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Intersectionality and Reproductive Justice to Dismantle Abortion Stigma: inroads Online Course

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Through the Share-Net International grant, the inroads team was able to create an online course (hosted on the inroads website) available for free to the public. The online course titled “Intersectionality and Reproductive Justice to Dismantle Abortion Stigma,” centered around understanding abortion stigma through a lens of intersectionality, power, and reproductive justice. The online course was built with extensive review and feedback from the Women Help Women team, and its contents are based on years of learnings and sharings from inroads members in key populations, including queer abortion-seekers, people living with disabilities, and people self-managing abortions.
In creating this course, the inroads team was able to gain and deepen a wide array of skills. This began with creating the course content and building it out to include information that would be relevant, but not too specific or complicated for people unfamiliar with stigma and/or abortion stigma theory. We worked with Women Help Women in reviewing the course content and refined it based on our collective feedback. During the course building process, we narrowed down our platform hosting options based on a deep consideration of our target audience needs, accessibility, and our desires for product reach. We learned to design the course and include some accessibility features, interactivity, and activities for engagement. The team also discussed, reviewed, and refined the systems we built to collect data and feedback on the course itself, to build on for future levels of this course as a series.

Knowledge product details

  • Knowledge Activation Grants

  • 2024

  • United States

  • Abortion

  • Inclusion

  • Social Stigma

  • Share-Net International

  • English

  • Course

  • Online SRHR Game

  • Training

KP creators involved

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Intersectionality & Reproductive Justice to Dismantle Abortion Stigma

Level: Beginner

Language: English

Time Investment: 45mins

A learning journey to dismantle abortion stigma through an intersectional and reproductive justice lens, this course serves as a comprehensive primer on abortion stigma, including intersectional issues such as disability justice and self-managed abortions as they relate to abortion stigma. It is grounded by the lived experiences of those most impacted by abortion stigma, those who have had abortions, and those who accompany and support abortion access.  You will find both theoretical frameworks and wisdom from abortion justice movements and inroads members worldwide.

We hope that this course will expand your understanding, raise questions, and prompt you to expand your own reproductive justice journey to include aspects you may have yet to consider. View and take the course on inroads website.

 

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KP creators involved


inroads

inroads: The International Network for the Reduction of Abortion Discrimination and Stigma is a global feminist hub and community of practice dedicated to nurturing abortion justice movements to dismantle abortion stigma and its discriminatory and harmful outcomes.

With over 10 years in the field, our community currently comprises 2,600+ movement leaders and collectives in more than 120 countries. These include grassroots abortion justice activists, movements, community-based groups and organizations, artivists, scholars, journalists, healthcare workers, policy-makers, researchers, feminist lawyers, abortion providers, accompaniment networks, funders, and other key actors within the reproductive justice ecosystem.

inroads is registered as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (EIN 84-3054114) in Washington State, although over 70% of our team, community, and work is rooted in the Global Majority.

inroads Vision, Mission, and Values

We envision a world where abortion access and care are centered on the needs, experiences, and leadership of those who seek them, where stigma, fear, and misinformation about abortion are eradicated through collective cultural change

We are creating a future where we have the tools to transform systemic, legal, medical, and interpersonal levels of stigma, so that people can be free to access abortion care on their own terms.

Women Help Women

Women Help Women is an international activist non-profit organization working on access to abortion. We are feminist activists, trained counsellors, medical professionals, and researchers based across 4 continents who have a strong focus on supporting self-managed abortion, especially in places where abortion is restricted by laws, stigma and lack of access. Our projects include (a) a global telehealth service that provides information, support and abortion pills to women around the world and (b) partnerships with local feminist groups around the world to support increased access to abortion pills.

Feminist activism, human rights, reproductive justice and harm reduction are the foundations for our work to improve access and change social norms and the discourse around abortion.

The power of self-managed abortion:

  • An immediate, safe and practical solution to an individual’s problem of having a pregnancy they feel they cannot continue at a particular time

  • A route to improving health outcomes as well as individual and community empowerment

  • A practical harm reduction strategy that meets people’s needs and realities

  • A power disruptor and an expression of fundamental feminist principles and human rights

Our Philosophy:

Key to reproductive freedom and justice is putting abortion pills directly into the hands of those that need them.

Our approach prioritizes:

1. Demystification: Eradicate the myths about abortion pills and promote knowledge sharing

2. Demedicalization: Put power into the hands of the people and communities, while calling for states accountability to provide clinical care and spectrum of options

3. Decriminalization: Remove all criminal laws on abortion as they are oppressive, irrational and discriminatory

4. Destigmatization: Center the needs and experience of the people that have abortions in discourse and policy

Women Help Women recognizes that the policing of our bodies constitutes a moral injustice, and that our work to reduce reproductive oppression is intricately linked with work that is done to eradicate racism, colonization, capitalism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, and other inequities. In particular, we know that transsexual, transgender, intersex and gender non-binary people also experience pregnancy and need abortion care, and we work to ensure that our activism and services are gender-inclusive. We strive to provide a respectful and responsive environment to every person, including every trans- or non-binary person who contacts us.

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