Actress and producer Amy Brenneman was 21 and a junior at Harvard when she found out she was pregnant and decided to have an abortion, a decision she calls “incredibly wise.” A summer resident of the Vineyard, Ms. Brenneman said she was shocked last year when she learned there are no abortion services available on the Island. “If there’s no access on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard, then the women of Martha’s Vineyard have an undue burden,” she said. “If you don’t have access, you don’t have a constitutional right.”

The actor and activist, known for roles in HBO’s The Leftovers and the ABC series Private Practice, will join a panel discussing abortion access on the Island on Saturday, August 4 at 5 p.m. at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown. The event is called Lifting the Veil: Shame, Secrecy, and Abortion Access on Martha’s Vineyard.

Ms. Brenneman has become an outspoken proponent of reproductive rights, joining eight other women to recount their experiences having abortions for an amicus brief for the 2016 Supreme Court case Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.

“I think it’s important for women to make decisions about own bodies,” she said. “A woman becomes a mother when she decides to parent someone for the rest of her life.”

Panel organizer Susan Desmarais said the impetus for the event was a 2017 report by the rural health scholars, a group of students from the University of Massachusetts graduate school of nursing and medicine. The report focused on reproductive health services on the Island, and found that Island women have to travel between 90 and 101 miles to access an abortion.

“One of their recommendations was to at least start a public forum,” Ms. Desmarais said. She serves on the board of Friends of Family Planning of Martha’s Vineyard and leads a committee formed to act on the report’s recommendations. “If we’re really going to find out if this is needed and wanted by the community, we have to start the discussion.”

Ms. Brenneman will be joined on the panel by other abortion activists and experts including Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute of Reproductive Health, Dr. Willie Parker, author of Life’s Work, a Moral Argument for Choice, and Rebecca Hart Holder, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice America of Massachusetts. Islanders will weigh in as well with Denise Schepici, CEO of Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, and Elizabeth Barnes, an Islander and president of The Women’s Centers. Cesar Rodriguez of University of Massachusetts Medical School will offer information from the rural scholars report. The discussion will be moderated by Vineyard Gazette publisher Jane Seagrave.

“It promises to be, I think, a very good panel,” Ms. Desmarais said.

The Family Planning clinic on the Island is an affiliate of the clinic group Health Imperatives and cannot perform abortions because they receive Title X funding from the federal government. Ms. Schepici has said she does not see offering abortions as a top priority for the hospital either.

“I think about two things: scale and resources,” Ms. Schepici said at a recent public forum on the hospital. “Do we have enough volume to do it well? And do we have enough resources to do it consistently and well?”

Ms. Desmarais said at the very least, she hopes the hospital will consider offering abortions induced by oral medications.

“Our number one hope is abortion on-demand, but the bare minimum is availability of non-surgical abortion,” she said. “No matter what the circumstances of the pregnancy are, it’s a woman’s legal right to make a choice and living on this Island is an impediment to making that choice.”

The panel comes amid debate at the national level over President Trump’s recent nomination of conservative judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. With the potential for balance to shift on the court, some are concerned about the fate of the landmark Roe vs. Wade case that made abortion a constitutional right.

“I have a 17-year-old daughter,” Ms. Brenneman said. “And the idea that she would have fewer rights to her own body than I did is pretty upsetting.”

The Massachusetts legislature recently overturned antiquated laws prohibiting abortion in the commonwealth, a move setting the state’s position on abortion access. Ms. Brenneman said she and other activists are gearing up to defend Roe vs. Wade as well.

“We’ve literally been training for this moment,” she said. “I’ve never been naive enough to think this moment

wouldn’t come.” The panel will be held Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown. Audience members will have the opportunity to ask questions and are encouraged to submit questions in advance too via an online survey [link: surveymonkey.com/r/R5GMLQJ].