Reproductive Justice, Reproductive Rights
Last weekend, 12 dedicated women joined Maine Family Planning staff for the inaugural, intensive Fighting Forward Abortion Advocacy Training. While hundreds of Mainers participated in anniversary Women’s Marches and related events, our spirit of resistance to attacks on reproductive rights took a less visible but equally important form. The impetus for the training was a desire to honor 45 years since Roe […]
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Abortion, Fake Clinics, Health Care
2018 could mark a turning point in the fight against so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs), those fake clinics that lie to women in order to deter them from getting an abortion. CPCs have been in the news lately, and we’ll be hearing a lot more about them in the coming months—especially with the Supreme Court set to take a closer look […]
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Get Involved, Reproductive Rights
You may have heard that earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—helmed by Trump appointee Ajit Pai—voted to gut the open internet principle known as Net Neutrality. This move is direct threat to women’s health, reproductive justice, and all movements that use the Internet to educate, organize, and fight back. But there’s still a chance […]
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A study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) found a slightly elevated breast cancer risk among women who used low-dose hormonal birth control. The roughly 20 percent increased risk of breast cancer—similar to the extra breast cancer risk contributed by physical inactivity, excessive weight gain in adulthood, or drinking an average of one or […]
Read MoreRed alert! Senator Susan Collins is caving and she needs to hear from YOU—today and every day until the Senate votes on the morally vacant tax bill. There are myriad ways this cruel legislation would hurt low-income and middle-class folks—all in the name of giving tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy—but we are particularly concerned by […]
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Today is international Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day where we honor those whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence. According to the Human Rights Campaign, 2017 has already seen at least 25 transgender people fatally shot or killed by other violent means—and the vast majority were transgender people of color. “While the details of these cases differ, […]
Read MoreHere is a dispatch from intern Casey Rogers. Casey is a senior at the University of Maine, studying social work, and is spending this academic year as a field practicum student with Maine Family Planning. Earlier this fall, I had the fortune of attending the Maine Women’s Summit on Economic Security. When I first read about […]
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Fake Clinics, Health Care, Title X
Any day now, we expect the Trump administration to issue its Title X Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA)—and to be honest, we’re a little nervous. After all, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) political appointee overseeing the Title X program, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs Teresa Manning, has publicly opposed the use of federal funds for family […]
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Get Involved, Health Care, Medicaid
Today, we celebrate Maine’s historic vote to expand Medicaid (MaineCare). The margin of victory (59 to 41 percent, as of this writing) and geographic distribution of votes (supportive communities stretched from towns bordering Canada all the way to southern Maine) clearly demonstrate that Mainers believe access to health care shouldn’t depend on where you live or how […]
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Get Involved, Health Care, Medicaid
Maine Family Planning is part of a statewide coalition working to pass Medicaid expansion on November 7th. Here, our community organizer Cait Vaughan shares a little more about why Yes on 2 is a vote for Maine women. As the community organizer for Maine Family Planning, I’ve spent the last couple of months talking about little else […]
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