About Us
The Abortion Conversation Projects brings a broad range of experiences to talking about abortion. We are a small, but mighty, all volunteer Board with a vast array of expertise. Some of us are abortion providers, some of us have had abortions, and some of us are committed to listening to the stories of those who are involved in abortion through our academic research or work in the community. As we explore how dialogue can help to change the conversation around abortion, we draw on our broad experiences.
Board Members
Jeannie Ludlow, Ph.D., is Professor of English and director of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Eastern Illinois University. She has worked as an abortion patient advocate at Whole Woman’s Health of Peoria, Illinois and at the Center for Choice in Toledo, Ohio. Jeannie has been an anti-racist advocate and trainer since 1998. Her scholarship focuses on the ways we talk about abortion and abortion stigmatization in the U.S. Recent publications include “Full Bleed: The Graphic Period at the End of the Menstrual Narrative,” in Graphic Perspectives on Health and Embodiment, edited by Jodi Cressman and Lisa DeTora (2021); “It’s ABoy!borted: Visualizing the Fetus in Abortion Narratives,” in Representing Abortion, edited by Rachel Hurst (2021); and “Graphic Abortion: The Grotesque in Diane Noomin’s 1990s Abortion Comics” in Feminist Formations 31.2 (summer 2019): 181-204. Jeannie is also a member of the Abortion Care Network.
Jimena Lopez, Treasurer, has been a Spanish interpreter and translator for more than ten years. This is her passion. Her professional career in advocacy makes a difference every day. She is a strong advocate for comprehensive reproductive education and has worked with the public schools to introduce the subject of abortion to high school students. Born and raised in Argentina, and now based in Peoria, Illinois, Jimena is an active member of the Peoria National Organization for Women, Vice President of the ACLU of Peoria, a founding member of Peorians for Reproductive Health Care, and a volunteer with the Illinois Choice Action Team, and many other organizations. Jimena is also a clinic escort, and a patient advocate. This has given her first hand insight into the impact of stigma and how it leads to misinformation and fear, adding greatly to the burdens on women seeking abortion care.
Tracia Banuelos Vice President graduated from Wichita State University studying Psychology and Women’s Studies, with a minor in Honors, and certificates in Tilford Diversity Studies and Community Psychology. She is receiving her Masters at Hunter College in NYC She previously worked at Colgate University, as a Program Coordinator for their sexual assault response center, Haven, where she advocated for survivors of sexual assault and fought to end the culture of sexual assault on college campuses. In the community, she has served on the Young Women of Color for Reproductive Justice Leadership Council through Advocates for Youth, as a YP4 Fellow, and on the It’s On Us Student Advisory Committee and Campus Organizer. In her spare time, she has founded an online comprehensive sexual education program called Know Yourself, designed with Kansas youth in mind. Upon graduation, Banuelos aspires to obtain her PhD in Community Psychology, and work in both grassroots organizing as well as applied research for marginalized populations and reproductive justice. Banuelos has recently won the “Next Generation” award from the Kansas Choice Alliance, and was named a 2018 Civic Health Hero by the Kansas Health Foundation.
Laurie Ryan, Agent of Record for ACP, is a 64 year old lesbian who started life in NY and migrated to Florida over 35 years ago. She has worked for an abortion clinic, non-profits, the government, small family owned businesses and large corporations. Her most recent employment was as a Business Analyst in healthcare. Laurie is a musician and songwriter. She has often worked with musicians and artists to bring social/political entertainment to the public. She enjoys working with groups. Currently Laurie is the guitarist in a large jazz band. Her spouse of 28 years, Patricia Pettijohn, has a long history of feminist activism and work in women’s health.
Ellen Benavides, ACP Secretary was the Director of Counseling for an Independent Abortion Provider for 30+ years. Ellen feels it is an honor to encourage, empower and educate women and their support people as they navigate their abortion experience. It is her belief that by maintaining integrity, respect and honesty in our conversations and interactions we can reduce the stigma of abortion one connection at a time. At her center, Ellen oversees day-to-day operations, contributes to the executive decisions and is responsible for the supervision, training, mentoring and development of their counseling team. Her proudest accomplishment so far is the development of a specialized program to support families ending a wanted and loved pregnancy due to a medical diagnosis. As a member of the ACP Board of Directors Ellen brings thirty years of experience in the field of abortion care, some moderate administrative skills, and she notes she’s “a pretty decent baker with a good sense of humor”.
Abby Minor lives in the ridges and valleys of central Pennsylvania, where she works on poems, essays, drawings, and projects exploring reproductive politics. Granddaughter of Appalachian tinkerers and Yiddish-speaking New Yorkers, she teaches poetry in her region’s low-income nursing homes and directs an arts education organization called Ridgelines Language Arts.
In 2016 she won the 5th Annual Abortion Rights Poetry Contest, co-sponsored by The Abortion Care Network and Split This Rock. This award introduced Abby to the amazing world of grassroots abortion-related artworks and activisms; since then she has enjoyed collaborating with the West Alabama Women’s Center, All-Options, and others in her community to create public art projects that aim to reduce abortion stigma. In 2018 she was awarded Bitch Media’s Writing Fellowship in Sexual Politics. Her first book of poetry, As I Said: A Dissent, explores abortion in her family’s and U.S. history and was published by Ricochet Editions in 2022.
Roslyn Banish Roslyn received a Master’s degree in Photography from the Institute of Design in Chicago. She combines photographs and texts to document human issues. Published works include “Focus on Abortion: Americans Share Their Stories,” (Skyhorse), “Focus on Living: Portraits of Americans with HIV/AIDS” (UMass Press), “City Families: Chicago and London” (Pantheon), and children’s books “Let Me Tell You About My Baby” (Harper) about a second child in the family, and “A Forever Family,” (Harper) about adoption. She has exhibited her work in England and the U.S.
Lynsey Bourke is an international abortion technical specialist and doula. Passionate about
abortion access, she has spent the last six years building supply and distribution structures for
abortion and contracptive supplies in Africa and Central America. Her experiences supporting
hundreds of women in Africa and the US through abortion with pills is culminated in
www.selfguidedabortion.com.
Natalie Jipson is a college educator in English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She received her masters degree from Illinois State University in 2022 with a focus on contemporary magical young adult literature centering multicultural and queer voices. She is an activist for abortion access and support of LGBTQIA+ rights both inside and outside of the classroom. Mentoring young activists and helping them to take leadership roles on their campuses is a top priority for Natalie. She has also volunteered as a clinic escort at multiple clinics in the midwest to assist patients in safely accessing abortion services.
ACP Advisory Board
Terry Sallas Merritt, ACP’s Agent of Record is the founder of Connections Consulting, and has been in abortion care work over 30 years, in counseling, training, administration, multi-site management and over 15 years in provider and organizational consulting. Terry has been an active member, served on Boards and provided services to the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, Abortion Care Network, ACP and many abortion care clinics, focusing on strategic planning, management counseling, transition management, relationship marketing, legislative advocacy and counseling training. She has been a contributor to publications, including co-editor of A Guide to Emotional and Spiritual Resolution After Abortion. Terry's deep belief in the often untapped power of voice and language is her hallmark in persuasive speaking, interactive workshops and as a passionate advocate for innovative pregnancy decision and abortion counseling. She understands that when empowered to tell our own story in our own voice, we can be less vulnerable to the cultural stigma surrounding abortion.
Loretta J. Ross was a co-founder and the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective from 2005-2012, a network founded in 1997 of women of color and allied organizations. She is one of the creators of the term "Reproductive Justice" coined by African American women in 1994 following the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt. She is a nationally-recognized trainer on using the transformative power of Reproductive Justice to build a Human Rights movement that includes everyone.
Read her newest release, Reproductive Justice, an Introduction, written with historian, Ricky Solinger.
Ms. Ross is an expert on women’s issues, hate groups, racism and intolerance, human rights, and violence against women. Her work focuses on the intersectionality of social justice issues and how this affects social change and service delivery in all movements. She is a member of the Women's Media Center's Progressive Women's Voices. Ms. Ross was National Co-Director of the April 25, 2004 March for Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., the largest protest march in U.S. history with more than one million participants. A
She launched the Women of Color Program for the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the 1980s, and led delegations of women of color to many international conferences on women's issues and human rights. She was one of the first African American women to direct a rape crisis center in the 1970s.She is a co-author of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice. She has also written extensively on the history of African American women and reproductive justice activism. Loretta is a rape survivor, was forced to raise a child born of incest, and she is also a survivor of sterilization abuse. She is a model of how to survive and thrive despite the traumas that disproportionately affect low-income women of color. A mother, grandmother and a great-grandmother, Ms. Ross serves as a consultant for Smith College, collecting oral histories of feminists of color for the Sophia Smith Collection which also contains her personal archives. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College.
Charlotte Taft Abortion Provider in Texas for 25 years, and Director of the Abortion Care Network at a critical time in its history, Charlotte founded with her partner Shelly Oram, Imagine! a consultation service and offer phone counseling to women who need to explore their feelings after an abortion. She has written extensively about abortion counseling.
Shelley Oram, co-founder of Imagine!, has worked in abortion care for over thirty years. She has trained counselors and consulted with management teams in clinics across the country. Her background includes management team development, crisis and conflict resolution, counselor education, staff retreat facilitation and strategic planning. Shelley has facilitated workshops on Grief and Loss/Death and Dying, AIDS Caregiving, Relationships, Personal Growth, Leadership Development, Gay and Lesbian Empowerment and Women’s Issues. Her background and training includes Hypnotherapy Certification, Leadership Mentoring and Development, Life Coaching, Transformational Education, Conflict Resolution and over a thousand hours toward certification in Psychodrama and Sociometry. Her work with Abortion Care Network and other non-profits includes fundraising; grant writing and fundraising event production. Her dream is for a world that is safe and healthy for women, children, and animals.
Karen Thurston, MA, a public school educator, writer, is a tireless advocate working to end the silence, shame, and fear around abortion care. Since 2014, she has been sharing her own abortion and stigma story in a range of public venues, including in an essay published in The Sea Change Program’s Untold Stories project. She also wrote and narrated the Sea Change video What Happened When I Talked About My Abortions, which won an ACP award in 2015. Karen has recorded her story on The Abortion Diary Podcast, and was featured in an msnbc.com documentary about the podcast in 2015. She has been interviewed by a variety of on-line news sites, including Mic, Elle, and Refinery29. She took part in the on-line abortion speak out hosted by the Advocates for Youth 1 in 3 Campaign.A former newspaper and freelance writer, Karen holds a Master of Arts in Journalism.
Emeritus Board Members include
Marcy Bloom, MA is currently doing U.S. advocacy and capacity building for a Mexico-City based organization GIRE - El Grupo de Informacion en Reproduccion Elegida/The Information Group on Reproductive Choice. GIRE seeks to decriminalize and destigmatize abortion and works toward the expansion of reproductive justice and respectful, safe reproductive health services for all the women of Latin America. She is the recipient of the 2006 William O. Douglas Award, the ACLU of Washington's highest honor. The award is given for outstanding, consistent, and sustained contributions to civil liberties. She has long been a leader in safeguarding the fundamental right to reproductive freedom. Bloom served for 18 years as the Executive Director and guiding force of the Aradia Women's Health Center, Seattle's first nonprofit abortion and gynecological health center and a model for clinics nationwide. Her activism spans the history of the reproductive rights movement.
Wendy Robinson, is a lifelong supporter of reproductive rights, became an active advocate in 2014 as Director of the Voice of Choice, and has been a Board member since August 2017 when Voice of Choice merged into the Abortion Conversation Projects. She is a retired budget analyst with 20 plus years of corporate experience, most recently in healthcare finance. Based in Northampton, Massachusetts, she is active in her community as a Board member of her Neighborhood Association, a volunteer with the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Mass and with the Northampton Survival Center. Wendy has worked on several political campaigns, which she enjoys and looks forward to doing more of in the future!
Mari Schimmer is based in Washington, DC. and has more than eleven years of experience in advocacy and organizing across multiple social movements. Currently, Mari works with Democracy for America in D.C. Mari has also served as the Program Director for URGE: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity, a national organization dedicated to young leaders in the reproductive justice movement. Prior to URGE, Mari worked for a national political consulting firm on issue and electoral campaigns and is an experienced community organizer, recruiter, and grassroots fundraising manager. In addition to her passionate support for abortion access, the elimination of stigma, and reproductive healthcare for all, Mari co-organizes QueeRJ, a quarterly networking event for LGBTQ-identified folks working in the reproductive health, rights and justice movements, and also serves as a volunteer adoption counselor at the Washington Animal Rescue League. A California native, Mari earned dual degrees in Politics and Women's Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz.
Heather Ault, MFA is an artist, designer, and activist for abortion rights and reproductive justice. As founder of 4000 Years for Choice, she created a dynamic visual art series devoted to re-visioning the historical and cultural narrative of abortion and contraception along with new messages that empower, inspire, and affirm reproductive and sexual justice. Since the project's launch in 2009, Heather has presented her artwork and research at art exhibitions, national conferences, university campuses, and reproductive health clinics across the country. Heather is a board member of the Abortion Conversation Project and also serves as Social Media Coordinator for the Abortion Care Network. She received the Vision Award from the Abortion Care Network in 2012. She holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Graphic Design a Master of Fine Arts in New Media and is based in Buffalo, New York. View more of Heather's work at www.heatherault.org.
Rev. Darcy Baxter served as Director of Family Ministries at the Starr King Unitarian Universalist Church in Hayward, CA and as the San Francisco Bay Area Regional Organizer for the CA Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. Reproductive justice is a core part of her ministry — she continues to volunteer as an after-abortion hotline counselor at Exhale, where she has counseled hundreds of women who have had an abortion. A self-described theology-junkie, she has taught theology at Starr King School for the Ministry and frequently speaks about the intersection of reproductive justice, religion, and spirituality.
Kate Cockrill, MPH is a co-founder of Sea Change and has been a leading researcher conceptualizing and measuring abortion stigma in the US and around the world. From 2006 to 2013, Kate was a researcher and program director at the ANSIRH program at the University of California studying the social and emotional aspects of abortion. In 2014, she and Steph Herold founded The Sea Change Program to expand her multidisciplinary research into programming, evaluation and movement building. She has authored 12 peer-reviewed, scholarly articles and her research on stigma has been profiled in The New York Times, Newsweek, Salon, Slate and RH Reality Check.
Grayson Dempsey has spent over fifteen years working in the reproductive rights and health movement. She is the Founder of Backline, an international nonprofit organization that promotes connection, conversation and support around pregnancy, parenting, abortion and adoption, and has worked as a consultant specializing in pregnancy options training for healthcare professionals and advocates. Grayson has served as a contributor to works such as Mom, Dad, I’m Pregnant, The Reproductive Justice Briefing Book: A Primer on Reproductive Justice and Social Change and Pastoral Counseling for Reproductive Loss. She is the author of the Abortion Diaries Discussion Guide and co-author of Providing Abortion Care: A Professional Toolkit for Nurse-Midwives, Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants.
Teresa Hornsby, PhD is a Professor of Religious Studies at Drury University, teaching the biblical studies courses, general religion courses, and some upper level topics for the department (such as The Bible, Sex, and Sexuality, A History of African American Religions in the US, and A History of Anti-Semitism). Her research centers primarily on the topics of sexuality and gender in the Bible.
Krista Jacob is the Editor of Abortion Under Attack: Women on the Challenges Facing Choice and Our Choices, Our Lives: Unapologetic Writings on Abortion. Jacob previously worked as an advocate and counselor for victims of rape and domestic violence.
Meg Roberts is a Fargo-based ceramic social practice artist and reproductive justice advocate whose work focuses on community engagement, stigma, and healing. She founded Plants for Patients in 2012, and was able to expand the program with one of the first grants from ACP and much local community support in Fargo ND. Plants for Patients provides a framework for communities to embrace their neighbors through handmade pottery planters, various plants, and supportive messages to abortion patients.
Victoria Tepe, PhD is an experimental psychologist and neurophysiologist with more than 25 years of experience as an advocate for women's reproductive health and abortion rights. Her work includes a decade of clinic volunteer service and organizing, independent research, course design and teaching about the history and development of the abortion debate, and published editorials and essays on topics such as late-term abortion and the science of fetal pain.
Amy Hagstrom Miller was a large part of the vision and the founding the original ACP. In 2003, she founded Whole Woman's Health, a privately-owned feminist organization, committed to providing holistic care for women in a group of women’s clinics in locations of need in five (5) states. WWH provides comprehensive gynecology services, including abortion care. An Independent Abortion Care Provider, Amy's voice and presence is well-known and her awards numerous. In 2016, we all became inspired and grew to know her and her team better as they fought and won in the Supreme Court in Whole Woman's Health vs. Hellerstedt.
Rev. Rebecca Turner was the Executive Director of Faith Aloud. In 2012, she was named one of "13 Religious Women to Watch: Changing the World for Good" by the Center for American Progress. In 2010, she was given the "Person of the Year Award" by the Abortion Care Network, and in 2009, the award for "Outstanding Contributions to Advance Women's Equality" by the Missouri Women's Network. She has been featured in Time Magazine, on PBS “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly,” on CNN “Anderson Cooper 360,” in the documentaries “Beyond the Politics of Life and Choice” and “South Dakota,” and in newspaper and web stories around the United States.
Chrisse France is the Executive Director of Preterm, Ohio’s largest abortion clinic, now an ambulatory surgical center, and a national leader in patient-centered care with a reputation for excellence. For over 40 years, Preterm has been an innovative leader in health care, championing patient-centered care long before the concept entered mainstream medicine, training hundreds of OB/GYN residents, and keeping abortion accessible by providing over $14 million in financial assistance to low-income patients. My Abortion, My Life , Preterm's successful campaign has been included in discussions of abortion stigma work at conferences around the country.
Renee Chelian has been a passionate advocate for advancing and protecting women’s choices regarding pregnancy and birth control. As the owner and founder of Northland Family Planning Centers, three Detroit-area women’s reproductive health centers specializing in abortion and gynecological services, Renee has helped set the national standard for excellence in patient care, compassion and education.
Her career began long before abortion was legalized for the nation. In the early 1970s, Renee assisted a Detroit-based physician who, in addition to his regular practice, flew to New York on weekends where abortion was legal, and provided medical safety, comfort and sometimes shelter to the thousands of women who traveled from many states for abortion care.
In addition, Renee is also an active advocate in preserving and building women’s reproductive and civil rights. Her acknowledgements are many and her voice has been heard loud and clear from the halls of Congress, in the volatile MI Legislature and, what she considers her proudest opportunity, addressing the United Nations Human Rights Council in Switzerland. Renee is a founding member of National Abortion Federation, ACP and the Abortion Care Network and is currently president of the Health Center for Women, a non-profit organization committed to providing reproductive health care for non-insured or low income women and RECLAIM a new non-profit advocacy organization.
