What Happened?
On September 18th, The United States House of Representatives
voted to defund Planned Parenthood. I spent the day in tears. On September
19th, I posted the following status on my personal Facebook page:
![]()
Within minutes, women were filling the comments with their
own abortion stories. My friend, writer Lindy West, screengrabbed my status and
tweeted it to her 61K Twitter followers. From there, #ShoutYourAbortion took on a life of its own, with the hashtag being used over 100,000 times in 24 hours. Clearly, women were ready to actively reclaim the conversation about abortion.
#ShoutYourAbortion channeled their voices, their own lived experiences, their own values, and a
resounding, unapologetic demand for reproductive justice. Since September 19th, over 250,000 people have used the hashtag on various social media platforms.
#ShoutYourAbortion
reframed the conversation around abortion at a critical time for reproductive
rights. As Cecile Richards defended Planned Parenthood on the Senate floor,
#ShoutYourAbortion received front-page coverage from The New York Times, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, as well as coverage from The BBC, Al Jazeera America, BuzzFeed,
HuffPost Women, CNN, BUST, KUOW/NPR, Vice, Bitch, Jezebel,
Salon, and countless others. Most recently, ABC's Nightline ran a segment on #ShoutYourAbortion that also featured actress and activist Martha Plimpton.
What Next?
#ShoutYourAbortion engaged users in a deep and personal way. The question is, how do we translate
all this energy—and this new perspective on how abortion should fit into
American society—into a long-term plan of action? The next
incarnation of SYA will be a full-fledged movement, a network dedicated to
destigmatizing the experience of abortion and working to expand access to
reproductive health care to all women in the United States.
If we want to continue to shift the power that enforces the cultural stigma around abortion, we need to continue to find new ways for women to shout their abortions and expand the national SYA community. This means funding for a variety of potential projects, including:
-
Building and managing a website that would function as a national hub for SYA activities. It would allow local SYA chapters to both download customizable content and graphics and upload their own, allow curation and promotion of women's #ShoutYourAbortion stories outside of the YouTube platform, and act as a nexus of various online advocacy and organizing tools for women who want to participate.
- Putting on events where women record their abortion stories and make them available to the public on a #ShoutYourAbortion YouTube channel.
-
Hosting other events that might include benefits for women's health providers, concerts, art shows, and movie screenings intended to raise awareness of issues related to reproductive justice, and others that would allow SYA to engage and network with like-minded groups and efforts.
- Facilitating salon-style discussions or online simulcast conversations across the country where SYA members could participate in dialogue about abortion and reproductive health access, raising concerns that are specific to their communities.
A lot of this is happening—SYA is already happening—but to sustain the momentum and allow this movement to flourish, we need to ensure the sustainability of SYA. This means building and empowering a network of individuals working to refocus this conversation on what abortion actually is: a medical procedure which grants women unqualified control of their own reproductive autonomy and by extension, their lives.
#ShoutYourAbortion has allowed countless women to vocally define their own experiences for the first time, and has shifted deeply entrenched negative attitudes about abortion in the process.
With your support, SYA will be able to continue supporting women acting across
cultural and political platforms as we work to expand cultural attitudes and systemic access
to reproductive justice.
