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Lisa Frelinghuysen has taken her decades of legal and advocacy experience around reproductive and contraceptive rights into her latest venture, Clutchkit. After graduating from Stanford Law, Frelinghuysen clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and helped draft the Court's last landmark gender equality decision, United States v Virginia; practiced law at Williams & Connolly, a prominent DC firm; and became Chief Legal Officer and Chief of Strategy for David Yurman, where she learned about building a brand, defining a strategy; has attended almost every reproductive rights case at the US Supreme Court since the 1990s. Currently she is the Senior Advisor at Banyan Global, advising the owners of large privately held businesses on ownership, governance, and succession planning.
Her time clerking under Ruth Bader Ginsburg shaped her approach to reproductive solutions in a practical and pragmatic way that ultimately inspired her to start Clutchkit. "Justice Ginsburg used to say, 'fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.' Reproductive justice has become a very polarized issue, but Clutchkit offers a middle-ground approach focused on the prevention of unwanted pregnancies, and everyone - pro-choice and pro-life people - should champion Clutchkit," she explained. "By distributing Clutchkits, we want to start a movement highlighting the importance of access and de-stigmatizing these essential health tools. Justice Ginsburg was a very practical legal thinker. She understood that granting reproductive rights without providing individuals access to exercise those rights was problematic. We want to provide Clutchkits to every woman across the country to ensure they have access to these reproductive health tools." Clutchkit contains a tin of condoms, emergency contraception (the morning-after pill), pregnancy tests, and information in a cute accessories bag.
The idea of Clutchkit came after the Supreme Court delivered the Dobbs decision; Frelinghuysen shared her idea with two of her friends, Dune Thorn and Christine Currence, and they said, "we have to do this!" Before Justice Ginsburg passed, Frelinghuysen had hosted a dinner before the women's rights march in Washington D.C., and both Justice Ginsburg and Gloria Steinem came to support as they cared deeply about gender equality and understood that women need both reproductive rights and access to these rights to gain equal stature in our society. "I hosted a dinner the night before the women's rights march in Washington DC and both Justice Ginsburg and Gloria Steinem—the two matriarchs of the women's rights movement—came! It was at that dinner that we discussed creating a kit giving women all the tools they needed for a happy and productive life; that idea became ClutchKit a few years later."
Before launching Clutchkit, Frelinghuysen held some focus groups with young women and received resounding enthusiasm for Clutchkit but had not realized the many accessibility barriers young women face in securing basic health products like emergency contraception or the morning-after pill. "We were laser-focused on the prevention of unintended, unwanted pregnancies. Our country has the highest rate of unintended pregnancies of any industrialized nation, and we thought, if we could lower that rate, we would do a lot of good," she explained. "My dream is to get a ClutchKit into the hands of every young woman across the country, so they have the reproductive health tools when they need them. In a 'clutch' moment. I think men should have ClutchKits too but my first priority is giving women access to these essential tools. There were 65,000 pregnancies brought to term due to rape and incest following the Dobbs decision. If those young women who were raped had a ClutchKit in their room, they could have avoided additional trauma."
Clutchkit has worked with several colleges and universities including Dartmouth, Brown, Barnard, Tulane, GW, and Berkeley, as well as some public high schools. Additionally, the brand has also worked with Red Hook Initiative, supporting underserved youth, and Mujer Inc, supporting survivors of domestic violence. More recently, Frelinghuysen founded The ClutchKit Project, a nonprofit arm, to ensure that reproductive health education and resources reach underserved communities. Through partnerships with schools, shelters, and community organizations, kits are donated and educational events are hosted that break down stigma and increase access and awareness. Generous individuals have been making donations to the Clutchkit Project and sending hundreds of Clutchkits to their universities.
"We sold through our first launch of Clutchkits in 3 months! We were surprised how quickly it took off and fired up with enthusiasm. The feedback around Clutchkit has been overwhelmingly positive. Young women are grateful and relieved to have this basic health care kit as they pursue their dreams. Parents also appreciate having a ClutchKit to give to their students as they head to college. Some parents have shared that giving ClutchKits inspired really meaningful conversations," shared Frelinghuysen.
As Clutchkit grows, Frelinghuysen is working on various educational materials, building a library of digestible, judgment-free resources that help people understand their options to break the stigma around these health products. In the fall, Clutchkit is launching a #ClutchCampusTour. For Frelinghuysen, she would like to make Clutchkit accessible to young men and women nationwide.