Amy Irvin—Abortion Access, Reproductive Justice, & Story Sharing to End Stigma

Amy Irvin is the executive director of the New Orleans Abortion Fund and served as the first intake coordinator. She has worked at abortion clinics in New Orleans and Atlanta, and was recognized as the Volunteer of the Year by Planned Parenthood of Kentucky in 2006. She earned her Master of Science in Social Work at the University of Louisville where she researched the impact of parental consent laws for minors at the ACLU of Kentucky Reproductive Freedom Project, and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Agnes Scott College. After undergraduate school she taught English as a Second Language, coordinated World Refugee Day activities, and developed a refugee childcare program at the International Rescue Committee. She's also a former union organizer with the United Food and Commercial Workers, organizing grocery store workers in Arizona and Indiana.

The New Orleans Abortion Fund challenges the inequalities of class, gender, race, and immigrant status by providing financial help to people who cannot afford the full cost of an abortion. NOAF affirms a person's right to control their body and work to ensure that everyone has access to quality medical care.

Jessie Nieblas, co-founder of the New Orleans Abortion Fund, received her Master of Public Health from Tulane University in the Department of Global Community Health and Behavioral Science and her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Santa Barbara in Women's Studies. In her 10 years of work on sexual violence prevention and intervention, reproductive health and rights, and health care access, Jessie has designed, implemented, and evaluated programs; conducted outreach and engagement efforts with diverse communities; and raised funds through direct appeals, grants, and events. She has served as co-chair of Take Back the Night at UCSB, volunteered on RAINN's Online Hotline, and currently works at an anti-sexual violence organization.

The mission of Women With A Vision is to improve the lives of marginalized women, their families, and communities by addressing the social conditions that hinder their health and well-being. We accomplish this through relentless advocacy, health education, supportive services, and community-based participatory research.

The People's Assembly

Protesters stage a 'die-in' over proposed abortion bill in Louisiana

Maternal Mortality in Louisiana

Sex Education in Louisiana

Shout Your Abortion is a decentralized network of individuals talking about abortion on our own terms and encouraging others to do the same. Following the U.S. Congress’s attempts to defund Planned Parenthood in 2015, the hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion became a viral conduit for abortion storytelling, receiving extensive media coverage and positioning real human experiences at the center of America’s abortion debate for the very first time. SYA quickly evolved into a grassroots movement, which has inspired countless individuals to share their abortion stories through art, media, and community events all over the country.

Lindy West is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman (2016, Hachette Books) as well as the upcoming essay collection The Witches Are Coming (2019, Hachette Books). In 2018 she adapted Shrill as a half-hour comedy for Hulu, set to air in 2019. Her work has also appeared in This American Life, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Vulture, Jezebel, The Stranger, and others. She is the founder of I Believe You, It's Not Your Fault, an advice blog for teens, as well as the co-founder of the reproductive rights destigmatization campaign #ShoutYourAbortion.

Open Access is a bi-weekly web series produced by the New Orleans Abortion Fund, aims to engage advocates from local and statewide organizations about their work through casual conversation. Exploring the role of wo...