Blue Mountain Clinic is a member of the Feminist Abortion Network
The mission, vision and purpose of the Feminist Abortion Network is to support the continued success, excellence, and strength of our clinics. Feminist Abortion Network (FAN) is a consortium of non-profit, independent, feminist health centers providing reproductive health care. The Network provides unique feminist perspectives and leadership that shape the women's reproductive health and justice movement from the perspective of local independent abortion providers. We are deeply committed to access to abortion.A network of non-profit, feminist-based health care clinics in the United States. Our mission is to keep quality and access issues in the forefront of abortion care discussions
Recently FAN members participated in an interview with RH Reality Check to discuss health care reform from a feminist perspective:
"Health care reform is the hurricane of U.S. public debate this year. Within that debate, access to abortion has been smack dab in the eye of the storm. Pro-choice advocates are outraged that legislators have sought to strip us of our ability to retain private insurance coverage for abortion services. But what of the women who never had that coverage in the first place? What about the low- income women in our country who, because of the Hyde Amendment (now considered to be “abortion neutral” so to speak), never had equal access to abortion? Where do these women go when they need or want an abortion in this country?
If you said Planned Parenthood, you'd only be partially right. In some parts of the country, the majority of abortions and much of the family planning services are actually provided by independent, non-profit, feminist women's health centers. Health centers that have been in continuous existence for upwards of 30 to 35 years. Health centers that provide the kind of woman-centered, non-judgmental, empowering care so critical for abortion and other reproductive health related services.
Lower and middle-income women have relied upon these independent, non-profit community health centers for years for abortion, birth control and annual exams. Sure, we think about these clinics when a provider like Dr. Carhart or Dr. Tiller is targeted, injured or killed by anti-choice terrorists. We talk around them, discussing the lack of access to abortion care, the problems with forcing women to view ultrasounds, how many providers are left in this country and where they are located, how much it costs for a woman to have an abortion, and how far she has to travel.
But how many of us actually think about our country's original basic reproductive health service providers, the architects of the movement for informed, empowered, self-directed health care? These centers and the women who staff them (many of whom have been there for 15, 20 and 25 years) are pioneers quietly existing, on the periphery of our awareness; struggling for the funding and resources necessary to continue providing optimal care to mostly lower- and middle-income women in this nation. What many don't realize is that most, if not all, of these health centers are not solely abortion providers. These community centers engage in extensive outreach, community education, provider education and training, family planning services including contraception, HIV/AIDS testing and more."
Read the full article here.
Find all the FAN members here.
Blue Mountain Clinic continues to voice concern about how health care reform will impact women
Read the women's health inclusion statement generated by BMC, Planned Parenthood of Montana and Bridger Clinic of Bozeman.
BMC's executive director, Anita Kuennen wrote the following opinion editorial in the Missoulian on Friday 7/10/09. Our concerns for the inclusion of women's health care in upcoming reform measures is at stake in the contentious transformation of health care in America.
View Anita on Bill Moyer's Journal from Friday 7/10/09: Assessing a "Public Option" for Health Care.