Whole Woman’s Health of Minnesota joins advocates from our local community and across the country to denounce the murder of Daunte Wright at the hands of police. 

We are Angel and Kiki, Whole Woman’s Health’s Clinic Manager and Clinical Coordinator, and we are the leadership team at WWH-Twin Cities.

We are also Black women, and Black mothers.

The fear and trauma we navigate today, and nearly every day, to mother our children safely, to live and work in this community safely, and to do our work providing abortion care in this community safely – well, let’s just say it is TOO MUCH to navigate on so many days.

We feel these traumas personally as Black mothers, and we feel this trauma professionally as abortion care providers who serve all the people in our community. On a daily basis, we summon deep courage to support our children, to encourage them to be their best and brightest, to overcome the trauma and fear they navigate in order to live in the Twin Cities. We also summon courage to show up as frontline healthcare workers during this pandemic, providing the essential service that is abortion care to those who need it every day. And we do this with compassion, respect, and dignity. Every day.

We have a right to expect the same respect and dignity from the community outside of Whole Woman’s Health that we provide inside our clinic – from police, from the press and from elected officials. The ongoing crisis in police brutality in our community is traumatizing and it affects us on every level, every day. This cannot become normal. This is not okay.

In our work at Whole Woman’s Health, we serve people at some of their most vulnerable and challenged times and we are deeply committed to caring for our patients as they make decisions about pregnancy, health, and parenting. We are deeply supportive of the tenants of the Reproductive Justice framework – this includes support for decision making around pregnancy and parenting and includes a vision for our ability to build the families we choose to build and to parent without violence.

Police brutality is a reproductive health and justice issue. The people we serve every day in our Twin Cities clinic deserve to live without this violence. As do our staff members. And so do both of us – two Black moms running your local abortion clinic.

Sincerely,

Angelika Viewins-Medearis, Manger; Whole Woman’s Health of Minnesota

Kiki Stimage, Clinical Coordinator; Whole Woman’s Health of Minnesota