About Us
Mission
Access exists to make reproductive health and choice a concrete reality -- not just a theoretical right -- for all women. We use a combination of direct services, community education and policy advocacy to promote real reproductive options and access to quality health care for low-income and uninsured women, young women, immigrant women and women in rural or isolated areas. No other organization in California provides the same range of support to women who are seeking or considering an abortion.
Our work is grounded in the following values:
Access is founded on the belief that women's control over our reproduction and bodies is crucial to our self-determination, and that access to health care is a basic human right.
Access's approach to work with clients is based on a feminist model of empowerment and self-determination for all women. We believe women are the best and only judges of the appropriate course of action for their own lives, and respect the validity of each woman's decision-making process.
Access is respectful of all options considered by callers and provides full information and support under all circumstances, regardless of our personal feelings or biases.
Access is committed to being a peer-based organization. We strive to build a board, staff and volunteer team that reflects the diverse mix of rural and urban, multicultural, young and low-income women we serve. We encourage callers to become volunteers and resource people within their communities.
Access sees reproductive health care as affecting and involving both men and women. We provide counseling and services to callers regardless of sex, and encourage men to join Access as members and volunteers.
Access values collaboration and coalition building as a means to advancing our reproductive freedom agenda. We seek to reduce competition among groups and build alliances with other pro-choice, reproductive rights, and social justice organizations.
Access believes that reproductive health and access to health care can best be achieved by working in cooperation with providers. However, while respecting the business considerations inherent in running a health practice, we maintain that they should not interfere with the health care needs and dignity of individual women.
Access is committed to effecting policy changes in the health care and social services systems that serve to broadly improve women's health, safety, and economic autonomy.
Our ultimate goal is to become obsolete, by creating a world that provides every woman with the information, resources and support she needs to make the reproductive decisions that are right for her.