Everything I know about being Queer, I learned from Abortion.

I was a teenager in Ohio during the late 80s obsessed with Abortion. It was all I talked about. I was on the Pill, I went to my first March on Washington, I spent my entire High School Graduation speech talking about “Choice”. I got to college in the early 90s in Westchester County right after their local abortion clinics had been bombed by Operation Rescue. I spent my weekends in the cold rain escorting patients in and out of the Clinic protecting them from the violence of the protesters. I Marched on Washington again. My politics and my identity always started with Abortion.

Abortion was how I could imagine my Queerness.

Living and breathing Abortion possibilities meant everything else was possible, too. In questioning the restrictions and shaming of Abortion, you had to get at what the world imagines for women. And if you get at what the world imagines for women, you have to question your sexuality, too. Questioning the category of woman and everything that was tied to it – heterosexual sex, birth, and marriage – is liberating. The promise of abortion releases women from stereotypes about what it means to be a woman. Abortion being controlled by others is the exact same premise as women being controlled by others. Access to abortion on demand and without apology released me from the constraints of womanhood, including heterosexuality. Fighting for Abortion made me Queer.

It was a natural step to AIDS activism where the well-organized ACT UP movement had so clearly and passionately connected the dots to access and drugs and information about medicine and healthcare. It was clear we had to fight back against any form of shame or stigma for needing lifesaving drugs and information. I knew this because of Abortion. I knew that our bodies were our own to love and save and protect and heal and those who knew more about them must help us – with no judgement about how we got here in the first place. We had to always separate our personal journey around “mistakes” and “risk” and “should have known better” from a medical professional’s ability to provide a fix.

Then there was the Lesbian Feminist Cancer Movement. The women who had worked so hard protecting Abortion and then fighting for AIDS drugs were getting older and getting diagnosed with Cancer. Here they personally met up against the systems they knew all too well from fighting on behalf of everyone else. Doctors that judged them for being gay, or fat, or smoking, or all three at once. Cancers that should have been caught earlier with screenings or prevention. But we had just spent the previous 20 years witnessing medicine’s sexism and homophobia and cold and unjust attitude toward Abortion and HIV. You think I’m gonna voluntarily get a mammogram now?

So we didn’t. We couldn’t. We couldn’t trust any of them. And we started our own clinics and our support groups and our educational campaigns. We healed each other. We buried each other. And we looked around and said enough is enough. We joined with our brothers who started their own AIDS clinics and we became a larger movement that we now call LGBTQ Health. We knit it all together.

The healthcare system was sick – not us. The political system was broken – not us.

We built new worlds together. We played and imagined. We celebrated and partied. We raised our own money. We had our own bars. We kept articulating what it meant to open our body up to possibilities of health and life and demand a system that did, too. That understood us.

In the early 2000s, my then partner came out as transgender. My program director at the Lesbian Community Cancer Project came out as transgender. My queer community was once again changing and growing with the power and promise of personal liberation. Imagining their bodies into existence. New names, pronouns, hormones, surgeries. All another step in our goal of making medicine work FOR us and not AGAINST us. A movement of autonomy and joy and bodies of our choosing. Choice was always our mantra.

Everything we knew from Abortion, HIV, and Cancer became our movement for Transgender Health. No longer would we have to suffer in bodies or lives prescribed by the world upon our birth.

We could live as we wanted. We could bring our inner most thoughts to the surface to be seen and appreciated by all. If we were to truly shed the dogma of heteronormativity – we must also shed gender, too.

Today’s LGBTQ Health Movement is all of us. The fight for Abortion and HIV medicine. Cancer support. Hormones and surgery. It is our right to control our own bodies. It is our fight to make medicine work for us. It is our bond to work across and with our differences to usher in something better for all. We have built a new world and new conversations that I could have never imagined in the 80s, 90s, 2000s. We know more than ever.

The Abortion fight is our fight. Not because we are women or not; or have a uterus or not; or have sex that could lead to pregnancy or not. This is our fight because they are all our fights. We must bring everything we have learned from Transgender Health and HIV and Cancer and access and shame and stigma to benefit Abortion. Because there is no LGBTQ Health anywhere without Abortion Rights everywhere.

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Jessica Halem ’16MBA shares her work with the Sexual and Gender Minorities Health Equity Initiative.

Can you tell us about your role at Harvard Medical School?

Harvard Medical School (HMS) sits uniquely at the intersection of higher education, healthcare policy, and multiple teaching hospitals and institutes. When the Dean created a role for tackling LGBTQ issues, it meant a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to influence all of these areas with my special mix of optimism, advocacy, and training. I started this first-of-its-kind role almost five years ago when I was getting my MBA at Simmons. I approached the position like a consultant: diagnosing, interviewing, and uncovering. I then developed a strategy and went to work. I’m so pleased to say we already have achieved so many successes!

Can you tell us about the Sexual and Gender Minorities Health Equity Initiative?

After years of work toward changing the culture and climate for LGBTQ staff, faculty and students at HMS, we were finally primed to tackle the greatest challenge — the curriculum. Medicine is unlike any other industry where I’ve worked. I bring fresh eyes and years of experience advocating for LGBTQ people whose healthcare needs frequently go unmet. Working with a very generous donor, we will be able to revise our curriculum to incorporate the latest findings in LGBTQ health generally and to improve transgender medicine in particular. Every student who studies here will be equipped to care for LGBTQ patients who may be wary in seeking help because of prior mistreatment by the medical system. Because we have financial support, we can replicate our curriculum and bring it to other medical schools across the country — maybe even around the world.

What do you see as the next step for this education to reach a broader audience?

I am very excited about what comes next. We will work closely with Deans and faculty at other medical schools to improve their knowledge and aptitude for working with sexual and gender minorities — as patients, students, and faculty. We will help them understand the importance of this work. I do not envision a top-down model where we deliver a big book of answers, but rather, we will listen and learn about how their school works, helping them integrate this curriculum in their own unique way. I can’t wait to learn from medical schools in different parts of the country and help them find their own path. I have found the greatest impact in this work — and all the equity work I’ve done — comes from one-on-one relationships and coaching people through challenges and difficult moments.

What Simmons professors had an impact on your career?

I’m forever grateful to Professor Stacy Blake-Beard for being so open and supportive of me. I dived into her research and found so much inspiration. She helped provide language and frameworks for organizational change that I learned to apply to my work. Graduate school never ends if you stay open and want to be a lifelong learner. I continue to lean on Associate Professor Spela Trefalt and Professor of Practice Cynthia Ingols for their mentoring and advice. I will tell you a secret — my office is just down the street from Simmons so I get to come back regularly for coffee dates and lunch talks.

Any advice for current students?

Do the hard work of thinking critically, engaging in difficult conversations, and being a leader of people with bold ideas. With leadership comes the responsibility to self-reflect and be honest about your style, challenges and how others receive you. Remember, if people aren’t inspired to follow you, you can’t be an effective leader! Figure out your style and cultivate it. Heal your hurts. Ask for feedback and listen with an open heart. Be gentle with yourself and with others. This is a long road — a lifetime of work to do — none of it will be fast or easy. It if was easy, it would be done by now.

Simmons University Alumnae/I Feature: https://www.simmons.edu/news/first-its-kind-role-health-equity-advocate-harvard-medical-school