About Holistic Repro Project
Mission
Holistic Repro Project (formerly known as “Holistic Abortions” promotes the value of community expertise, the wisdom of diverse lived experiences, and the power of collectively held knowledge to reshape abortion access and provision by centering the unique needs and identities of abortion seekers. We empower individuals with accessible, community-centered, and justice-oriented reproductive educational programming and offer no-cost abortion doulas to those seeking one-on-one support for their clinical or self-managed abortions. Through collaboration with values-aligned organizations, artists, activists, researchers, and clinicians we work to build community power and promote holistic, safe, and effective abortion care in North America.
Who We Are
Holistic Repro Project’s team and co-conspirators are grounded in liberation work across issues. We are led by people with a diversity of lived experiences and expertise around reproductive health, pregnancy, and abortion. These varied experiences result in a deep-seeded commitment to increasing access, information, and availability to models of care that reflect the values and preferences of our students and clients. We acknowledge and honor the people that have come before us that hold the unbroken thread connecting abortion keepers across time. May we remember where we come from to guide us where we are going.
Vision and Values
We are proudly pro-abortion and believe all people should have the information, resources and the support needed to make informed decisions about their bodies, their reproductive lives and when and how they want to build their family.
We are deeply committed to justice and we believe in housing, health care (including but not limited to abortion, gender-affirming and reproductive care), quality education, food, and peace for all people across the globe. No one is free until we are all free.
We strive to continuously learn and grow. We believe in science and evidence-based data, and we believe in embodied knowledge and collective wisdom.
We believe in accountability for ourselves and others in our movement - we are committed to hearing concerns and feedback from the community about our creations, classes and content in an effort to build new worlds and move towards autonomy and collective liberation.
Read our herbal justice statement here.
Ways Holistic Repro Project Takes Action-
—Through building power in the repro community by teaching classes that increase bodily autonomy, hosting peer-to-peer care circles, and facilitating conference talks and panels.
— By directly working with people having and seeking abortions with logistical, emotional, and holistic consultations and one-on-one .
— Using art, collaboration, mutual aid, and narrative work to shift the culture of abortion.
We believe everyone is an expert of their own body. Connecting theory with our lived experiences is a link to re-membering and reclaiming knowledge as our own and in service to collective liberation and autonomy.
What to expect in our classes
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While evidence-based protocols coming from peer-reviewed research plays an important role in building best practices and medical care models, there are serious shortcomings to relying exclusively on their materials. They often exclude the collective knowledge held by marginalized groups without the access or ability to create large bodies of research. Plant medicine, especially when applied to pregnancy, is inherently hard research to get approved, funded and carried out. Our materials and trainings uplift and value many types of knowledge: research, stories, embodied from all types of professionals and experts.
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As clinically trained herbalists, many will attest to the lack of education around abortion and miscarriage within herbal certification programs, despite 1 out of 3 people with the capacity to become pregnant will have a pregnancy that ends in termination. Additionally, many birthworking professionals (from doulas to midwives to clinicians) get no education on herbal medicine. Healthcare for most people is a combination of allopathic and more traditional, or alternative methods. Trainings from Holistic focus on bridging these knowledge gaps for people working within reproductive healthcare structures.
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Classes distill ancestral knowledge, current research, and evidence-based protocols into introductory classes and resources meant to teach the general population. Our goal is to provide accurate, well organized and easy to understand education to help practitioners, individuals and collectives to increase their bodily autonomy and community resiliency.
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People leading workshops through Holistic Repro Project have varying levels of clinical experience, community training, and actual lived experience. We know how to center and care for people getting abortions because we get or have had abortions.
We are not doctors or lawyers (except when we feature those who explicitly say they are!)
We are not giving medical or legal advice. Courses and training materials are to educate people, so they can make informed decisions about their bodies and their reproductive health.
The people who make up Holistic Repro Project have been engaged in abortion support and education for decades. No matter the political situation, we are committed to sharing what we have learned and continue to generate and evolve new ways of practice and care reflective of the needs of people having abortions.
