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NIRH’s Recent Successes:
NIRH Digital Campaign Educates Public About New York’s Outdated Self-Managed Abortion Law
In October 2018 NIRH launched a month-long education campaign to inform the public about New York’s outdated abortion laws. Before the Reproductive Health Act passed in 2019, New York was just one of a handful of states with laws from the 1800s still on the books that criminalized self-managed abortion performed without a medical provider. With the creation of three videos and digital ads that explain the different ways these antiquated laws impact women and other pregnant people, we reached over 123,000 New Yorkers raising awareness about this issue. Watch the videos here: [...]
Polling on Abortion Access in Massachusetts
In 2018, the NIRH Action Fund partnered with NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts to illustrate that Massachusetts voters care about protecting abortion rights and abortion access. The ultimate goal was to pave the way for passing proactive legislation to repeal barriers to abortion on the books, safeguard reproductive freedom in state law, and expand access to reproductive health care. As part of these efforts, we conducted a first-of-its-kind poll of Massachusetts voters regarding reproductive freedom and abortion access. This polling included an oversample of Catholic voters in order to address the misconception that Catholic voters’ opposition to reproductive freedom was a barrier [...]
Massachusetts Passes State Decriminalization Bill Safeguarding Abortion Access
On July 18, 2018, the Massachusetts legislature passed long-overdue proactive legislation to decriminalize abortion. This win is significant because it overturns archaic statutes that have been used to prosecute women who self-manage their own abortions. With this win, Massachusetts pushed back against a hostile anti-choice federal landscape, and laid the groundwork to push even further to enshrine he full range of protections for abortion access in Massachusetts law. NIRH worked closely with NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts on the effort to decriminalize abortion in Massachusetts, providing funding, communications support and strategic guidance. We were proud to work closely with NARAL Massachusetts to get [...]
Passing Resolution Supporting Insurance Coverage for Abortion Care in Durham County, NC
On April 9, 2018, the Durham County Board of Commissioners unanimously passed a resolution calling for an end to the Hyde Amendment and calling upon President Trump and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper to support measures to ensure and protect the rights of women, transgender, and gender-nonconforming individuals everywhere to have unhindered access to safe and comprehensive health care. NIRH and All* Above All partnered with NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina and a broad coalition of local organizations, including Carolina Abortion Fund, SisterSong, ACLU of North Carolina, Action NC, American Association of University Women NC, Equality NC, Jewish Voice for Peace, [...]
NIRH White Paper on Self-Managed Abortion – “When Self-Abortion is a Crime: An Analysis of Massachusetts Law”
NIRH’s white paper, “When Self-Abortion is a Crime: Laws that Put Women at Risk: An Analysis of Massachusetts Law,” raises awareness about the harms of criminal bans on self-abortion, with a particular focus on Massachusetts, which is one of a handful of states with criminal laws on the books that explicitly make self-abortion illegal.
Youth Ambassadors Council in Hillsboro, OR Expands Access to Teen-Friendly Reproductive Health Care
The members of the Youth Advisory Council (YAC) at the Inukai Family Boys & Girls Club are changemakers in their community, and in 2016, NIRH was proud to support them as they work towards their goal of increasing access to teen-friendly reproductive health care. In the first quarter of 2016, the Hillsboro School Board voted 4-3 to deny a policy that would have allowed the town’s school-based health center to dispense and prescribe contraceptives to students, despite advocacy by the YAC urging them to support the policy. Undeterred, the young people turned to a partnership with Washington County Public Health [...]
Stopping Fake Clinics’ Deceptive Practices in Hartford, CT
In 2017, NIRH supported a partnership between NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut and Hartford GYN Center, a long standing health care provider in the Hartford community, to educate and mobilize a grassroots base about the harms caused by so-called crisis pregnancy centers or fake women’s health centers in their community. This was based in part on a two-year investigation conducted by NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut conducted that identified 27 CPCs operating in the state, whose deceptive practices they documented in the 2015 report, “The Right to Lie: Crisis Pregnancy Centers in Connecticut.” After one of these facilities moved into the same building complex [...]
Increasing Access to Immediate Postpartum LARC in New Mexico, Tennessee, & Utah
NIRH is committed to expanding access to underutilized forms of contraception, including IUDs and implants. Though offering immediate postpartum LARC to patients who want this method is considered a best practice, barriers including policy, reimbursement, and lack of education for both providers and patients, and the challenges of implementing this service, have made it so that the majority of hospitals do not provide this service. With the support of NIRH, partners like Young Women United, Southwest Women’s Law Center, Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains and the New Mexico Perinatal Collaborative in New Mexico, Vanderbilt University, SisterReach, and University of Tennessee-Knoxville in Tennessee, [...]
Engaging Hospitals Across New Mexico and Utah in the Implementation of Immediate Postpartum LARC
Implementation is an integral part of expanding access to contraceptive coverage after successful advocacy for a policy change. Too often, a new policy is passed but its enactment is limited due to the difficulty that comes with vital work like ensuring that systems are created or updated and key stakeholders and informed and educated. As more states have worked with their public and private insurers to allow long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), including IUDs and implants, to be covered in a postpartum setting, work to ensure the services are actually offered to patients is vital. This includes revising systems for billing [...]
Passing a Resolution to Support Abortion Coverage in Public Insurance Programs in Pittsburgh, PA
On November 20, 2017, the Pittsburgh City Council voted to pass a Will of Council calling for the passage of the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage (EACH Woman) Act, a federal bill that would reinstate abortion coverage in public insurance programs, and for the repeal of Pennsylvania’s ban on abortion coverage in private insurance plans sold through the state’s Health Insurance Exchange. This remarkable effort was led by New Voices for Reproductive Justice, a human rights organization dedicated to the health and well-being of Black women and women of color in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and supported by the National Institute [...]
