about personhood and definitions of life and entirely cordon off pregnant people’s lived reality. Advocating for abortion care access is a bioethical imperative not because it’s a fun puzzle in analytic philosophy, but because people are being actively harmed as we speak. Statements directly from leaders in bioethics are a start, but need to be overt in support of abortion as healthcare to fulfill baseline bioethical principles we describe above.
The overturning of Roe brings with it the force of law to pressure silence and complacency. Quite simply, sometimes people need abortions, and denying them access to that care is a matter of suffering and death on a massive scale. So, as feminist bioethicists, we plan to continue pushing for reproductive justice in our thinking, teaching, and advocacy and encourage all of our academic communities to do the same. The rights of patients, and the principles of bioethics, implore us to…”
Here, I’ll leave you with my latest favorite swag from ReproFund New Hampshire followed by an incredible hymn featuring the incredible adrienne maree brown.
Back to the usual news roundup in two weeks! Feel free to send along your own writing and work or the favorite news you see to make sure others read it here, too!
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In solidarity,
Stephanie (Feminist Midwife)