Katie Early, Ipas’ longest-serving employee, helped put Ipas on the global stage as a bold advocate for abortion access.Katie Early, Ipas’ longest-serving employee, died on June 26, surrounded by loved ones. Early’s extraordinary leadership and vision helped shape Ipas programs, fundraising, workplace culture—as well as Ipas’ visibility on the global stage as a bold advocate for abortion access.
“Katie’s visionary leadership saw Ipas through decades of innovation as we fought at the local, national and global levels to raise awareness that abortion access is a human right,” said, Ipas president and CEO. “Her tenure at Ipas really tracked the evolution of the global abortion rights movement, in which Ipas was instrumental—and Katie’s devotion and strategic guidance was crucial to that success.
Anu Kumar, president of Ipas; Katie Early; and Kathryn Andersen, Ipas’ chief scientific and technical officer, in Rwanda in 2018. When Early first joined Ipas, the word ‘abortion’ was barely mentioned in the fields of family planning and women’s health due to abortion stigma and gender inequity in politics worldwide. By the time Early retired, a robust global movement for abortion access was gaining momentum and achieving historic law change in countries around the world.