Project Leader : Arpit Agarwal

Background

Despite the landmark Roe v Wade decision in 1973, many states continue passing legislation that effectively restricts access to reproductive health care, and abortion particularly. Ohio is one such case, and we regularly see Ohio patients coming to Pittsburgh for their abortions.

Volunteer clinic escorts at Allegheny Reproductive Health Center (AHRC) often get requests to drive patients home after their appointment. This is done manually, on a case by case basis, resulting in a lot of overhead for administrative workers at the clinic.

Furthermore, it begs the question of how many people don’t even attempt to get reproductive health care because they lack the social or economic means to travel to providers, especially when states require waiting periods of several days, and thus multiple trips.

These legislative efforts by conservative state governments overwhelmingly impact poor, Black Black and Brown communities. They are part of an oppressive system that keeps poor people in poverty and helps reinforce fundamentally racist biases.

Project

In this project, we will be working closely with AHRC to develop an application that significantly automates the process of finding volunteer rides for patients. The system should be flexible and general enough that it can eventually be deployed across the country, so that volunteer drivers can be found to accommodate the longer trips necessitated by abortion legislation.

Challenges:

  • Ensuring volunteers drivers can be trusted and have adequate training.
  • Ensuring the system integrates well with clinics’ existing scheduling infrastructure.

Technology Used

  • Python / Django for the back-end
  • HTML / CSS / JS / JQuery for the front-end

Status

Currently in the prototyping phase.