Published by Altaonline.com
From a young age, Amika Mota was immersed in the advocacy for women’s wellness that was central to her mother’s San Francisco sex shop, Good Vibrations. At 19, Mota started her career as an apprentice midwife, then became the assistant director at the Andaluz Waterbirth Center in Oregon. There, she advocated for teen mothers like herself. When the center was faced with bullying by a nearby hospital, Mota weathered a “David and Goliath–style fight,” she says. Andaluz prevailed. The experience would prepare Mota for a life of battling Goliaths, one that would lead to her role today as policy director at the Young Women’s Freedom Center.