About Us - Equality Health Center (2024)

Equality Health Center is a non-profit healthcare facility serving all genders and sexualities throughout New England. We have been providing individualized, quality, compassionate care with respect since 1974. We are New Hampshire’s longest standing abortion provider.

Equality Health Center is a 501(c)3 organization. Our EIN# is 23-7368251.

Equality Health Center’s mission is to advance health by empowering our clients and communities through advocacy, education, outreach, and the provision of quality, non-judgmental healthcare with expertise in sexual, reproductive, and gender-affirming services.

Core Values

• We are a client-centered, not-for-profit, independent healthcare facility.
• We provide quality, evidence-based healthcare.
• We value the equality of all regardless of age, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, body size, socio-economic status, or immigration status.
• We respect the dignity of all individuals and act with compassion.
• We remain committed to reproductive freedom and social justice.
• We are committed to providing difficult to access healthcare, with expertise in abortion and LGBTQ+ care.
• We strive to create and maintain a physically and emotionally safe, confidential, and inclusive environment.
• We provide medically accurate, comprehensive and respectful client and community education.
• We actively seek collaborations within our community to accomplish shared goals.
• We are committed to the training of future healthcare providers.
• We continue to champion the feminist model of healthcare, which promotes self-determination and equality for all people.

Who we are, what we do and the way we do it, is a story that goes back to 1973 and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision legalizing abortion.

After the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, activists throughout the country celebrated the end of illegal, unsafe abortion and the suffering and death it had caused for decades. But the Supreme Court’s decision was only the beginning: making abortion legal didn’t make it immediately available or affordable. At that time in New Hampshire, abortions were expensive and performed mainly in hospitals, and people were given little information and virtually no emotional support.

Soon a group of feminist in Concord began meeting to figure out how to address the needs of New Hampshire citizens for accessible, affordable abortion services. Their vision – a radical one for the time – was of a non-profit, freestanding clinic where abortion care would be nurturing, compassionate, empowering, and respectful of the dignity of every person. This vision was realized on October 19, 1974 when New Hampshire Women’s Health Services – later to be renamed Concord Feminist Health Center – opened its doors at 38 South Main Street in downtown Concord.

Over the four decades since we opened, our services expanded to include a wider range of reproductive health care. We also expanded the clients we serve to all people who need reproductive health care. In order to better reflect the organization’s broader healthcare commitment and give the public better insight to the recent expansion of services to men and the LGBTQ community, it was important to find a name that was inclusive and one that all of our patients would resonate with. In 2016, we proudly changed our name to Equality Health Center.

Our goal is continue to provide the highest quality of treatment to our community far into the future and ensure that those who turn to us for care leave feeling accepted, empowered, and dignified.

Throughout the years since Equality Health Center opened, we are proud to say that we have become nationally recognized experts in abortion and contraceptive care. There are many things we have done that make us proud, including:

• maintained the highest quality of abortion services throughout our history
• provided pregnancy options counseling and pre- and post-abortion counseling to help thousands of people and their families meet the challenges of coping with their unexpected pregnancy
• been among the first to offer newly available birth control methods
• educated hundreds of people about abortion, contraception, and other health issues through our speaker services to schools and community organizations
• provided STI and HIV counseling and testing
• been among the first in N.H. to make emergency contraception readily accessible
• provided critical financial assistance to countless people needing abortion services
• weathered many storms of anti-abortion protest and attacks on our building
• helped to fight numerous legislative proposals intended to restrict New Hampshire citizen’s right to choose when and whether to become a parent
• helped launch other organizations such as the Womankind counseling service and the NARAL Pro-Choice New Hampshire
• received awards from the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union, the National Women’s Health Network, and NARAL-NH
• became a training site for physicians and others to learn and improve their skills in routine gynecology and abortion