By Felipe on November 12th, 2024. Posted under: 2024, Statement
MSFC Executive Director Pamela Merritt issued the following statement on the 2024 election:
Political power may shift between parties, but Medical Students for Choice remains unwavering in our commitment to support future abortion care providers and advocate for reproductive justice globally.
MSFC has provided family planning and abortion training for over 30 years, and we will continue to ensure our members receive patient-centered, evidence-based training.
Voters in the 2024 election made a clear demand for abortion access. They have given us a mandate to liberate reproductive health care from politics, and MSFC is eager to lead efforts to establish reproductive rights for all.
Contact: Pierina Gendusa, media@msfc.org
By Felipe on February 29th, 2024. Posted under: 2024, Statement
As an advocacy organization with more than 10,000 members across 34 countries, Medical Students for Choice is guided by our mission to “support future abortion care providers and advocate for reproductive justice globally.” Our words and actions center reproductive justice in an effort to disrupt the ways in which white supremacy, racial capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy all converge to limit access to care. In this spirit, and as an organization whose global membership is actively harmed by these forces every day, Medical Students for Choice denounces the multiple crises happening globally, from Palestine to Sudan, Armenia, Haiti, Ukraine, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other contexts.
After bearing witness to more than 140 days of escalating bombardment in Gaza, the International Court of Justice recently determined that the Israeli government is plausibly committing genocide. Since October, the Israeli government has killed more than 26,000 Gazans, with an estimated two mothers being killed every hour. With no fully-functional hospitals remaining in Gaza, more than 540,000 reproductive-age women and girls are being systematically denied access to essential health care. That number includes an estimated 50,000 people experiencing pregnancies in the absence of the routine prenatal and peripartum care required for long-term maternal and child health. Experts warn of impending famine, undrinkable water, and inaccessible sanitation services, as humanitarian aid to the region remains strangled.
This genocidal violence is one of the worst instances of reproductive injustice that we have witnessed in our lifetimes. As current and future physicians, we recognize that the systems of harm that created conditions for these atrocities are as old as our profession. Despite our moral and ethical commitments to doing no harm, physicians have long engaged in reproductive coercion, from eugenics movements and experimentation to ongoing systemic discrimination.
As the next generation of reproductive healthcare providers and advocates, we are determined to create a more just future. Our vision for reproductive justice compels us to build systems of care grounded in principles of abolition and harm reduction, like those that poor, Black and brown, Indigenous, queer, undocumented, and other marginalized communities have cultivated for centuries — those that we are seeing from the caregivers in Gaza and other communities enduring violence. Our work begins with solemn recognition that reproductive injustice anywhere is reproductive injustice everywhere, and that the silence and silencing of health professionals is complicity.
To that end, Medical Students for Choice echoes calls from MSF, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO for an immediate, permanent ceasefire. We stand alongside reproductive justice organizations like ARC-Southeast in calling for Palestinian liberation through self-determination. And we urge our fellow health professionals and advocacy organizations — particularly those in imperialist nations like the United States — to join us in solidarity with the most marginalized among us, in Gaza and around the world.
By Felipe on January 18th, 2024. Posted under: 2024, Statement
Medical Students for Choice is deeply concerned by the trend of state coalitions organizing to enshrine restrictions on abortion access into state constitutions. Codifying the most problematic components of Roe is a tactic that completely rejects the reproductive justice framework, placing greater importance on the rights of some while sacrificing abortion access for people most impacted by abortion bans.
There is no test that definitively determines viability. Viability should never be used to restrict access to care, and it absolutely should not be enshrined in state constitutions as a requirement to access abortion.
MSFC reaffirms our unwavering commitment to supporting any medical student or physician in training seeking abortion and family planning education, and we urge the movement for reproductive rights to stop attempting to resurrect Roe and start organizing for the abortion access Americans deserve.
Pamela Merritt
Executive Director
Medical Student for Choice
