The AMSA Abortion Care & Reproductive Health Project addresses the “hidden curriculum” in medical school, prepares students to think critically about abortion-related education and training opportunities, and provides students with issue education, advocacy training, and hands-on skill building sessions via AMSA Academy Scholars Programs and the AMSA Elective in Abortion Care, Family Planning & Reproductive Justice. Scroll down to learn more!
AMSA Reproductive Health Scholars Program
Fall 2024 – Now Closed
AMSA strives to empower physicians-in-training to effect change through education and advocacy. AMSA Scholars Programs are designed to provide medical and premed students with information not covered in traditional medical school curriculum and to foster an online learning community of future physicians.
The AMSA Reproductive Health Scholars Program addresses the “hidden curriculum” in medical school and prepare students to think critically about abortion-related and education and training opportunities. At the end of the program, participants develop a project utilizing the knowledge gained from the course. The projects are an application of their new skills, as well as a professional development opportunity in the participant’s school or community. Throughout the experience, participants gain valuable mentorship from their Course Directors, fellow Scholars, and partner organizations to enhance their projects.
Topics this program addresses:
- Diversity & Equity in Abortion Access & Our Healthcare Workforce
- Basic Clinical Overview of First & Second Trimester Abortion
- Protecting Reproductive Health: State & Federal Laws that Impact Access & Care
- Reproductive Justice: Framework & Advocacy
- Options Counseling & Values Clarification in Reproductive Care
- Birth Settings in America: Outcomes, Quality, Access, & Choice
- When Routine Training is Unethical & Becomes Illegal: The Case of Intimate Exams for Teaching Purposes
For more information please email rhp@amsa.org
Note: Students attending an international medical schools who are either U.S. citizens or intend to practice in the US may register with the understanding our program focus is on U.S. abortion policy and practice and is not designed to address policy or practice outside the U.S.
AMSA Elective in Abortion Care, Family Planning & Reproductive Justice (non-clinical)
FALL 2024 & WINTER 2025
1 credit P/F Electives – Seats Limited
Registration is Now Closed
A virtual, credit-bearing elective for US and international medical students (all years), residents, fellows, and graduate public health students who are passionately interested in developing and deepening their knowledge and skills in abortion care, family planning, and reproductive justice.
All sessions are held from 1:00pm – 3:00pm ET via Zoom
No in-person components, this elective is conducted fully online, and may be taken for credit, or audited (not for credit).
Program Description:
Developed in partnership between the AMSA Reproductive Health Project and the RJ Med Ed Project of the University of Michigan Medical School, this virtual elective for U.S. and international medical students (in particular, medical students pursuing family medicine or ob/gyn) will center Reproductive Justice (RJ) as a human-rights framework for exploring topics related to reproductive health and abortion care, including approaches to RJ-informed and trauma-informed patient care. The course will present reproductive health education with a focus on the interconnections of power, privilege, oppression, and resistance. Students will engage with critical social theories – including Critical Race Theory, Intersectional Feminism, and Queer Theory – to explore, interrogate, and reflect on the complex sociocultural, medico-legal, and politico-economic context of sexual and reproductive health.
The program is grounded in a pedagogy of liberatory education (Paulo Freire; bell hooks), and in a commitment to practicing an ethics of Love-centered educational care for adult learners that help us create and sustain deeper relationships within intentional communities.
This course will cover healthcare delivery including family planning and abortion care in a post-Roe reality. Even though this is a non-clinical elective, we will significantly incorporate approaches to patient care that are loving and affirmative of the universal human right to bodily autonomy, agency, and dignity, with a focus on correcting and repairing medicine’s ethical failures to honor the bodily autonomy, agency, and dignity of women and femme people generally, and especially Indigenous and Black women, and queer and trans people.