I represented the Vitala Global team at the 15th FIAPAC conference in Brussels this past September! Our amazing team had four e-posters accepted at the conference and you can check them out here!
At FIAPAC, abortion and contraception providers, experts, and researchers from Europe and around the world gathered together to share experiences, research, and best practices, and build the case for reproductive choice, which was this year’s conference theme.
Hearing about the various challenges in abortion access across Europe either due to restrictive laws or lack of solidarity from the medical community on reproductive rights, made me realize that the barriers for abortion seekers are the same in the United States and Canada (where I used to live and where I trained), whether they are living in a legal or illegal context.
Our support model can be applied worldwide
It also hit home that the feminist accompaniment model of care from Latin America can be applied to address the challenges in abortion access in Europe/Global North in general. We were able to show this narrative when we brought our Aya Contigo digital abortion accompaniment model from Venezuela to the US last year.
Our learnings from our self-managed abortion work in Venezuela where abortion is illegal, could be applied to support the Latina/x community living in restricted states: the needs were similar, and the accompaniment we provided offered validation, support and empowerment to the marginalized Spanish-speaking abortion seekers.
Since 2022 Aya Contigo’s virtual doulas have accompanied 1.800 abortion seekers and supported over 9.000 users with reliable Spanish-first information on self-managed abortion and contraception across the US and Venezuela.
The role of the feminist accompaniment movement in demedicalizing abortion
At FIAPAC we heard from Lucía Berro Pizzarossa about the Latin American feminist accompaniment movement and its role in demedicalizing abortion with pills and expanding access in countries where it was illegal over the past four decades.
We also heard from Polish activist Justyna Wydrzynska fighting hard to ensure safe abortion access for Polish women, including risking imprisonment for her activism. As doctors who co-founded Vitala and leading Aya Contigo’s implementation in North and South America, we are grateful for the groundwork feminist accompaniers and activists have laid out to introduce a person-centered model of care that is safe and effective.
A global shift: WHO acknowledges self-managed abortion
We are proud that organizations like the World Health Organization WHO are acknowledging the global evidence that supports harm reduction approaches to preventing unsafe abortions through self-managed abortion guidelines that outline that it’s safe for people to use abortion pills for up to 12 weeks at home as long as they have the right information and support during the process.
The representation from reproductive rights activists, the feminist accompaniment movement, and providers/researchers from Global South at FIAPAC was disappointingly low. However, there was a thirst from the majority Global North provider/academic participants to hear more from these groups and to learn from their experiences and successes in supporting safe self-managed abortion care in the Global South context.
We are hopeful to see more cross-cultural and sectorial learning at the next FIAPAC conference in 2 years.
Women can self-manage their own reproductive health
Our amazing US partners Shout Your Abortion, Plan C, and Women on Web, hosted a FIAPAC side event post-conference celebrating an “International Day of Culture, Arts, and Repro Rights”.
Vitala was invited to be on the panel ‘Abortion beyond the law’ with inspiring abortion activists Lara Islinger (Women on Web, Las Libres), Lucía Berro Pizzarossa (Women Help Women, University of Birmingham, S.A.F.E.).
We discussed the importance of trusting women and pregnant people to self-manage their own reproductive health and supporting them through their self-managed abortions as an act of rights-based self-care and community care.
We need to work together and recognize that this de-medicalized feminist model of accompaniment and care is safe and evidence-based, promotes empowerment, restores dignity, and saves lives.
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