Erin Worden (NYU Wagner) | Ipas | Kakuma, Kenya
The ability to control one’s fertility is a human right – inalienable, indivisible, interrelated, and uneven in its access.
Few populations are as familiar with the barriers and opportunities of reproductive agency as pregnant people living in humanitarian settings. The United Nations (UN) estimates that 55% of maternal deaths globally and 38% of stillbirths occur in countries with active UN humanitarian response plans. Pregnant people in emergency settings are at heightened risk of death, including from unsafe abortion.
This summer, I will be partnering with Ipas, a global NGO dedicated to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) by expanding access to abortion and contraception. Seeking to enable safe abortion ecosystems globally, Ipas is motivated by a commitment to Reproductive Justice – a rights-based framework created by Black women to illuminate the reproductive needs of women of color, trans people, and other marginalized pregnant people.
As a graduate student at Wagner and early-career humanitarian, I will be supporting the final months of a multi-year, a multi-partner research project exploring self-managed abortion (SMA), which involves a range of methods – from traditional herbs to medication abortion – to end pregnancy without clinical supervision. The study is being piloted in two refugee communities: Bidibidi, Uganda, and Kakuma, Kenya. No known peer-reviewed evidence on abortion incidence and experiences in humanitarian settings exists, suggesting that this study fills a crucial knowledge gap that will enable humanitarian-development practitioners to better understand and meet the abortion needs of pregnant folks in humanitarian settings.
My work will involve drawing on findings from the study to inform high-impact, low-literacy visuals that will function as inputs for a user-centered design workshop in Kakuma. These inputs will be informed by my fieldwork in Kakuma refugee settlement, one of the world’s largest refugee camps. I look forward to leveraging the rights-based focus of the Gallatin fellowship to center positionality, equity, and impact in opportunities to advance Reproductive Justice for refugee women and girls.