Francine Coeytaux

Francine Coeytaux

Public Health Institute (PHI)

Ms. Coeytaux is internationally known for her promotion of comprehensive reproductive health services, safe abortion services, and the development of new reproductive technologies. In her thirty-year career she has worked to empower women, particularly in managing their reproductive health and rights, and has pioneered the use of acceptability research to give voice to women in the shaping of public health agendas. Ms. Coeytaux is a Co-Founder of the Pro-Choice Alliance for Responsible Research and serves on the Boards of EngenderHealth and the Center for Genetics and Society.

[Photo: A pharmacist speaks with a customer]

With Reproductive Rights in Great Jeopardy, ‘Plan C’ Is More Important Than Ever

Francine Coeytaux, Victoria Nichols & Elisa Wells

Plan C—making "missed period pills" widely available—would give users the power to decide whether or not they wished to test for or confirm pregnancy before taking pills to bring on their period.

The Risky Business of DIY Abortion—It’s Not What You Think

Francine Coeytaux & Elisa Wells

As we gather across the country to march for women’s rights on January 21, let us embrace this game-changing technology and take concrete steps to make it widely available.

Mail-Order Abortion: The Future Is Now

Elisa Wells & Francine Coeytaux

Women in dozens of countries around the world are already able to mail-order pills for early abortion care. So why not in the United States?

Invoking ‘Choice’ When Discussing Surrogacy as a Feminist Concern Is a Mistake

Susan Berke Fogel, Francine Coeytaux, Marcy Darnovsky, My Mother’s Story: Still a Reality for Far Too Many Women & My Mother’s Story: Still a Reality for Far Too Many Women

A recent Rewire piece treated the vexing question of commercial surrogacy as a litmus test for feminists. For us at Pro-Choice Alliance for Responsible Research, we believe that contract pregnancy can’t be understood in such a simplistic framework.

Plan C: The Safe Strategy for a Missed Period When You Don’t Want To Be Pregnant

Francine Coeytaux & Victoria Nichols

What is a woman to do if neither her plan A (birth control) nor her plan B (the morning-after pill) worked? Wouldn’t it be great if she had a plan C—a medicine similar to these other pills that would start her period and end her anxieties? Such a thing exists, and it should be available to all women.

In Our Own Hands: What U.S. Women Can Learn from Self-Use of Medication Abortion Worldwide

Francine Coeytaux & Leila Hessini

There is much we can learn from our sisters in the Global South who, rather than trying to gain access to services that all too often do not exist or fail to treat them well, are obtaining pills to induce abortion and taking them at home without seeing a health provider.