Michigan Organization on Adolescent Sexual Health

MOASH mobilizes youth voices, engages community partners, and informs decision-makers to advance sexual health, identities, and rights across Michigan.

NIRH began partnering with MOASH in 2015 to implement its Michigan Youth Rights initiative to reduce the harm of the state’s forced parental consent for abortion law, while also building a coalition to advocate for the law’s repeal and for the rights of young people. MOASH conducted a comprehensive assessment of judicial bypass procedures in all of Michigan’s 83 county court systems and worked with their youth advisory council to create an online portal, MY RIGHTS, where young people can access information and resources on judicial bypass.

In 2017, NIRH worked with MOASH to institute a youth- and community-informed, district-wide, integrated program of services and trainings to develop effective Sexual Education Advisory Boards (SEABs), which are youth- and community-informed boards required by Michigan law to guide sex education curriculum in their communities.

NIRH worked with MOASH in 2019 to launch its Michigan Young Parent Advisory Council (MY PAC), a youth-led cohort of expectant and parenting youth in Saginaw, MI. MY PAC leaders learn about their rights to reproductive and sexual health information and services and build their leadership and advocacy skills. Together, they are then using these skills to develop and organize for local policies that will support happy, healthy, and thriving young people and their families.

In 2022, NIRH is supporting the Michigan Organization for Adolescent Health (MOASH) and Michigan Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Network (MUUSJN)—longstanding leaders on reproductive health, rights, and justice in Michigan—to promote the Reproductive Health Act (RHA) and a reproductive freedom ballot initiative proposal to secure access to the full range of reproductive health care, including abortion, in Michigan. MOASH and MUUSJN will work to organize and engage young people and people of faith to ensure that these communities—whose voices are often erased or misconstrued in these conversations —are leading efforts to safeguard reproductive freedom, including abortion access. With NIRH’s support, MOASH and MUUSJN will launch efforts that include awareness and advocacy actions among youth, faith-based community members, and other stakeholders in order to pass the RHA and ballot initiative proposal.