PURPOSE:
Midwifery and abortion share a complicated history in the United States (US) healthcare. As medicine professionalized, physicians disenfranchised midwives and abortion care from mainstream practice, leaving both separated from standard education and training. Today, midwives often compete with physician-prioritized systems for training opportunities. To address these gaps in education and training, the non-profit organization Repro TLC highlights midwives as abortion care learners, providers, and trainers, in midwifery-led and interdisciplinary learning. For the last 13 years, Repro TLC’s work with midwives in both challenging and successful political, legal, and clinical environments can model strategies to integrate midwives into abortion care for other countries and organizations.

DISCUSSION:
In many settings in the US, midwives work alongside physicians, each with overlapping and complementary scopes of practice in abortion care. Telemedicine, clinic, and hospital sites offer incredible opportunities for interdisciplinary learning, optimizing each care worker’s skills and meeting trainee’s specialty and regional needs. Challenges and benefits of interdisciplinary training models will be discussed, including how the midwifery model of care prioritizes individual patient care needs within care worker communities.

EVIDENCE WHERE RELEVANT:
Repro TLC’s Board Chair and midwife training alum will review the history of abortion exceptionalism in the United States. Repro TLC’s Executive Director and birth worker, alongside a midwife, abortion clinic co-owner, and a midwife Chief Clinical Officer, will present Repro TLC’s individual clinical training (ICT) program. Each will explore operationalizing midwifery-led training models at their respective clinics. All will present how these models work in real-time, including medication abortion learning collaboratives, procedural clinic care, and pre- and post-abortion support mechanisms.

KEY MESSAGE:
Midwives are ideal trainers for abortion learners from any discipline. Purposeful spotlighting of and leadership by midwives and collaborative birth workers in abortion care and training expands access to high-quality, patient-centered comprehensive sexual and reproductive healthcare. Poster session 3 (Group B)