Randie Bencanann

Randie Bencanann, M.S., LCSW has been a Health Educator and Social Worker for the past 40 years. She has been immersed in the world of Reproductive Health and Rights throughout her career. She was a founding member of the Committee to Defend Reproductive Rights (now ACCESS), EROS, the student hotline for sexuality and reproductive health and information at San Francisco State University, and created and directed the Planned Parenthood Teen Outreach program for San Francisco in the 1970s. She has worked in all aspects of the choice continuum; education, advocacy and direct service. Since 1986, as the Co-Director of an adoption program, she made sure that all clients received options counseling and that staff were fully educated about abortion. Recently she spent a year in Washington DC and was a clinic escort at the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic.She is currently retired, teaching literacy at the Public Library, doing Tai Chi and increasing her work in reproductive rights. She is married with two daughters, a 28 year old medical student who plans to be an OB/GYN and is active in Medical Students for Choice and a 25 year old who works at the Capitol Food Bank and is passionate about all food issues. Being a mother of two girls, having had an abortion herself, these issues are personal as well as political.