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Erik: Why is access such an important enabler of reproductive rights policy?
Gabrielle: So having reproductive rights or health care rights in general is important
but you need to be able Ð you need to have access in order for those rights to actually
be meaningful.
In many places in the United States and many places around the world, you may have a right
on paper but if you canÕt get to the health care facility, if you cant get the right information
and you canÕt figure out how to pay for it the right is meaningless. You havenÕt been
able to actually get your health care needs taken care of.
So my work in reproductive rights in California really solidified that concept for me and
eventually played a part in the work I was doing in Uganda helping to understand how
you could include a cervical cancer vaccine into a general vaccination program for the
Ugandan Ministry of Health. With cervical cancer, this is something that not very many
women in the United States suffer from and very few women die. But about two hundred
and seventy thousand women die every year and most of those are in developing countries.
That really isÉreally hinges on lack of access. They donÕt have access to appropriate screening.
This program I was working on was trying to understand out how you can increase access
to this life-saving vaccine in a way that doesnÕt burden the health system.