Three years later, the elusive Connie Criminal is still coming to me for legal advice. Patti Plaintiff and Don Defendant are up to their old tricks. Bob’s still buying. Sam’s still selling. The Land of Law School Make-Believe is getting old.

Unsurprisingly, then, my summer internship—a Law Students for Reproductive Justice-sponsored placement at the National Network of Abortion Funds in Boston—is a welcome dose of reality, a chance to put some of what I’ve learned in the classroom to work in the field.  Where it matters. To real people.

The Network, which raises money to help women finance abortions, is comprised of over 100 individual member funds in over 40 states and four different countries. Through its “Hyde: 30 Years is Enough!” campaign, it works to reduce the economic barriers that impede women’s access to safe, legal abortions.

What this means for me, practically-speaking, is that in a whirlwind 10 weeks at the Network, I’ll have conducted legal research for two separate member funds. I’ll have investigated constructive steps to ensure public funding for abortion in the event the Hyde Amendment (a provision which restricts federal Medicaid funding for abortion in all but a very limited number of circumstances) is repealed. I’ll have analyzed states’ definitions of “medically necessary” in Medicaid statutes and administrative codes. I’ll have tracked health reform legislation. I’ll have attended the Network’s annual summit in Chicago—and a Network-organized vigil for the slain Dr. George Tiller. I’ll have defended and touted the importance of repro justice work in lengthy dialogs with family and friends (at least a handful of whom are vehemently conservative and anti-choice and who, probably without intending to, managed to help me better define and articulate my values). I’ll have piqued my husband’s interest in the cause. I’ll have done most of this to a steady backdrop of phone calls from women whose lives and futures depend on private funding for abortion and referrals from my Network co-workers to a local fund which might be able to subsidize their expenses and affect their reality dramatically for the better.

Because the reality is this: sans private funding, many of the women who turn to the Network for support would be forced to either give birth to unwanted children, incurring expenses incident to prenatal care, labor and delivery (to say nothing for the costs of childcare), and often risking their health in the process.  They might have to rely on unlicensed, “underground” providers if they can find one—or themselves, self-terminating pregnancies. The implications on women’s health—indeed, women’s lives!— are huge. Absent this private funding, some women’s only real “choice” is between bad and worse. 

Reality bites—and yet I think it’s tremendously dangerous to lose sight of it. My internship’s been invaluable in helping me stay focused: focused on what brought me to law school, focused on what keeps me there, and focused on affecting real change for real people post-graduation.

-Jonelle Kusminsky

Massachusetts School of Law ‘10

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 10:55 pm and is filed under interns, pregnancy, abortion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.