March Meeting: March 10, noon, Kroc Center
Featured speakers:
Bonnie Kapp, New Morning;
Ashlyn Preaux, Palmetto State Abortion Fund
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As we embark on Women’s History Month, we find ourselves facing ongoing threats to women’s reproductive health in our state. Our March meeting will focus on organizations in the state working to serve women, provide access to health care, and to fight aggressive legislation that seeks more restrictions on women’s healthcare under consideration by the South Carolina legislature.

One of the most effective methods of preventing unwanted or unplanned pregnancies is readily available, low cost, effective methods of birth control. New Morning Foundation  https://newmorning.org/  is laser focused on enabling women in South Carolina to be empowered to protect themselves against unplanned pregnancies through the availability of effective birth control but that’s not all they’re doing for the women in our state.

Our featured speaker for the March 10th meeting will be Bonnie Kapp, president and CEO of New Morning. She leads one of the largest, most successful contraceptive access programs in the nation. Their nonprofit clinical network, which includes 120 health clinics, provides family planning counseling and free or low-cost birth control for low-income, uninsured or underinsured women in every corner of SC.

Since their efforts began in 2017, South Carolina’s unintended pregnancy rate has plummeted from 50 percent to 37 percent – the lowest rate in 20 years. Unwanted births have declined by 58 percent. Demand for their services is at an all time high but they’ve still been able to serve 530,000 women and provided more than $3.1 million in subsidized birth control. New Morning has trained over 9,300 health professionals in contraceptive options, patient-centered counseling and trauma-informed care at ongoing health summits and training events. New Morning’s efforts have saved the state an estimated $907 million.

You may have seen billboards and commercials with the tagline No Drama, this is New Morning’s consumer education campaign, providing information on all FDA-approved birth control methods and connecting people with participating clinics and telehealth services. https://nodrama.org/

New Morning Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit funded through grants and charitable donations. 

Kapp has more than 35 years of professional experience in strategic planning, philanthropy, charitable fundraising, and nonprofit management and board governance. Bonnie is a native of Washington, D.C., and a graduate of Furman University. She has served on a number of nonprofit boards of directors, most recently the Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina. 

The GOP majority South Carolina legislature has tried their best to completely ban abortions but for now they’ve had to settle for a six-week limit on the procedure. The current law known as the Fetal Heartbeat Act was signed into law in May 2023. Planned Parenthood is asking the state Supreme Court to move the ban to the 9th week of pregnancy when the components of the eventual fetal heart begin to be formed. Read more here.

In response to the ongoing war on abortion access in South Carolina a group of mostly women founded the Palmetto State Abortion Fund.  Founded in 2021 to provide expert help and assistance in obtaining abortion services, the Palmetto State Abortion fund is dedicated to removing all barriers that may prevent or restrict abortion access. PSAF is a 100 percent volunteer-run, majority Black, majority women-led abortion fund. To date it has helped 575 abortion seekers from South Carolina and other states. 

Ashyln Preaux, one of the founders of PSAF, will be speaking at the March meeting.

She is a veteran of numerous political campaigns and has spent the past few years working in the reproductive rights and justice space. In 2021, she co-founded the Palmetto State Abortion Fund and recently  joined Planned Parenthood Votes! South Atlantic.

The war on women’s reproductive rights is being fought on many fronts. While Republicans pile on restrictions in South Carolina, the Trump administration is blocking health information on government platforms. 

As theSkimm reports, physicians recently noticed that several CDC pages on contraception were no longer accessible. In response, theSkimm published this critical content under a new URL, to ensure health care providers can still access it. 

We will also be reviewing the latest efforts by the legislature to insert the state into matters of women’s health at the March meeting of Democratic Women. Don’t miss it.