A Matter of Facts — March 2024

Letter From Our Leadership

Last month, Guttmacher announced a new interim co-leadership model, with the two of us—Jonathan Wittenberg and Destiny Lopez—serving as acting co-CEOs for the year ahead. We are excited to support the exceptional efforts of our talented and dedicated staff at this key moment. Our Board is meanwhile diligently assessing leadership needs and preparing to launch a search for a permanent CEO.

As we navigate this leadership transition and confront a pivotal year for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) globally and in the United States, our experts stand ready to meet challenges and seize opportunities. In the months ahead, our dedicated staff will continue to produce the rigorous research and incisive policy analysis you expect from us, and will work to ensure that our evidence influences sound advocacy and policymaking.

Don’t miss the “Behind the Scenes” section in this edition of A Matter of Facts, profiling our Public Policy division. Led by Kelly Baden, this phenomenal group tracks the latest SRHR policy developments and trends, promotes research findings to advocates, crafts forward-thinking policy ideas and plays an active role in shaping policies at the state, national and global levels. Read on to learn how our Policy division is fostering collaborations with an array of allies to address inequities in access to care and promote a comprehensive vision for SRHR worldwide.

At Guttmacher, collaboration and partnership are integral to our mission. Together, we hope to demonstrate the power of diverse perspectives and voices and offer an aligned vision for a powerful SRHR movement.

We are grateful for your ongoing support,

Destiny Lopez and Jonathan Wittenberg

Acting Co-CEOs 

Behind the Scenes 

Meet Our Dynamic Public Policy Team

Guttmacher is proud to complement our research efforts with fact-based policy solutions for lawmakers and leaders who can rewrite the rules limiting reproductive freedoms. Informed by our data, our public policy division offers timely and comprehensive tracking and analysis of policy trends and works in coalition to craft new policies and advocacy strategies that are both visionary and responsive to the world we live in. My job, as vice president, is to ensure that we are grounded in the Institute’s guiding principles, including equity and justice, and are leaning into our role as an action-oriented think tank.

With a monumental year ahead, we’re launching several exciting projects. Our Policy Innovation Hub: A Workshop for Proactive Abortion Policies will gather abortion rights thinkers and academic and legal experts to identify new policy concepts to advance abortion rights and access. We’re also proud to cohost the second Green Wave Gathering, which will bring together abortion rights activists and leaders from Latin America and the United States to forge a united movement without borders.

Because the global movement for reproductive freedom is interconnected, our triad of Policy teams tackles sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) from the global, US federal and US state arenas. Our teams are excited to develop ideas that center equity, to build a world where every person has the ability and right to exercise bodily autonomy and self-determination. I’m excited to introduce them here.

Global Policy

Guttmacher’s global policy team works with UN agencies, civil society organizations and other stakeholders to advocate for evidence-based SRHR policies and programs around the world. We work at the global, regional and country levels in close alliance with our partner organizations. In all of our collaborations, we are committed to equitable partnerships, co-creating projects and raising the visibility of partners’ work. 

At the global level, we equip partners with key evidence and policy recommendations to make the case for robust SRHR policies and programs in multilateral processes. For example, in May 2023 we participated in a high-level panel session during the World Health Assembly, highlighting ways in which our evidence has been used in several countries to advocate for stronger adolescent SRH policies and greater investment in programs. We also collaborate with regional and national organizations. With International Planned Parenthood Federation Africa Region, for instance, we recently published a report outlining the connection between universal health coverage and access to sexual and reproductive health services in Sub-Saharan Africa. And in the United States, our team demonstrates the global impact of US policies and bilateral funding for reproductive health and family planning programs worldwide. We also share lessons and successful advocacy approaches from other countries to inform US policymaking.

US State Policy 

The state policy team provides the analysis, tracking and expertise that partners and policymakers need to advance state policies rooted in evidence and human rights principles. We craft thoughtful policy publications that paint a broad picture of sexual and reproductive health care trends at the state level—such as our end-of-year analysis of state policy developments. And we ensure that Guttmacher’s original research is informed by the needs and perspectives of state advocates and is integrated into policy and advocacy strategies. We’ve shared findings from our Monthly Abortion Provision Study, for example, with state lawmakers and advocates, with whom we’ve co-created uses of this data in state policy agendas.

In the year ahead, we’ll continue providing time-sensitive analysis of emerging state issues, such as travel bans and data privacy protections; forging relationships with LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive justice organizations; and creating and refining policy products that meet the needs of our audience.

US Federal Policy

With a national election looming and two abortion-related US Supreme Court cases on the docket for 2024, the federal policy team at Guttmacher is working hard to advance our goals for data-driven policy impact. Our team does this by ensuring that members of Congress and the White House have our latest and most relevant research and policy analyses, by strategizing and sharing ideas with a range of stakeholders and by producing informative public materials.

With the culmination of multiyear research projects at the state and global levels, we plan to release policy publications later this year that frame their findings. Those will demonstrate how detrimental federal abortion policies such as the “domestic gag rule” and the “global gag rule” deny people person-centered care and impact access to a range of sexual and reproductive health care services, including contraception. Our advocacy will consequently focus on fully funding domestic and international family planning programs free from anti-abortion restrictions. We’ll also continue to support several bills: the Women’s Health Protection Act and the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance Act, which would ensure that all people can access and afford abortion care; the Health Equity and Access Under the Law for Immigrant Families Act, to expand immigrants’ access to health care; and the Abortion Justice Act, to support the full spectrum of abortion care.

L to R: Mollie, Managi, Talia and Kimya. Floriane, who joined Guttmacher just before we went to "press," not pictured.

Guttmacher’s state policy associates, Talia Curhan and Mollie Fairbanks, track, analyze and categorize all state bills related to sexual and reproductive health and rights that we then catalog through our state legislation tracker. They create and update state policy analyses, publications explaining current policy issues and Guttmacher’s interactive map of state-by-state abortion policies. They also provide assistance to state advocates and expert analysis to media contacts to ensure that our information is available to different audiences.

Our principal policy associate, Kimya Forouzan, serves as a technical expert and collaborates with organizational partners to develop a shared understanding of emerging state policy issues.

Managi Lord-Biggers, Guttmacher’s federal policy associate, tracks legislation and identifies ways that our data can support or be integrated into federal advocacy strategies. Managi focuses primarily on contraception policy; he’s currently updating our federal contraception policy resources and creating related products, such as fact sheets. In addition, Managi advocates for Guttmacher’s priorities in congressional and agency meetings and engages with partners.

Floriane Borel recently joined the team as a senior global policy associate. She brings global policy analysis and Guttmacher data to bear during discussions with stakeholders, in written materials and in the expertise she provides to partners, policymakers and advocates.

Fast Facts

Medication Abortion and its State in the Union

The reversal of Roe in 2022 turned the spotlight on medication abortion. But access to this safe and common method of abortion is being threatened by relentless attacks at the state and federal levels—most notably the baseless case that will be heard by the US Supreme Court later this month.

There’s much to understand about this topic, from the language used to describe medication abortion to how people get the pills to its current legal status in the United States. Our policy analysis explains the basics. 

Starting from scratch? Here are some quick definitions to establish your base knowledge: 

• Medication abortion: also known as “abortion pills” or “medical abortion,” this method of terminating a pregnancy uses various drug regimens. The most common offered by providers in the United States is an FDA-approved combination of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. 
• Mifepristone: the first drug in the two-drug regimen stops a pregnancy from continuing. 
• Misoprostol: the second drug in the two-drug regimen causes uterine cramping and expels the pregnancy; it can be used safely and effectively without mifepristone. 
• Self-managed abortion: an abortion that occurs outside the formal health care system. People have been self-managing abortions for centuries using a variety of methods, including, more recently, abortion pills.

Currently, 29 states restrict medication abortion, either through total abortion bans that supersede specific restrictions (14 states) or with statutory restrictions on medication abortion itself. For example:

• 15 states require medication abortion to be provided by a physician

• 5 states require an in-person visit with a physician to obtain medication abortion

• 2 states ban mailing abortion pills

To be clear, many rights and protections exist surrounding medication abortion, and it’s not illegal in most places for pregnant people to self-manage their own abortions. Federal policy supports the right to travel across state lines for health care and allows medication abortion pills to be sent through the mail. Pills can be sourced from US-based or international websites that sell them, community networks, pharmacies (with a prescription) or a health care provider practicing in a state where abortion is not banned.

The bottom line: medication abortion is a safe and effective way to terminate pregnancy, despite rampant misinformation and pernicious attempts to prevent people from accessing it. Knowledge is power. To learn more about medication abortion basics, criminalization, court challenges and related issues, read our policy analysis.

Evidence in Action

Nearly 800 people joined us on January 25 for our live-streamed event, Data for Democracy: How Evidence-Based Advocacy Fuels a Post-Roe Future. Feminist author Jessica Valenti moderated the engaging panel discussion on how data can be used to shape polices that protect sexual and reproductive health and rights. Stave off your postpanel FOMO by viewing video of the event.

We Recommend...

• “Funny, Like An Abortion,” a dark and quirky satirical play about a dystopian American future where even saying the word abortion is illegal, mesmerized Erin McGee, our research administrative manager for operations and budgets. “I was grateful to spend an evening laughing about abortion, rather than crying about the state of abortion access and rights in the US.” 

• Director of C&P administrative operations Rebecca Wind recommends this Hysteria podcast episode—a roundtable on abortion featuring Monica Simpson, the executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, and model Chrissy Teigen. 

• Eve by Cat Bohannon is “essential reading for anyone who is interested in reproductive health,” says senior development assistant Rhea Goveas. The book, shared by a long-time Guttmacher donor, covers the evolution of the female body—a topic often overlooked by the scientific community.     

• Director of production Kathleen Randall found the “What is medication abortion?” illustration from this CNN article “particularly helpful in conveying accurate details…. The graphic comparing deaths per million to Viagra isn’t bad, either.”

Notions

Colombian Paula Avila-Guillen is a human rights lawyer and executive director of the Women’s Equality Center, where she leads efforts to expand abortion rights in Latin America. We’re inspired by her recent video on the pañuelo verde, which originated with the region’s Green Wave movement. As Avila-Guillen explains, everyone can embrace the green bandana as a symbol of pride and solidarity in the global fight for reproductive freedom.

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