An Avengers-like team of University of Wisconsin-Madison experts are uniting to research and promote civic engagement on the issue of abortion.
“Good policy begins with good evidence,” said Amy Williamson, associate director and co-creator of the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity (CORE).
CORE is a research initiative at UW-Madison School Of Medicine and Public Health focused on reproductive health, equity and autonomy. Their experts specialize in gender and women's studies, sociology, medicine, OB-GYN and public health, giving Wisconsinites the tools to make informed decisions.
Williamson and other UW-Madison leaders established the initiative in 2018 following a decade of large shifts in reproductive health policy and access in Wisconsin.
“We're researchers. We're at a university, so we saw our role, our power and our lane as research,” Williamson told The Daily Cardinal. “How can we use that to help people who don't sit in the university build awareness of issues of policies and impact that they may use for civic engagement, policy, programs and law?”
In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion.
Following the decision, an 1849 law banning abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest went in to effect in Wisconsin. Clinics stopped offering abortion services in the state until last September, when a Dane County Circuit Court judge ruled the 1849 law applied only to feticide, not consensual abortions.
Wisconsin Planned Parenthood (PPWI) has since resumed abortion services in three clinics in Madison, Milwaukee and Sheboygan, and Affiliated Medical Services performs abortion services at its Milwaukee clinic.
People working in the field of women’s health care had seen signals the Supreme Court would overturn Roe according to Williamson, so when it eventually happened, CORE felt the obligation and immediacy of conducting research that would illuminate its negative effects.
“We went into overdrive,” Williamson said. “We went into high gear to evaluate and understand the impact of the changes on people who need care, on families, on health care providers, on people who care for people who can be pregnant or who are pregnant.”
CORE gathered qualitative evidence through patient interviews and focus groups and quantitative data through surveys and analysis of health care utilization datasets needed to answer their questions.
The post-Roe landscape has resulted in a host of negative effects on women and other people capable of pregnancy, according to a CORE brief. These include increases in pregnancy-related mortality, immediate and long-lasting effects on mental health, increases in chronic health problems, increases in intimate partner violence and a restricted ability to achieve educational, career and other life aspirations.
During the 15 months where no clinics in Wisconsin offered abortion services, CORE conducted a study with individuals who were pregnant to examine the financial, health and family related decisions that they made in the absence of access to care.
CORE is still analyzing the data from this study, so it hasn’t been published yet, but Williamson said the study’s interviews provided a profound insight into the complexity of accessing health care under the abortion ban.
“I feel the importance of sharing that truth can't be underestimated,” Williamson said. “It's no question the most profound insight comes from the experiences of real people.”
CORE also translates and disseminates research.
Translation is all about making research accessible to different audiences to “meet people where they are,” Williamson said.
“We're talking about both using plain language and explaining what is done in accessible terms, but also utilizing different forms, whether it's a short brief, a fact sheet or infographics on social media,” Williamson said.
Once the research is accessible in terms of understanding, they shift to dissemination — making it physically accessible for the people who need it most.
CORE disseminates through direct outreach to individuals, sharing information to organizations and making it available to legislators. Although CORE’s research topics connect with issues on the ballot, Williamson said CORE stays out of politics to keep their focus squarely on research. But Williamson does encourage people to vote and believes that CORE can be one of many sources of information that voters consult before hitting the polls.
“We want to be a trusted source of evidence,” Williamson said. “Our reason for being is that our work helps decision-makers, policymakers and just regular people like you and me make informed decisions, and informed decisions includes people's assessment of the issues that matter.”
