Rebecca Gomperts

Last updated

Gomperts in 2017 Rebeca Gompers Lodz 2017 by Jarek Sawiuk. cropped.jpg
Gomperts in 2017

Rebecca Gomperts (born 1966) is a Dutch physician and activist for women's rights, in particular abortion rights. She is the founder of Women on Waves and Women on Web, which provide reproductive health services for women in countries where they are not available. In 2013 and 2014, Gomperts was included in the BBC's 100 Women. [1] [2] In 2018, she founded Aid Access, which operates in the United States. [3] A trained abortion specialist and activist, she is generally considered the first abortion rights activist to cross international borders. [4]

Contents

Gomperts was included in Time's 100 Most Influential People in 2020. [5]

Early life and education

Rebecca Gomperts was born in 1966 in Paramaribo in Suriname. [6] Her family moved to the Netherlands when she was three years old and she grew up in the harbor town of Vlissingen. [7] Although she grew up in a small town, an international consciousness was instilled in her that would drive her future career. [7]

Gomperts moved to Amsterdam in the mid-1980s after high school. [4] Having an interest for both the arts and sciences, she studied visual arts and medicine. She studied conceptual art and completed a four-year art degree at Amsterdam's Rietveld Academy, attending medical school at the same time. [8]

In 2011, she completed a masters Public Policy at Princeton University and in 2014 she was awarded a PhD at Karolinska Institutet. [9]

Career

Early career

After graduating from medical school, Gomperts worked in a small hospital in Guiana as a trainee doctor. [7] While working in Guiana, she witnessed the realities of illegal abortions for the first time. [10] As of 1997, she was a 31-year-old doctor based in Amsterdam who performed legal abortions. [4]

Between 1997 and 1998, Gomperts sailed with a Greenpeace ship called the Rainbow Warrior II as a resident physician and environmental activist. [4] She sailed through Latin America, visiting Romania[ dubious – discuss ] and Guinea. [4]

Women on Waves

Women on Waves logo Women on Waves logo.png
Women on Waves logo

After her travels with Greenpeace, Gomperts's interest in reproductive health increased. Gomperts wanted the health damages and death rates from botched at-home abortions to decline, so she designed a program founded upon the radical idea that women could do safe abortions and get medical abortions performed in places where abortion clinics are highly restricted or do not exist at all. [11]

Gomperts used contacts she had made during art school to help her design and fund a mobile clinic. [11] A close friend of hers, Joep van Lieshout, agreed to help design the clinic. [11] The clinic was called A-Portable. [12] Dr. Gomperts said they already had in place the $50,000 mobile clinic that was being built to be placed aboard a ship; she and her colleagues needed to raise $190,000 to charter a Dutch ship. [13] The grant for the mobile clinic came from the Mondriaan Foundation. [8] Gomperts's background in art helped her execute this vision. [8] The A-Portable was labelled a functional work of art. This meant that whenever a transport ministry tried to confiscate the container on national waters, the certification of the A-Portable as a sculpture made its border crossing legal. [11]

Gomperts formed the organization Women on Waves in 1999 after she returned from her voyage on the Rainbow Warrior II . Women on Waves brought non-surgical abortion services and education to countries around the world that did not offer them. [14] Using the grant from the Mondriaan Foundation, Women on Waves rented a boat on which the mobile clinic would be held. Concerns expressed included the safety of patients traveling to and from the ship, follow-up care to avoid infection, and whether Women on Waves would even be allowed to anchor in some ports to offer training, contraceptives and information. [15]

Women on Waves made many voyages. News spread quickly that Gomperts was trying to reach countries where abortion was illegal, and many nations took measures to stop her. [4] Women on Waves traveled to Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Morocco, and Guatemala. [7] Although the first eleven-day trip to Dublin was deemed unsuccessful by the media, Women On Waves had received more than 200 abortion requests from women ashore who needed their help. [4] Women on Waves intended to help create legal precedent in the grey areas of nations' abortion laws, to reach women who had been refused abortions by their own physicians, and to prevent the dangers of unsafe abortion procedures. [4]

Women on Waves faced many challenges during its voyages. [16] On one of Gomperts's trips to Portugal, her mobile clinic was not allowed to dock. Gomperts appeared on a Portuguese talk show instead. [11] She talked about how women could perform safe abortions by themselves at home and how they could obtain and take abortion pills. [11] Gomperts realized that she could reach more people through the internet than she could in a boat. [11] "In the end our ship will never be a structural solution for the enormous number of women who need abortions", [4] said Gomperts.

Art exhibitions

After Women on Waves gained some international recognition, it began to participate in art exhibitions around the world. [14] The A-Portable was exhibited in the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001. [12] It was presented on a raft, floating just out in the waters at the Arsenale. [8]

There were four other exhibitions in 2001 where Gomperts collaborated with Willem Velthoven. [14] These four installations, Portrait Collector, Sea, I Had An Abortion and Every 6 Minutes, were presented in the Mediamatic Women on Waves show. [14] Portrait Collector was a collection of internet kiosks where viewers who had had abortions could photograph themselves and become part of the exhibition. [14] Gomperts aimed to show how often abortions occur. [14] Sea was an interactive narrative composed of shots of the sea taken on Women on Waves' first exhibition to Ireland. [14] Its audio component was a poetic work of voices of women asking Women on Waves for help. [14] I Had An Abortion featured wire coat hangers with vests hung on them. Each vest had "I Had An Abortion" written on it in all European languages. [14] The final installation, Every 6 Minutes, had a very simple message. Every six minutes a red lamp flashed, symbolizing the statistic that a woman dies from an unsafe abortion every six minutes. [14]

On July 12, 2003, the Mediamatic Supermarkt entrance was blocked with the A-Portable. [14] This interactive exhibition presented by Mediamatic was the final installation of their Women On Waves exhibition. It allowed viewers to walk into the portable container that was transformed into an abortion clinic and sailed across international waters. [14]

Women on Web

In 2005, Gomperts' founded Women on Web. As of 2016, Women on Web was receiving more than 10,000 emails a month from more than 123 countries. [7] Women asked for advice on abortion pills, contraceptives, and relationships. Instead of delivering abortion pills from the sea, Women on Web uses packages and drones to send pills and instructions for safe, at-home abortions. [7]

Women on Web launched an ad campaign that utilized barcodes hidden in plain sight within images. [12] If scanned, the barcodes provided viewers with information on the abortion pill [12] In 2023 Gomperts left the organisation, where she had remained as the scientific director.

Aid Access

In 2018, Gomperts founded Aid Access, which operates in the United States and globally. [4] Aid Access initially has shipped mifepristone and misoprostol from a pharmacy in India to "tens of thousands of people in the USA", [17] who complete online forms, exclude contraindications, and report a gestation of 10 weeks or less. [18] From 2023 Aid Access provides the pills through U.S.- based health care providers who can prescribe pills. [19]

Research

Rebecca Gomperts co-authored almost 100 science papers , the most cited of which are:

Telemedicine for medical abortion: a systematic review, M Endler, A Lavelanet, A Cleeve, B Ganatra, R Gomperts, ...BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology 126 (9), 1094-1102

Using telemedicine for termination of pregnancy with mifepristone and misoprostol in settings where there is no access to safe services, RJ Gomperts, K Jelinska, S Davies, K Gemzell‐Danielsson, G Kleiverda, BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology 115 (9), 1171-1178

Self reported outcomes and adverse events after medical abortion through online telemedicine: population based study in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, ARA Aiken, I Digol, J Trussell, R Gomperts, bmj 357

Requests for abortion in Latin America related to concern about Zika virus exposure, ARA Aiken, JG Scott, R Gomperts, J Trussell, M Worrell, CE Aiken, New England Journal of Medicine 375 (4), 396-398

Recognition and awards

2001: Women of the year, Ms magazine

2002: Clara Meijer-Wichmann Penning

2002 : Women making History award by Planned Parenthood of New York City

2004: “Margaret Sanger Woman of Valor Award” Planned Parenthood New York City

2005: The 1000 PeaceWomen are activists from around the world who were collectively nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

2005: Rosie Jimenez Award from the Women's Medical Fund

2007 : Global Women’s Rights Awards, Feminist Majority Foundation, Los Angeles, USA

2011: First "Women Deliver 100" list marks 100th International Women's Day, featuring women and men who have fought to improve girls' and women's lives worldwide

2012: Allan Rosenfield Award for Lifetime Contributions to International Family Planning by the Society of Family Planning

2013: BBC 100 Women

2014: BBC 100 Women

2015: global thinkers by Foreign Policy

2015: Els Borst Oeuvreprijs by VNVA (Vereniging van Nederlandse Vrouwlijke Artsen)

2020: Time's 100 list of most influential people of the world

2022: MS top feminists

2022: Aletta Jacobs prize

2022: Glamour women of the year

2022: Bloomberg 50: The people and ideas that defined global business in 2022

2022: The Financial Times 25 most influential women

2023: Lovie Special Activist of the Year Award

2024: Princeton School of Public and International Affairs Dean's Leadership lecture by Rebecca Gomperts: The State of Women's Healthcare

Documentary

Vessel, an award winning documentary about Women on Waves, premiered in 2014 at the Southwest Film Festival. [20] This documentary depicts the creation of a network of reproductive health activists led by Gomperts. [20]

Personal life

Gomperts has two children and lives in Amsterdam. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Morgentaler</span> Canadian physician and abortion rights advocate (1923–2013)

Henekh "Henry" Morgentaler, was a Polish-born Canadian physician and abortion rights advocate who fought numerous legal battles aimed at expanding abortion rights in Canada. As a Jewish youth during World War II, Morgentaler was imprisoned at the Łódź Ghetto and later at the Dachau concentration camp.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abortion in the Netherlands</span>

Abortion in the Netherlands was fully legalized on 1 November 1984, allowing elective abortion up to the 24th week of the pregnancy. Abortion for "serious medical reasons" can be performed after 24 weeks. There used to be a mandatory five-day waiting period for abortions done after one's menstrual period is 17 days overdue. However, on 21 June 2022, Dutch parliamentarians approved a law to scrap the mandatory five-day reflection period before undergoing an abortion, saying women, with a joint consultation with the doctor, should be able to determine the time before making a decision. The law went into effect in January 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women on Waves</span> Dutch pro-choice non-profit organization

Women on Waves (WoW) is a Dutch nongovernmental organization (NGO) created in 1999 by Dutch physician Rebecca Gomperts, in order to bring reproductive health services, particularly non-surgical abortion services and education, to women in countries with restrictive abortion laws. Other services offered by WoW include contraception, individual reproductive counseling, workshops, and education about unwanted pregnancy. Workshops are conducted for lawyers, doctors, artists, writers, public health care activists, as well as for women and men to learn about contraceptive practices and non-surgical, self-induced abortion using RU-486. Services are provided on a commissioned ship that contains a specially constructed mobile clinic, the A-Portable. When WoW visits a country, women make appointments, and are taken on board the ship. The ship then sails out approximately 20 km, to international waters, where Dutch laws are in effect on board ships registered in the Netherlands. Once in international waters, the ship's medical personnel provide a range of reproductive health services that includes medical abortion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telehealth</span> Health care by telecommunication

Telehealth is the distribution of health-related services and information via electronic information and telecommunication technologies. It allows long-distance patient and clinician contact, care, advice, reminders, education, intervention, monitoring, and remote admissions. Telemedicine is sometimes used as a synonym, or is used in a more limited sense to describe remote clinical services, such as diagnosis and monitoring. When rural settings, lack of transport, a lack of mobility, conditions due to outbreaks, epidemics or pandemics, decreased funding, or a lack of staff restrict access to care, telehealth may bridge the gap as well as provide distance-learning; meetings, supervision, and presentations between practitioners; online information and health data management and healthcare system integration. Telehealth could include two clinicians discussing a case over video conference; a robotic surgery occurring through remote access; physical therapy done via digital monitoring instruments, live feed and application combinations; tests being forwarded between facilities for interpretation by a higher specialist; home monitoring through continuous sending of patient health data; client to practitioner online conference; or even videophone interpretation during a consult.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Self-induced abortion</span> Abortion performed by a pregnant person themselves outside the recognized medical system

A self-induced abortion is an abortion performed by the pregnant woman herself, or with the help of other, non-medical assistance. Although the term includes abortions induced outside of a clinical setting with legal, sometimes over-the-counter medication, it also refers to efforts to terminate a pregnancy through alternative, potentially more dangerous methods. Such practices may present a threat to the health of women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carol Downer</span>

Carol Downer is an American feminist lawyer and non-fiction author who focused her career on abortion rights and women's health around the world. She was involved in the creation of the self-help movement and the first self-help clinic in LA, which later became a model and inspiration for dozens of self-help clinics across the United States.

Abortion is illegal in El Salvador. The law formerly permitted an abortion to be performed under some limited circumstances, but in 1998 all exceptions were removed when a new abortion law went into effect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Merle Hoffman</span>

Merle Hoffman is an American journalist and activist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women on Web</span> Canadian online abortion help service

Women on Web (WoW) is a Canadian non-profit organization that aims to increase access to safe abortion known for its online abortion service accessible in multiple countries. The organization was founded by Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch physician, in 2005.

A medical abortion, also known as medication abortion or non-surgical abortion, occurs when drugs (medication) are used to bring about an abortion. Medical abortions are an alternative to surgical abortions such as vacuum aspiration or dilation and curettage. Medical abortions are more common than surgical abortions in most places around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Sparrow</span> New Zealand medical doctor, activist and author

Dame Margaret June Sparrow is a New Zealand medical doctor, reproductive rights advocate, and author.

<i>Vessel</i> (film) 2014 film

Vessel is a 2014 multi-national documentary film written and directed by Diana Whitten as her debut film, focusing on the work of Women on Waves, a Dutch pro-choice organization founded by the Dutch physician Rebecca Gomperts in 1999. The film's world premiere took place at SXSW in Texas on March 9, 2014. The film has been distributed by Filmbuff since 2015.

carafem American nonprofit organization

Carafem is an American nonprofit organization that provides women’s reproductive health services with centers in Maryland, Atlanta Georgia, Chicago Illinois, and Nashville TN metro areas as well as virtual care in select states. The organization seeks to normalize, "de-medicalize" and remove the social stigma from the provision of birth control and early abortions in the midst of an ongoing polarized and politicized debate on abortion in the United States. The organization intentionally uses certain language such as “health center” instead of “clinic”, and openly uses the word “abortion” in its advertising.

Abortion in Guatemala is illegal, except when needed to save the woman's life. Abortion was illegal without exception prior to 1973. Congressional Decree 17-73 altered the penal code to allow abortion in cases in which the pregnant woman's life is endangered in September 1973. The procedure must be done by a physician and approved by a second doctor.

The women's health movementin the United States refers to the aspect of the American feminist movement that works to improve all aspects of women's health and healthcare. It began during the second wave of feminism as a sub-movement of the women's liberation movement. WHM activism involves increasing women's knowledge and control of their own bodies on a variety of subjects, such as fertility control and home remedies, as well as challenging traditional doctor-patient relationships, the medicalization of childbirth, misogyny in the health care system, and ensuring drug safety.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aid Access</span> Abortion services provider

Aid Access is a nonprofit organization that provides access to medication abortion by mail to the United States and worldwide. It describes its work as a harm reduction strategy designed to provide safe access to mifepristone and misoprostol for those able to become pregnant in the United States who may not otherwise have access to abortion or miscarriage management services. People are able to manage their own abortion with remote access to a physician and a help-desk for any questions. The website is available in English, Spanish, and Dutch.

As of 2024, abortion is currently illegal in Indiana. It's only legal in cases involving fatal fetal abnormalities, to preserve the life and physical health of the mother, and in cases of rape or incest up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. Previously abortion in Indiana was legal up to 20 weeks; a near-total ban that was scheduled to take effect on August 1 was placed on hold due to further legal challenges, but is set to take place, after the Indiana Supreme Court denied an appeal by the ACLU, and once it certifies a previous ruling, that an abortion ban doesn't violate the state constitution. In the wake of the 2022 Dobbs Supreme Court ruling, abortion in Indiana remained legal despite Indiana lawmakers voting in favor of a near-total abortion ban on August 5, 2022. Governor Eric Holcomb signed this bill into law the same day. The new law became effective on September 15, 2022. But on September 22, 2022, Special Judge Kelsey B. Hanlon of the Monroe County Circuit Court granted a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of the ban. Her ruling allows the state's previous abortion law, which allows abortions up to 20 weeks after fertilization with exceptions for rape and incest, to remain in effect.

Abortion in Guam is legal under territorial law, but the absence of abortion providers in the territory means that it is effectively impossible to receive abortion services.

Amelia Bonow is an American abortion rights activist and co-creator of the social media campaign #ShoutYourAbortion along with fellow activists Lindy West and Kimberly Morrison. She is the Founding Director of #ShoutYourAbortion. Bonow’s writing has appeared in The New Republic, The Huffington Post, The New York Daily News, and Salon, among others.

Since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, several states have enacted abortion shield laws to protect abortion access. The goal of these laws is to ensure that providers can perform abortions for patients who traveled from states where abortion is illegal; and also to protect telehealth actions, when the provider prescribes abortion pills to a patient while the patient is within an antiabortion state.

References

  1. ↑ "100 Women: Who took part?". BBC. 22 November 2013.
  2. ↑ "Who are the 100 Women 2014?". BBC. 26 October 2014.
  3. ↑ Koerth, Maggie (1 November 2022). "As States Banned Abortion, Thousands More Americans Got Pills Online Anyway". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved 6 November 2022.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Corbett, Sara (26 August 2001). "The Pro-Choice Extremist". The New York Times Magazine .
  5. ↑ Richards, Cecile (22 September 2020). "Rebecca Gomperts: The 100 Most Influential People of 2020". Time .
  6. 1 2 Ferry, Julie (14 November 2007). "Abortion on the high seas". the Guardian. Retrieved 19 November 2018.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Oppenheim, Maya (31 May 2016). "Meet the woman travelling the world delivering abortion drugs by drone". The Independent.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Lambert-Beatty, Carrie (1 January 2008). "Twelve Miles: Boundaries of the New Art/Activism". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 33 (2): 309–327. doi:10.1086/521179. ISSN   0097-9740. S2CID   147307705.
  9. ↑ "Dean's Leadership Guest Rebecca Gomperts: The State of Women's Healthcare". Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Retrieved 22 February 2024.
  10. ↑ "The doctor who brought abortion out of the shadows in Ireland". POLITICO. 20 March 2018. Retrieved 19 November 2018.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Bazelon, Emily (28 August 2014). "The Dawn of the Post-Clinic Abortion". The New York Times Magazine.
  12. 1 2 3 4 Timeto, Federica (9 March 2016). Diffractive Technospaces. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315577111. ISBN   9781315577111.
  13. ↑ Berger, Leslie (11 November 2000). "Doctor Plans Off-Shore Clinic for Abortions". New York Times. Retrieved 10 April 2024.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 "Women on Waves -Mediamatic Exhibition 6". Mediamatic. 1 January 2003. 13 July 2003–24 August 2003
  15. ↑ Berger, Leslie (11 November 2000). "Doctor Plans Off-Shore Clinic for Abortions" . Retrieved 10 April 2024.
  16. ↑ "Mexico: Abortion on the High Seas | #TheOutlawOcean". YouTube. 1 April 2019.
  17. ↑ Conaboy, Chelsea, The Doctor Prescribing Abortions from Overseas , Politico, June 3, 2022
  18. ↑ Rubin, Rita; Abbasi, Jennifer; Suran, Melissa (18 May 2022). "How Caring for Patients Could Change in a Post– Roe v Wade US". JAMA. 327 (21): 2060–2062. doi:10.1001/jama.2022.8526. ISSN   0098-7484. PMID   35583902. S2CID   248858571.
  19. ↑ Ott, Haley (23 September 2021). "European doctor says she'll keep prescribing abortion pills in Texas: "I don't care about 6 weeks" - CBS News". www.cbsnews.com. Retrieved 22 February 2024.
  20. 1 2 "Vessel - Home page". Vessel - the Film. Retrieved 12 December 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.