Access to reproductive healthcare is deeply impacted by systemic inequities, disproportionately affecting BIPOC and other marginalized communities. This interactive workshop, led by an OB/GYN who operates an independent abortion clinic, delves into how societal conditioning and social determinants of health create reproductive oppression. Participants will analyze real-world scenarios, exploring how economic, environmental, and systemic barriers—from housing instability to insurance discrimination—impede bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom. We’ll identify the multifaceted intersections where reproductive justice meets various social issues. The session will empower attendees to understand their own “Social Determinants of Health Profiles” and translate this understanding into actionable steps at personal, community, and systemic levels. Learn why true reproductive freedom demands addressing the underlying conditions that shape power, privilege, and oppression, fostering systemic change beyond individual choices.

OB/GYNs and other reproductive health providers can perform intrauterine device (IUD) placements, endometrial biopsies (EMB), and even procedural abortions in the office-setting. Multiple evidence-based pain management options have been studied for office-based uterine procedures, including paracervical block with lidocaine for IUD placement. However, national studies show that providers do not routinely use injectable lidocaine for IUDs, and multiple media stories have reported that providers dismiss or downplay patient concerns about painful office-based procedures. In 2024 CDC released updated guidance that encourages providers to discuss pain expectations and management options for all patients prior to IUD placement. This session will review the literature on pain management options for uterine procedures like IUDs, EMBs, and procedural abortions and provide patient-centered, trauma-informed counseling and exam techniques to address patient pain with uterine procedures.

Bleeding during the first trimester is a common concern, affecting about one in three pregnancies. In this discussion, we’ll explore the causes, diagnostic approaches, and treatment options for early pregnancy complications. We’ll also offer a practical framework to help navigate this challenging – yet frequently encountered – clinical situation.

Pregnancy loss and termination care is often limited by local laws or institutional policies. As a result, learners may not have exposure to the many ways these services can be provided including different types of patient educators, follow-up, or anesthesia. Still, as clinician advocates, we should be attentive to where we can promote patients’ values and preferences throughout the process. In this session, we will look at the continuum of miscarriage and abortion care to highlight the options along the way more than just ‘continuing pregnancy-adoption-termination’ or ‘medication-procedure-expectant management.’ Using NAF recommendations, other guidelines, and provider experience, we intend to consolidate a non-exhaustive menu of options and hope that when an attendee is participating in a reproductive health service or evaluating their program, they have a reference to other options and ways of providing care.

In a setting of restricted access to abortion care, how are people getting the care they need and what role can medical providers play in this? This session will explore the collaboration of the medical and logistics volunteers of the Miscarriage and Abortion (“M&A”) Hotline with community support networks, working together to meet the reproductive health needs of the people utilizing our services.

There are many ways that students and physicians may share their experiences in provision of reproductive health care to advocate for change in their hospitals, communities, state or even nationally. Physicians have a unique opportunity to share the impact that abortion restrictions have on their patients through expert testimony. This panel will discuss ways that medical students and physicians can get involved in advocacy for abortion rights. Panelists will describe ways to get involved within the hospital system, state medical societies, national professional organizations, and by offering legislative or expert testimony. The panelists will also discuss their personal experience and involvement in litigation and advocacy.

Medical care providers are one of the largest sources of mandated reports of children, and in particular newborns, to the child welfare system, spurring a series of legal interventions that often result in unnecessary and harmful surveillance and family separation. These practices are not evidence based interventions, and tellingly, are largely targeted towards Black, Indigenous, Latine, and low income communities living on the margins of society. The practice of mandatory reporting has racist, classist, and xenophobic origins, and it continues to have a disparate impact on families who are already experiencing discrimination within the medical and educational systems. Despite these realities, the medical professionals who advocate for reproductive health, rights and justice are only now, 50+ years after the nationwide expansion of mandated reporting, beginning to discuss and tackle this reproductive injustice. Understanding the history of mandatory reporting will help attendees put the realities of the present-day family policing system into context. Attendees will learn about the social and legal impact of mandatory reporting today from attorneys and a parent educator directly impacted by the system. The presenters will also share case studies of resistance strategies being undertaken by medical professionals who are trying to mount challenges to the deeply entrenched practice of mandated reporting. Attendees will walk away with a firm understanding of 1. The historical and present day realities of mandated reporting 2. The legal requirements and how these have been misconstrued by medical systems across the country 3. Resistance strategies that medical professionals can engage in today.

Three years after Roe’s reversal and the abortion rights and access landscape is more fluid than ever. This session will provide an overview of the current legal landscape, pending hot spots and opportunities, and explain how to navigate these uncertain times and ever-shifting landscape.

In recent years, restrictions around reproductive health care have presented challenges to providers in certain states. The emergency department may reflect unique opportunities to increase access to reproductive health services in creative ways. In this session, presenters will discuss case studies from Florida and Georgia where the emergency department expanded access to mifepristone, streamlined hurdles to abortion care, and increased access to contraception. This session is a hopeful discussion about practical measures that have been implemented in states with extreme restrictions on abortion care.

This session will guide medical students through the various training pathways that lead to providing abortion care within the field of obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN). Students will explore the distinctions between practicing as a generalist OB/GYN and pursuing subspecialty training, including the Complex Family Planning (CFP) fellowship and emerging one-year clinical fellowships focused on abortion and contraceptive care. The session will also outline key considerations when selecting an OB/GYN residency program, including how to assess training in abortion care, program values, and local legal constraints. Finally, the session will review the spectrum of abortion provision possible, from medication abortion in early pregnancy to later gestation procedural care, and how scope of practice varies based on training pathway.

In contexts where abortion laws remain restrictive, legal and ethical frameworks that promote gender equality can offer critical avenues for advancing sexual and reproductive health rights. This presentation explores the case of Malawi’s Gender Equality Act as a strategic legal tool in promoting access to safe abortion and other reproductive health services. Despite existing legal barriers, the Act mandates non-discrimination, access to health, and bodily autonomy—principles that align with international human rights standards and support equitable access to reproductive care. Drawing on lessons from Malawi, this session highlights how integrating gender equity into national legal frameworks can empower healthcare providers, policymakers, and advocates to push for policy changes. It also underscores the importance of aligning national legislation with ethical principles of autonomy, justice, and non-maleficence. The presentation calls for urgent reforms that decriminalize abortion, dismantle access barriers, and ensure that legal protections translate into real-world access to comprehensive, rights-based SRH services for all—especially for marginalized populations.

In a post-Dobbs landscape, abortion bans in tandem with “fetal personhood” language, law, and judicial decisions significantly impact reproductive care. “Fetal personhood” laws grant fetuses — and in some cases embryos and oocytes— the same legal rights and status given to born people. Currently, 17 states have established “fetal personhood” by law or judicial decision and 24 states include personhood language in laws regulating or prohibiting abortion. Ultimately, “fetal personhood” threatens to fundamentally change the legal rights and status of all pregnant people, inviting pregnancy criminalization, surveillance, and obstetric violence, which disproportionately affects communities of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and low-resourced communities. Our session will discuss the current legal definition of personhood, review landmark court cases that have shaped the legal understanding of personhood and provide a necessary overview of the post-Dobbs legal framework supporting “fetal personhood.” We will also examine the rise and application of “fetal personhood” principles since Dobbs, explore the real-world implications and harms of “fetal personhood” from lived experiences and patient care perspectives shared by an interdisciplinary panel of abortion providers and policy experts, and identify advocacy areas for intervention and resistance.

Abortion later in pregnancy has long been used as a wedge topic to advance abortion bans by the right and used as a negotiating tool by the left. Yet, new and emerging research shows the public audience is shifting towards a vision that keeps the government from interfering in pregnancy decisions, and yes, that includes in the last three months of pregnancy. In this session, Patient Forward will share research, public opinion polling, and best practices that break the cycle of conventional wisdom so that you can walk away more equipped to publicly and confidently advocate for access, rights, and de-criminalization throughout pregnancy.

This program will review information relating to the safe and appropriate use of Mirena, Kyleena, and Skyla. Following a didactic overview, attendees will have an opportunity to practice placement in a workshop guided by a Bayer Medical Educator.

Manual Vacuum Aspiration (MVA) is a safe and easy method of providing early surgical abortion. It is also used for miscarriage management, treatment of failed medical abortion, or endometrial biopsy. MVA provides a low-tech alternative to electric vacuum aspiration that is gentler, quieter and used throughout the world in low resource settings. The session provides a hands-on learning opportunity using papayas as a uterine model.

Being pro-choice doesn’t mean you don’t have complicated or hidden biases, values, and opinions around abortion care. Letting those biases remain hidden, however, can perpetuate abortion stigma and get in the way of non-judgmental, person-centered care. During this interactive workshop, participants will develop increased self-awareness about how their values impact their care of patients seeking abortion services.

Safe medication abortion is available in all 50 states via telehealth from providers who live in states that have passed shield laws. I will explain the history, science, political and legislative actions that brought about the paradigm shift of abortion from brick and mortar clinics to telemedicine provision. Students will learn how to access care and how care is provided to people in states with bans and by choice for people in states without bans.

Though abortion has long been criminalized both in the United States and abroad, providers are increasingly concerned about abortion and miscarriage criminalization post-Dobbs, and especially now with a hostile federal landscape and emboldened state legislature and prosecutors. Join If/When/How, Abortion on Our Own Terms and Ipas to learn about how and why abortion criminalization happens, and what providers have been doing for decades to help keep their patients and communities safe. We will also hone in on the criminalization of self-managed abortion and what you can do to prevent it and how to increase access to care with dignity for your future clients.

This session, sponsored by Medicines360, will review the clinical development, unique features, and the “how-to” for placement and removal of Liletta. The didactic program will be interactive and include hands-on simulation training.

Manual Vacuum Aspiration (MVA) is a safe and easy method of providing early surgical abortion. It is also used for miscarriage management, treatment of failed medical abortion, or endometrial biopsy. MVA provides a low-tech alternative to electric vacuum aspiration that is gentler, quieter and used throughout the world in low resource settings. The session provides a hands-on learning opportunity using papayas as a uterine model.

Join abortion providers as they share their stories in an informal dialogue. Hear why they chose to provide abortion as part of their practice; where they practice; what they find meaningful and rewarding about their work; what is challenging about their work; and if they have been harassed or targeted by anti-choice groups/individuals and how they deal with it. The moderator will use a prepared list of questions to guide the discussion and will allow additional questions from attendees.