Remembering Charlotte and celebrating her contributions 20 years later: Opill on the shelves
This piece was authored by Kelly Blanchard, President of Ibis Reproductive Health.
This is an exciting week at Ibis Reproductive Health and for the Free the Pill coalition. Opill is now available for purchase online and is starting to roll out onto pharmacy shelves. This is a huge moment — 20 years since the founding of what was then called the OCs OTC Working Group, we now have an OTC birth control pill in the United States!
But this week also marks another important date in my personal and professional life, and in Ibis’s and the coalition’s history. Twenty years ago this week, Charlotte Ellertson, my dear friend and mentor, and the founder of Ibis Reproductive Health, died of breast cancer at the much-too-young age of 38. Just a couple of weeks before she died, Charlotte hosted the very first meeting of the OCs OTC Working Group, and she had been involved in research and writing to try and make OTC birth control pills a reality even before that. I think she would be amazed that it took this many years and the work of this many people to get to this moment, but I think she would also be thrilled to see how the coalition lived by and succeeded because of the values she believed were so important at Ibis: the values of rigorous research, and of authentic and principled partnership with organizations and communities who stand to benefit from the work to identify and shape what innovations in access should look like.
I think Charlotte would be proud of the way we committed to and built the evidence base for Opill to be available with no age restriction — thinking about the young people who testified at the advisory committee meeting and their impact on the decision still makes me smile — and the way we ensured that the leadership of the coalition and our approach to the work were guided by a reproductive justice lens and a youth-adult partnership model. I know she would also be proud of those of us at Ibis and across the coalition who had the tenacity and perseverance to always believe this would be a reality one day. I am so grateful to our partners and my colleagues at Ibis without whom we would have never seen a box of Opill on a shelf or in a virtual cart.
Of course, I wish Charlotte was here to celebrate this amazing victory with us, and to help plot the strategy for all the important work that still remains. We need insurance coverage of OTC birth control so that people can use their insurance if they choose to use Opill, and we need broad access to low and no cost supplies that are accessible to people who cannot afford the $19.99 monthly price. But there is something fitting and maybe poetic about real access starting the same week twenty years after Charlotte’s death. At least for me, the lessons are that perseverance and principled partnership can move us closer to an inclusive and just world where everyone has the power and resources to access the contraception and abortion care they need and want.
I know many people who knew and worked with Charlotte will be thinking of her this week, and although it is very sad she is not here to enjoy this amazing victory, I hope the fact that this is the week OTC birth control pills have become a reality in the US helps underscore how her impact is still felt in this work. Thank you again to all the Ibis staff current and former; to the coalition members whether from the very beginning or who just signed on this week; and to the donors who saw this possibility twenty years ago or who are joining us now to ensure access will be a reality for all. We could not have done it without you. I hope you will raise a toast to Charlotte’s memory this week, alongside your celebration of Opill being on the shelf and in our carts.
