November 24 Annual Membership Meeting, 2-4 p.m., Laramie
Nov. 24, 2024 Annual Membership Meeting
Pro-Choice Wyoming will hold its annual membership meeting on November 24, 2024, from 2-4 p.m., in Laramie. We will be holding elections for board nominees and discussing next year’s plans for Pro-Choice Wyoming. Please RSVP to info@prochoicewyoming.org and let us know if you will be attending in person or would like to receive a Zoom link to join our meeting from your location.
Here are the four board nominees for our members’ consideration:
1) Jan Cartwright: Jan is the current Vice-Chair/Secretary of Pro-Choice Wyoming and is seeking re-election to her second full term on the Board. Jan resides in Cheyenne and is an experienced leader, manager, collaborator, and advocate and has extensive non-profit expertise related to health care policy, budget and grant management, and coalition and team building. Jan has over 25 years of lobbying experience, including the 2023 legislative win to provide new moms with extended Medicaid benefits. She is a founding Board member of the newly formed Healthy Wyoming non-profit and the immediate past chair of Wyoming Frontier Information “WYFI.”
2) Billie Scambler: Billie is a current Pro-Choice Wyoming Board member and is seeking election to her first full term. Billie grew up in Laramie and spent almost a decade away, going to college and starting her career as a nurse before moving back to Laramie last summer. Billie has a Gender & Women’s Studies BS from the University of Wisconsin, where she focused on healthcare and reproductive justice, and a BSN from the University of Colorado. Billie works as an infusion nurse in the Ivinson Memorial Hospital Cancer Center. She has always been passionate about access to abortion, and moving home to a state where bodily autonomy is under attack has reinforced these views. As a queer woman, Billie sees how reproductive justice is connected to other threats to freedom, such as bans on gender affirming care, violence against transgender women, and the surveillance, restriction, and censorship of the LGBTQ community. It is important to Billie that reproductive justice is seen as an issue that effects more than just white cisgender women-- it impacts the safety and wellbeing of ALL women, ALL people with the capacity to bear children, and it impacts us all differently depending on our identities. Billie is excited to bring her experiences and perspectives to direct action with Pro-Choice Wyoming and would be honored to continue to serve on the Board.
3) Betsy Erickson: Betsy is a current Pro-Choice Wyoming Board member and is seeking election to her first full term. Betsy resides in and is a Casper native. She graduated from UW/CC in 2013 with her BA in English and from St Kate’s University in 2018 with her MA in education with an emphasis on Montessori. Betsy is currently a small business owner and mother of 2.
Betsy would like to continue serving on the Pro-Choice Wyoming Board because she believes that women should have autonomy over their reproductive choices. It’s as simple as that. Women should be able to legally do what they need to be able to care for their bodies. One of Betsy’s dearest friends almost died and she had to go to Denver for a medical abortion. We need more choice and more freedom in this realm here in Wyoming and Betsy would like to help support the cause. She thanks PCW members for their consideration.
4) Janean “Birdie” Forsyth: Birdie is a current Pro-Choice Wyoming Board member and is seeking election to her first full term. Birdie is a small business advisor and certified health coach in Laramie. She grew up under the big skies of Montana but she has lived in Laramie and worked at the University of Wyoming since 2005. Birdie holds a bachelor's degree in Humanities (minor in Women’s and Gender Studies) from the University of Colorado, Boulder and a Master's in Public Administration from UW.
As a mother of 2, and a breast cancer survivor, Birdie firmly stands with a person's right to control their own body and to make personal healthcare decisions without the interference of government. She supports the mission of Pro-Choice Wyoming to protect the right to access a full range of reproductive health services including legal abortion and would be honored to continue to serve on the board.