Principle #8: Stop supporting prosecution in cases against people who manage their own care or offer community-based care, fail to seek care, refuse care, or fail to disclose their private medical information

SUBSECTIONS

Why

Invitation / Action

Read More

Reflection Questions

Reflect

Research

Practice

Imagine

Return to 13 Principles

Why

  1. When people seek reproductive health care or other care outside of medical systems, it is usually because they didn’t have access to or trust in health care inside those systems

  2. Criminalizing people who provide or receive care outside the system doesn’t help anything – it drives them into more limited options

  3. People deserve safe and accessible abortion care, gender affirming care and other procedures driven into the informal economy by high prices and criminalization

Invitation / Action

  1. Do not support prosecution of self-managed care cases

  2. Support colleagues who are penalized for not participating in prosecution

  3. Change laws around self-managed care and make legal care more safe, affordable, and accessible

Read More

  1. Abortion Decriminalization is Part of the Larger Struggle Against Policing and Criminalization - Interrupting Criminalization

  2. Resisting Criminalization of Reproductive Autonomy Policy Dos and Don’ts  - Interrupting Criminalization

  3. We Must Fight in Solidarity with Trans Youth - Interrupting Criminalization

  4. Read about the work of TLDEF, Transgender Law Center, If/When/How

Reflection Questions

Reflect 

  • Reflect on the reasons that someone might choose to manage their own care or seek community-based care. Is it safe for all community members to access care in formal medical care systems? Why or why not?

Research

  • Read up on the history of formal vs. informal care, professionalization and licensing and the factors driving this, through the lens of the history of US midwifery: Constructing the Modern American Midwife: White Supremacy and White Feminism Collide

  • Make a list of the kinds of care are not available to people in your community (i.e. abortion care, trans health care, care for migrants, care for pregnant drug users, mental health care for uninsured people, etc.) How might people in these situations seek to manage their own care? How might that lead to criminalization?

  • Read ‘We Testify Abortion Comics

    • What ways have people self-managed abortions historically and currently? 

    • How does criminalization impact self-managed care? 

Practice

  • Think through how you might support a friend or a family member navigating a self-managed abortion.

  • If you are a clinician, review these clinical recommendations from the Society of Family Planning regarding self-managed abortions, and how to provide non-judgmental, compassionate care

Imagine

  • What might it look like for everyone to access the care they need in the way they want to access it, where they want to access it? Paint a picture with words or images of a community where care is available in all forms at all times to all people in ways that honor agency, self-determination, consent, and the right to accessible and high quality care? What is needed to make this vision real? What is one step you can take today toward that vision?