The "WHY"
The late civil rights activist, Toni Cade Bambara, once said, “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” At a time when authoritarian and fascist movements in the US are organizing to reverse more than 60 years of gains in human and civil rights, we - those of us on the side of freedom, justice, truth, and beauty - must present a compelling and irresistible vision for collective liberation, freedom, and flourishing. Too often, the side of freedom and justice fails to convey what we are actually for, because we speak so frequently about what we are against. But merely speaking against things does not a movement make! At least, not one that is grounded in joyful community, embodied connection, and deep resolve to keep fighting for what is right and good.
This new, accredited, non-clinical, virtual Elective in Abortion Care, Family Planning, and Reproductive Justice (1 credit) will help future physicians and public health professionals provide justice-centered reproductive healthcare services - and advocate for reproductive health, rights, and justice - with positive values that point to a better world for us all. The elective will be an exploration of what it means to say that "hope is not a feeling, it is a discipline" in light of the very serious and harmful attacks against reproductive health, rights, and justice that we are experiencing in the US -- including the egregious reversal of the constitutional protection to the right to abortion care. For as much as it is necessary to boldly step up and say "No!" to these ongoing attacks, it is equally necessary that we tell and embody a counternarrative that invites and draws people into the vital and creative work of building the world we actually dream of.
So, if you are a medical or public health professional-in-training who is also a Reproductive Freedom Dreamer and Doer, this Elective might be for you! Read on, and apply...
Program Description:
Developed in partnership between the AMSA Reproductive Health Project and the RJ Med Ed Project of the University of Michigan Medical School, this elective will center Reproductive Justice (RJ) as a human-rights framework for exploring topics related to reproductive health and abortion care, including approaches to RJ-informed and trauma-informed patient care. The course will present reproductive health education with a focus on the interconnections of power, privilege, oppression, and resistance. Students will engage with critical social theories – including Critical Race Theory, Intersectional Feminism, and Queer Theory – to explore, interrogate, and reflect on the complex sociocultural, medico-legal, and politico-economic context of sexual and reproductive health.
The program is grounded in a pedagogy of liberatory education (Paulo Freire; bell hooks), and in a commitment to practicing an ethics of Love-centered educational care for adult learners that help us create and sustain deeper relationships within intentional communities.
This course will cover healthcare delivery including family planning and abortion care in a post-Roe reality. Even though this is a non-clinical elective, we will significantly incorporate approaches to patient and community care that are loving and affirmative of the universal human right to bodily autonomy, agency, and dignity, with a focus on correcting and repairing medicine's ethical failures to honor the bodily autonomy, agency, and dignity of women and femme people generally, and especially Indigenous and Black women, and queer and trans people.
Themes and Topics:
- Reproductive Justice: Framework, definitions, and herstory
- Historical Injustices and Today’s Crises: The continuous thread of scientific and medical racism and sexism in Reproductive Health and abortion care
- Family Planning and Abortion Care: Options counseling, values clarification, medication and procedural abortion, messaging and framing
- Her Stories of Resistance: Honoring those who fight back, speak up, and labor to get free
- Power and Control in Reproductive Health & Abortion Care: Religion, morality, masculinity and medicine – who gets to claim the right to shape reality
- Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice: Access, disparities, and structural competency
- Reproductive Health Law and Policies: At the intersection of medicine and law, patient and community, care and advocacy
- Affirmative Patient Care: Sexual and reproductive healthcare for LGB+, trans, queer, and non-binary people
- Human-centered Care: Professional humility, trauma-informed sensitivity, cultural safety, and non-violent communication
The "WHO"
The AMSA Reproductive Health Project and the Reproductive Justice Med Ed Project of the University of Michigan Medical School are seeking up to 25 participants for each elective cohort who are passionately interested to develop and deepen their knowledge and skills in abortion care, family planning, and reproductive justice advocacy. US and international medical students (any year), residents, fellows, and students in graduate public health programs are eligible to participate. However, only M3/M4 students are eligible to receive credit for the elective.
The "WHAT"
A leadership training academy as much as a reproductive health elective, the two-week program will be a deep dive opportunity to build knowledge, skills, and connections in a supportive, nurturing, and Love-centered community to help us connect with joy in the labor of securing reproductive freedom, an essential aspect of collective liberation.
As an experiment of what togetherness can look like in a world irreversibly changed by the COVID pandemic, we've designed the program to include virtual (live) and on-demand (asynchronous) learning that centers practices of community care, harm reduction, repair, and healing, in acknowledgment of the vast extent of harm and trauma that people are experiencing and carrying with them. The elective program will also include hands-on training (e.g., MVA workshop, IUD insertion workshop), project resources and development support, facilitated connections, and one-on-one mentoring.
The "WHEN & WHERE"
The two-week virtual elective will be offered in two different sessions:
- Fall 2024 - September 23 - October 4, 2024
- Winter 2025 - January 20 - January 31, 2025
All daily sessions (M-F), 11:00am - 1:00pm ET // 8:00am - 10:00am PT.
There are no in-person components to this elective; everything will be conducted online.
The "WHAT NEXT"
This elective can be audited (not for credit) by any medical student or completed for credit (only M3/M4s are eligible for credit).
To apply for credit:
To apply to audit:
- If you are interested in auditing this elective (not for credit), then you only need to complete this AMSA application (below). You do not need to register through VSLO.
- Most questions below are REQUIRED. For the free-response questions that are marked as OPTIONAL, you must choose two questions and provide responses to those questions. *Word counts indicated for the free-response questions are suggested and approximate.
Application Deadlines
For credit (available to M3/M4s only):
August 26, 2024 (for Sept 2024 elective) and
December 20, 2024 (for January 2025 elective)
For audit:
September 9, 2024 (for Sept 2024 elective)
January 6, 2025 (for Jan 2025 elective)
(this AMSA form only)
