Mission: Provide is committed to access to safe abortion for all women in the U.S. We believe that by being clearly focused on abortion within the context of our broader values we will make a significant contribution to women's health and autonomy. To this end, Provide:
-Looks for gaps in abortion access that no one else is addressing and seeks to create and support innovative responses to these gaps;
-Seeks to catalyze changes within health care and reproductive health activism that increase the participation of a wide range of health care providers in providing and connecting women to safe abortion care; and
-Works with local partners to achieve locally-driven, locally-relevant goals and connects this work to national organizations also interested in expanding access.
Target demographics: support those who care for women to take steps to ensure accessible abortion
Direct beneficiaries per year: 739 health and social service providers trained in providing quality abortion referrals and all-options counseling to clients, and 14,780 women facing unintended pregnancy that these providers came into contact with
Geographic areas served: rural communities and Southern and Midwestern states
Programs: training and supporting health and social service providers to offer quality abortion care referrals and all options counseling to patients and clients.
Provide trains health and social service providers to offer non-judgmental, all options counseling to their clients and patients. They work in geographic areas where women and girls have difficulty obtaining full information about their options as well as difficulty accessing critical reproductive health services.
We cannot change everyone's minds to make them pro-choice, and Provide doesn't attempt to. Rather, they have adopted the brilliant strategy of working with healthcare providers - both pro and anti-choice - to remind them of their ethical obligations to their patients and to equip them to offer nonjudgmental counseling and referrals to their patients. I participated in a training and was blown away by the caliber of the trainers.
I have been involved with Provide since it began as the Abortion Access Project in the early 1990's. At that time it was, in my mind, the most forward-thinking, creative, and agile organization in the prochoice movement. I am a midwife and they helped me find a legal way to get training to become an abortion provider. Years later, with the Referrals Project working to change thinking in states with seriously anti-choice climates, Provide continues to be that forward-thinking, creative, agile organization I love.
