Women’s access to reproductive healthcare is being threatened. Lawmakers from all over the country have drafted and passed several bills that restrict women’s access to abortion, emergency contraception, birth control and even medically accurate information about sex and contraception. Laws have also been drafted and passed that elevate the status and immunity of ideology-based organizations that push misinformed anti-sex, anti-contraception and anti-abortion messages.

A core problem to this issue is that we’re not hearing the voices of women. Instead the voices in our legislatures and our media continually speak against women’s right to access. Men’s voices have been given precedent in this discussion over women’s health while women have been discredited and ignored.

That’s why we, Trust Women, are creating this blog as a space to provide a supportive voice, an evidence-based voice, and a voice that understands women’s health is society’s health. Sexual health is not something we should whisper about. It is something we should discuss openly to guarantee everyone has the knowledge and access they need to keep themselves, their partners and their family safe and healthy.

Trust Women wants to create a forum that focuses on aspects of reproductive health that are being threatened and discounted via legislators, cultural perception and accessibility. We want to be a resource and a sounding board.

To accomplish that goal, our interns will post pieces every week that focus on reproductive rights in this country from a psychological, sociological, medical and political standpoint. These different lenses will allow us to provide a diverse and well-rounded perspective on these issues, while being informative to the readers.

We will dissect the ways in which sexuality and reproductive rights are dealt with in this culture from different angles.

Trust Women’s primary goal will always be to make sure women continue to have access to reproductive health that is safe and respected.  We seek to echo that mission in our posts and spread accurate reproductive health information that women and men can use in their personal lives and in the fight for reproductive rights.

We ask that you respect the nature of our work and our mission to advocate for and provide reproductive health. Within that framework, we will strive to provide diverse opinions on the subject. We hope that our readers will be thoughtful when they post comments. We don’t abide by hate speech.

We reserve the right to not post comments that are hateful and detrimental to productive conversation on women’s rights and health. We also reserve the right to determine what “hateful,” and “detrimental” mean. We don’t want this blog to be occupied by vitriol, but a place for writers and readers to educate themselves about reproductive rights and to express their opinions.

Feel free to become a part of this discussion by reading our different upcoming pieces, and commenting on the issues that are important to you.