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Author Archives: astrout

  1. Leadership Announcement

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    June 3, 2021

    Leadership Announcement from Board President, Aislinn Canarr (she, her):

    It is with a heart full of both sadness and joy that I share the news that Andrea Irwin will be stepping down as Executive Director of Mabel Wadsworth Center after six years of leadership. Andrea is the second-ever Executive Director in our 37-year history of providing exceptional client-centered reproductive and sexual health care, and educating and advocating for reproductive health, rights, and justice.

    Under her leadership, the Center invested in an ambitious three-year strategic plan that has guided us through significant change and new opportunities. Under her visioning and with the support of the board of directors and staff leadership team, Andrea has led the Center to a place of stability and growth.

    Under Andrea’s leadership, the Center:

    • Reckoned with its feminist identity and legacy to reimagine a more gender inclusive mission in alignment with our values, and now welcomes people of all genders.
    • Expanded clinical services to become the region’s largest provider for trans clients; and to offer a more holistic and comprehensive model of care for all, including primary care, mental health counseling, and client advocate services to help clients to enroll in health coverage and overcome other barriers to care.
    • Became a nationally known and respected leader in providing and advocating for trans-inclusive abortion care and other reproductive healthcare.
    • Prioritized abortion justice and relentlessly advocated for dismantling the discriminatory and racist Hyde Amendment and other restrictions that harm people who need abortion care; acted as lead plaintiff in ACLU lawsuit to restore state Medicaid coverage of abortion.
    • Spoke loudly and unapologetically about abortion in unexpected forums by lifting the voices of people who have abortions.
    • Strengthened Mainers’ access to abortion care by championing the enactment of new state laws to require MaineCare coverage of abortion care, and to allow nurse practitioners to provide abortion care, demonstrably increasing access for people struggling to make ends meet and in rural areas.

    Today Mabel’s is a nationally recognized feminist health center known for our exceptional abortion care, trans care, and other essential health services. As we have become a leading provider for LGBTQ+ care in Maine, Andrea’s commitment to social justice and centering the experiences of folks living at the margins, precipitated our work to prioritize racial justice and equity. While it has been a time full of stress and challenge, her strategic thinking, vision, and pragmatic base saw the Center not only stay open to serve clients during a pandemic, but thrive as well. Her focus has always been on the community we serve, and the care of the staff that serve them. I and the Center will miss Andrea’s enthusiasm, care, and curiosity. I am grateful that I got a chance to work closely with her as Board President.

    Andrea’s last day with the Center will be June 18. After informing the Board of this news last month, we have worked closely with her to create an initial transition plan to share with our community. The Board has formed an experienced transition team and intends to hire an external interim Executive Director before hiring the Center’s next Executive Director. Kate Waning (she/her), the Center’s current Director of Finance and Operations, will become Acting Director upon Andrea’s departure, before an interim director is selected.

    Andrea leaves the Center in an excellent position to be intentional and thoughtful in our approach in hiring our next Executive Director. We will be reflecting on equity in hiring and attracting great talent. Our focus will be leadership based in feminist and racially equitable models in order to better serve our clients and community.

    Andrea will be missed dearly, but I am also excited for her next chapter and our ongoing partnership with her as a valued member of our community.

    What a time.  To pause.  To reflect.  To prioritize our work.  To grow in opportunity.

    Thank you all for you do to support the Center. Please contact me directly with questions or concerns at mabelbod@gmail.com.

     

    Message from Andrea:

    Leading Mabel Wadsworth Center for the past six years has been a privilege for which I am profoundly grateful. I am especially grateful to current board president Aislinn Canarr and past president Suzanne Gordon, and the entire board, for their strong leadership and commitment to the Center. I have also truly enjoyed working with such an incredible team of staff and volunteers, who meet every challenge with courage, grace, and resilience.

    My pride in this team and our work to support our clients with compassion, and to impact our broader community, is immense. I am especially proud of our work to celebrate the experiences of people who have abortions, and to build trust and strengthen relationships within the trans community. Mabel’s has always been on the frontlines, acting boldly and with great clarity of vision and values, a legacy that will undoubtedly continue.

    While I am leaving the Executive Director role, I remain deeply committed to the movement for reproductive health, rights, and justice, and look forward to continuing to be a part of Mabel’s vibrant, diverse, and powerful community. Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to steward this dynamic organization for six years!

     

  2. Interview with a Trans Educator Part 3

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    Join Cat and Aspen for the final installment of their three-part adventure in exploring gender.

  3. Interview with a Trans Educator Part 2

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    Join Cat and Aspen for part two of a three-part adventure in exploring gender! In this episode, the pair focuses on gender roles in our culture. Our host Aspen could talk about gender all day, the final episode in the series will be released in May.

  4. STIs – Stigmatized and On the Rise

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    By Emma Smith (she, her, hers), intern, Mabel Wadsworth Center

    Why are sexually transmitted infections (STIs) a topic of avoidance? What makes them stigmatized – giving them a negative connotation? When should we be concerned about them? Why do they seem scary? 

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report in 2018 with U.S. statistics showing that cases of some STIs were increasing in their report regularity. 

    With a lack of clinical studies on the ways STIs get spread, it isn’t clear what factors are contributing to this rise more than others. 

    This absence of clinical study and engagement on ways STIs spread is a deficit in the U.S. education and healthcare system, which has been legislatively designed to result in a lack of evidence-based education on sexual health and thus inadequate public understanding.

    Regardless if people are having more sex or not, or more partners – we as a culture remain stuck in a past of sex stigma, which shames people for the sex they have and is stigmatizing for what is preventable, and incredibly common in the U.S. today. 

    The stigma around STIs has amplified in the U.S. since legislators created funding for abstinence-only education, beginning in 1996 and still in effect, using tax-payer dollars today. Legislatively designed to teach based on the main tenet that the only way to stay truly safe, happy, and in fulfilling relationships(or critically, a relationship), is to abstain from sex until marriage. This education targets kids between the ages of 12-18. In an education system like this, there is barely any room to discuss the implications of sex, in some cases at all. This is meant to be intimidating – thus maintaining a cultural stigma for the sake of conservatism. 

    With this lack of education and discussion about STIs, it’s no wonder that people avoid getting tested and are unaware that they even should be getting tested. The purposeful avoidance of evidence-based sexual education in the U.S. reflects our deeply rooted societal discomfort with addressing sex at all, especially with emerging adults, and this has serious implications for the state of everyone’s health, relationships and livelihoods. Through the continued withholding of information, misconceptions and fear surrounding STIs have grown – holding people hostage from opening up and honestly assessing their health. This culture is cruel. 

    STIs are packed with stigma in our culture today – for example, there is a connotation of being ‘clean’ when one doesn’t have STIs and being ‘dirty’ if one does. This clean/dirty connotation sums up the way many people think about STIs, and by associating having these infections with being ‘dirty’ we are furthering the stigma through shame, and this only does harm. 

    To protect ourselves and others from the spread of STIs, and to work to reduce their stigma, are the same goal. Honest communication with one’s partner(s) and healthcare provider(s) is a necessary step for this goal; talking about the types of sex you have, the frequency of new partners, and whether or not you’ve had unprotected (without barriers) sex or shared needle use are all important topics your partner(s) and healthcare provider(s) should be aware of to properly assess risk. 

    These essential conversations must be coupled with STI testing, because most STIs are usually asymptomatic, meaning they’ll often show no physical signs of infection but can remain contagious and can be harmful if left untreated. The suggested regularity of STI testing is different for different people; if you frequently (subjective, I know) engage in casual sex you should have STI screens fairly often, with the urge to screen always being after unprotected sex, and not just the penis-vagina type either – this goes for all sex involving each partners’ fluid contact. If you don’t have multiple partners, if you’ve had one or two, it’s still important to get tested for these reasons – because STIs can happen to anyone, regardless of the regularity of sex. 

    Honesty with providers is crucial for them to properly be able to assess your risk of infection and transmission. STI screenings are not cut and dry – they are fitted for the patient, for example,  many screenings will not include a herpes test unless the patient expresses concern for exposure to herpes. This is because providers avoid testing for herpes because false positives are fairly common, and if one does test positive for herpes but is asymptomatic, the health and transmission concerns are often so minimal that the patient can go without knowing. 

    But honest conversations with partners and providers, and STI testing, can only go so far if people are not taking steps for harm reduction during sex. Harm reduction looks different for different people and circumstances – sometimes harm reduction is using a barrier like a condom or dental dam, and sometimes harm reduction means abstaining from more high-risk sexual acts, for example, sex involving fluid contact. 

    Condoms, dental dams, and gloves are all the best barrier options for safer sex – but still yet can’t provide complete protection against infection, especially with common STIs like HPV and the herpes virus, which get spread through skin contact and not fluid contact, like other STIs. 

    However we find ourselves talking about STIs; whether it’s prefacing sex, in a clinical setting, or in ordinary discussion – there can not be effective conversations about preventing the spread of STIs if we do not abstain from stigmatizing language. This means, in short, being kind, and mainly working to not use(to others and internally) language that connotes STIs with being ‘dirty’ or shameful. If you get or have an STI(s), it’s absolutely not the end of the world – or your sex life. Preventative measures and treatments can be provided for the continuance of a fulfilling and pleasurable sex life. Be kind to yourself, remember STIs are as easy to catch, and as common, as the flu.

  5. Announcing “Terry’s Trust”: a new initiative to honor Terry Marley-DeRosier, WHNP

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    After more than 23 years of service as an employee, and nearly four decades as a co-founder, Terry Marley-DeRosier, Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner, is leaving Mabel Wadsworth Center to explore new opportunities. While this news is bittersweet, we are pleased to announce the launch of “Terry’s Trust”, a new initiative to honor Terry’s legacy and ensure the Center’s sustainability for many years to come.

    As a co-founder, and our longest-serving provider whose philosophy of care was instrumental to the creation of “the Mabel way”, Terry’s contributions to Mabel Wadsworth Center and the greater community are significant; among her many accomplishments, Terry’s impact is far-reaching:

    • Helping to envision and create Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Health Center, Maine’s only independent nonprofit feminist health center, and the first Maine clinic to offer abortion care;
    • Reaching thousands through education, empowering women with accurate information and resources about their reproductive and sexual health, including special programs on lesbian health, menopause, and women and AIDS;
    • Establishing our prenatal care practice when she merged her private practice in 1997, becoming one of the only practices in the area to serve clients with MaineCare, and one of the only independent nonprofit clinics nationwide to offer full-spectrum pregnancy care;
    • Expanding gynecology services to include colposcopy for cervical cancer screenings, an unmet need in our region;
    • Teaching and training countless nursing students and medical residents; and
    • Playing a vital role in developing the long-term strategy to change Maine’s physician-only restriction on abortion care, and then becoming one of the state’s first nurse practitioners to provide abortion care when the law changed in 2019.

    Message from Terry Marley-DeRosier:

    “While this change is bittersweet, I could not be prouder of the Center’s contributions to the community and the many lives we have touched. It has been a privilege and an honor to empower women and to truly partner with them along their journeys. I have loved being a women’s health nurse practitioner and will always be grateful to the thousands of clients who trusted me with their care. I am excited for the next chapter and proud of the Center’s growth with the addition of primary care to serve our community.”

    Message from Andrea Irwin, Executive Director:

    “Terry’s unwavering commitment to her clients and the Center’s feminist philosophy of care, that everyone deserves a provider who listens to their concerns with compassion, and supports their decisions without judgment, is unmatched. Her legacy is the Center’s strong foundation as an essential safety net provider, and in supporting and empowering so many clients.”

    We look forward to sharing more opportunities to honor Terry’s legacy and contributions to Mabel Wadsworth Center in the months to come, and even celebrating in person when it is safe to do so!

    Ensuring continuous, uninterrupted care for our clients is our highest priority. Fortunately, we have several other providers ready to assume care for Terry’s clients and we are now offering primary care in addition to OB-GYN services. Please call us (947-5337) or email (info@mabelwadsworth.org) to establish care and to arrange an appointment.

    We are so grateful for Terry’s many years of service and friendship. Please consider making a special gift in her honor, to help us continue to do such vital work.

     

    Donate to “Terry’s Trust” (please write “Terry’s Trust” in donations notes)