Indigenous people navigate abortion access after Roe v. Wade

Aunt Flow provides period product dispensers to colleges and universities so students can access free menstrual care. The company is currently partnered with over 800 universities.

In response to varying abortion bans across states, nonprofit organizations are emerging to help women in states with strict abortion laws access the care they need. Nonprofits like the Center for Reproductive Rights, Northwest Abortion Access Fund and Indigenous Idaho Alliance provide women with free abortion pills, help them travel out of state for care and even challenge local courts attempting to pass strict trigger laws.

Europe-based Aid Access is now allowing U.S. medical professionals in certain democrat-led states with abortion “shield” laws to prescribe and mail abortion pills to patients in anti-abortion states. There are currently seven U.S. providers working with Aid Access under the protection of their state’s shield laws and have since mailed 3,500 doses of abortion pills to those in need.

Amidst abortion bans, secret networks of volunteers are working to provide those living in areas with strict abortion bans access to abortion pills to ensure safe access to abortion through burner phones, aliases, code words and helplines. Activists ensure those in need get the medication they need at an affordable price, while maintaining confidentiality.

A medical tactile examiner (MTE) is a new, emerging profession for blind and visually impaired women in India and Europe that trains women to give tactile breast examinations to detect signs of breast cancer. The MTE profession originated in Germany but since 2017, 18 MTEs have been trained in India, and have since screened thousands of women and participated in several breast cancer awareness campaigns.

Indigenous Women Rising, is a health-care advocacy nonprofit supporting Indigenous people, which also runs the only abortion fund dedicated to Native Americans. The assistance of the IWR abortion fund extends to Native people nationwide and consists of funding for any element of abortion care that someone may need including paying for an abortion, transportation and lodging.

Aid Access is a telemedicine service that connects people in red states with abortion pills. The goal of Aid Access — and similar nonprofits that have emerged since the overturning of Roe v. Wade — is to ensure that abortion pills are affordable and that the most vulnerable people can access them.

A medical outreach group called Quinta Health offers breast and cervical cancer screenings to women free of charge. Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women globally. Quinta Health uses a strategic outreach plan to reach low-income community women in need of screening and trains medical professionals to provide the tests in surrounding cities.

Following the national rollout of the HPV vaccine, teams emerged to manage critical components of the rollout, including supply chain management, education, training and data collection. Immunization specialists were also tasked with educating the public on vaccine-related myths and misinformation to assure people getting the shot was safe and necessary. With the help of these outreach strategies, the team managed to vaccinate 387,645 girls.

Some people who experience debilitating periods are using hormone therapy as a means to manage or suppress menstruation. These norethisterone tablets can be seen as a tool for reproductive freedom, allowing people to have some control over when and how their body menstruates.