Our Mission
The Reproductive Equity Now Foundation is the sister organization to Reproductive Equity Now, focusing its efforts on research and public education about equitable access to the full spectrum of reproductive health care regardless of race, ethnicity, income, zip code, gender, age, immigration status, ability, sexual orientation, or religion. Advancing reproductive justice and eliminating barriers to safe, legal abortion care are central to our mission. The Reproductive Equity Now Foundation uses research and analysis to educate the public and, especially voters, and shine a light on barriers to access that must be removed to create true reproductive equity.
Our History
For nearly 50 years our strategy has been to engage in local organizing and local advocacy to create statewide change. In the late 1960s, a group of activists came together to make abortion legal in Massachusetts under the banner of the Massachusetts Organization to Repeal Abortion Laws or MORAL. Incorporated in 1972, MORAL evolved and grew, eventually becoming an affiliate of NARAL Pro-Choice America. In 2021, change came to organization again as our partnership with NARAL Pro-Choice America ended and we became Reproductive Equity Now and the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation. And in 2023, we began building the nation’s first regional block for abortion access as we expanded our work to Connecticut and New Hampshire.
What We Do
Our organization’s name, the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation, reflects the urgency we feel when it comes to demanding, protecting, and expanding abortion access and reproductive equity for everyone. Though we believe that reproductive equity should be guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, what has become abundantly clear is that protecting and expanding abortion access is a state-by-state, voter-by-voter grassroots battle. We need reproductive equity across this country, and we need it now. Reproductive Equity Now and the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation will lead that fight in New England as we expand our grassroots presence across the region.
We have seen what happens when we mobilize and organize on the local level. Our sister organization, Reproductive Equity Now, has been successful in ensuring pro-choice majorities in the Massachusetts State House and State Senate, passing laws that expand access to reproductive health care, and implementing policies to protect patients and providers post-Roe. The Reproductive Equity Now Foundation has created educational and organizing resources to build our movement for reproductive equity and ensure every person has access to accurate reproductive health care information.
Why Reproductive Equity?
Reproductive equity means using an intersectional lens to fight for access to reproductive health care. Reproductive equity asks us to look beyond abstract legal rights and examine the lived experiences of people seeking reproductive care, and their material ability to access care. Reproductive equity acknowledges that a legal right is not sufficient to realizing real equity in our communities, and allows us to envision policy advancements that transform people’s experience seeking reproductive equity and their ability to end pregnancies, start families, and grow their families in safe communities with ample resources.
Not all pregnant people have access to pregnancy care and healthy birth outcomes. And, as long as Black and Brown women face a grave maternal health crisis, we must fight to end it. People cannot make decisions about if, when, and how to become parents if they cannot access affordable child care. And they cannot elect politicians who will fight for reproductive freedom if systems of power erect obstacles that limit their ability to vote. Our goal is to look at the systems that prevent us from achieving equity and dismantle them.