Steph Herold, MPH is an award-winning activist and social scientist with a background in abortion care, abortion funds, and reproductive health advocacy.
She is the lead researcher directing the Abortion Onscreen program at ANSIRH, where she studies depictions of abortion on American film and television. Her work provides the backbone for the documentary film Hollywood Does Abortion, premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2026.
Steph brings expertise in multidisciplinary research design and implementation. She’s co-authored over a dozen peer-reviewed academic articles, and her research areas include abortion in American culture, abortion stigma, and self-managed abortion. Steph has also co-authored numerous grey literature papers on stigma and sexuality, including on media coverage of abortion, youth sexuality stigma, addressing stigma through service delivery, and evaluations of abortion stigma interventions.
Steph is a sought-after public speaker to national news media on abortion research; her writing has been featured in the New York Times, The American Prospect, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Hill, Marie Claire, and many others. Steph has twenty years of experience in the reproductive health, rights, and justice field, including co-founding the Sea Change Program, the first non-profit to focus entirely on reducing abortion stigma.
Steph Herold, MPH 