My name is Teddy Carlin, and I’m an incoming senior chemistry major at Haverford. I am also a member of the Men’s Lacrosse team, a student researcher in the Norquist chemistry lab, and a senior interviewer in the admissions office. This summer, I’m interning at Whole Woman’s Health in Charlottesville, Virginia. Whole Woman’s Health is a reproductive health clinic that provides abortion care along with OB-GYN appointments and birth control. This internship was inspired by the documentary Trapped, which depicts Whole Woman’s Health and their fight against the state of Texas. This fight led to Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt going in front of the Supreme Court and a temporary victory for abortion rights nationwide. In light of the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, I was inspired to find an internship where I could aid in the providing of abortion care. Remembering the documentary, I reached out and am now a couple of weeks into my internship.
The clinic, which is in Charlottesville, is small and has only four full-time employees, so everyone ends up sharing the work that goes into running, maintaining, and cleaning a clinic that serves around one hundred patients on a weekly basis. On non-clinic days, I help clean and prepare clinic rooms, organize and locate files, and make follow-up calls to our patients. A large part of these non-clinic days is acquiring funding for our patients. Many of the patients we see in clinic come from low-income and underserved communities, and Medicaid and many insurance providers do not cover abortion, so many patients to struggle to afford abortion care. To help with this, we reach out to a variety of local and national charities that fund abortions to help offset the costs for these patients. The necessity for this sort of funding and the process necessary to receive it was not an expected part of my internship. The economics of abortion care were not something I had considered before starting this internship, but its importance has become obvious. These charities fund a high percentage of the abortions that are performed at our clinic and I would highly recommend donating to one if you support abortion rights.
On clinic days, we open at 8 AM and close when there are no patients left. On these days, I’ve helped to check in patients and helped patients with their paperwork. We serve a large Spanish-speaking population, and I’m often tasked with helping these patients access our translation services. I’ve also had the opportunity to shadow our patient advocates, doctors and nurses in patient counseling, appointments, and sonograms. These experiences have emphasized to me the importance of the availability of abortion around the country. Women regularly drive 8-10 hours to access our clinic from the large swaths of Virginia that do not have abortion clinics, along with bordering states where women have recently lost the right to have an abortion. Watching the compassion of the healthcare workers at the clinic along with the strength of our patients has inspired my interest in healthcare and affirmed the necessity of reproductive healthcare. We also offer low-cost OBGYN appointments along with free long-term birth control. The clinic staff works diligently to guarantee that all our patients feel respected and cared for during their time at the clinic, and getting to watch this process has profoundly affected the way that I think healthcare should be performed. Patient Advocates consistently spend hours with patients making sure they feel comfortable and confident in their decisions, which has been a huge change from the experiences of healthcare I’ve had up to this point.
My internship so far has been an inspiration for my hopeful future career in healthcare and for my strong belief in the necessity of available abortion care. I’ve learned so much from everyone who works in the clinic and I’m excited for the rest of the summer. I could not be more thankful to the CCPA and to the Jaharis Primary Fund for funding this internship and allowing me to have this opportunity.
