Former Boulder Abortion Clinic Staff Rebuild as the RISE Collective

How many times have you sat down for a few drinks with friends and during the course of the conversation said “We should do something about that” only to let the thought fade by morning? When a group of former employees of The Boulder Abortion Clinic got together to mourn its closing last summer, those words became a promise. The clinic had served the community for 50-years and was one of the last in the country to offer later-term abortion care. Rather than let that legacy disappear, the group vowed to continue the work themselves.

Just five months later, they kept that promise as, on October 14, the RISE Collective opened their doors to their first three patients. 

Alicia Moreno, Executive Director of the RISE Collective, said “When the clinic closed we all said we don’t wanna let this go. So the question was who would be interested in helping put together our own thing?” Without hesitation the doctors, nurses, and support staff, almost to a person, said yes. In total, thirteen members of the old clinic came together to form the RISE Collective. Each one is an owner with an equal vote in the operation and future planning.

“We already were so well versed in what we knew how to do. We had worked together for so long and in really incredible ways,” Moreno said. “Everything else was really just procurement.”

Two organizations spun out of that effort. The RISE Collective offers reproductive care, services, and patient support. The Boulder Collective is a 501c3 created to secure funding and a permanent home for RISE and other care-focused organizations. The funds generated from the building ownership will be used to establish a “Forever Fund” for patient support.

Margie Williams, Board Chair of the Boulder Collective, explained “The Boulder Collective came out of the need for RISE to have a safe and secure place to start working. Based on the history of the way that clinics can, and have been, treated in the past they needed a space where their existence would be secure and safe.”

The Boulder Collective is led by five board members and an advisory board. They are working on obtaining funding through grants and donations.

While Moreno and team worked on getting the new clinic set up they had an opportunity to reflect on how best to serve patient’s needs going forward. 

“We had been doing this work for so long, but in the same way, we wondered what […] needs to be evolved,” Moreno said. They spoke with clinics across the country to learn from their models and assess unmet needs. Moreno noted “We really saw an opportunity to update things that had been created forty, fifty years ago.”

As planning for the new clinic continued, they also listened intently to the needs they were hearing from the community. Moreno said “We got a call from a regional hospital who said ‘Hey our administration is pulling back with us being able to offer gender affirming care to people 19 and under. Would y’all be willing to step up and provide some of this care or provide us with space so that we can provide it, so that care doesn’t have to end?’” 

That’s just one of the new  services under consideration along with the return of contraceptive care. “We did that many years ago but stopped,” Moreno said “but a lot of people are going back to states where they’re not even sure if they’re gonna be able to get reliable contraceptive care. So we’re gonna start addressing that here and now.”

Since announcing the new clinic, Moreno said one question comes up again and again: Why Boulder? “We’re all community members,” she said “Plus there is a historical place carved out in Boulder for this type of care, it’s in our city charter. All of those things are what made us want to stay and continue providing care here.”

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