This is something I wrote for a pro-choice group I am on the admin team for, because folks are in a panic and it needed saying again. Posting here because it’s instantly being flagged and removed by FB robots.
Dearests.
If you’ve landed here out of panic at the state of the world and a sincere desire to help right what is wrong, this is for you.
The post-Roe world is a hot mess, but it may not be the kind of mess you think it is, and those of us who have been on the ground working in a focused way on abortion access for the long haul have some counsel and some serious, immediate requests for folks who are newer to this conversation.
Please do consider reading this post as your prerequisite for being helpful.
There is really and truly no disrespect meant toward anybody’s good intentions or capacity.
If you’re here to do something good, we really, really need you. We WANT you.
And: there’s a learning curve here, and we need your attention.
We are seeing a lot of enthusiasm, new orgs, new projects, and heroic public gestures, on social media and all over the internet.
In all of that, we are witnessing a whole lot of false assumptions, really terrible misinformation, ignorance of best practices, arrogance, defensiveness, overt and covert racism and transphobia, and emotionally-driven kneejerk reactivity.
So this is a really sincere, ardent call-in of You, whoever and wherever You are, who want to help move the needle on access for everyone.
Again: we need you. If you want to be useful, we need you to understand that the circumstances at hand - the criminalization of abortion access - aren’t actually new for a whole lot of people, both in the US and elsewhere in the world.
The Roe verdict wasn’t a magic spell that made it all ok.
Its disappearance, while horrendous, does not undo the good work that is already happening.
And there are people in your community, activists and educators and lawyers and providers, who have been trying to ensure safe, legal, equitable access to abortion upon request for longer than you, some for literal decades.
Below is a roundup of requests, recommendations and heartfelt counsel from the experienced activists in your life. Please listen up.
Here are some things we want you to do:
1) Make yourself trustworthy. Begin by listening to people who probably know more about this than you.
Find those people locally and online, offer your time and attention, learn everything you can from them and then show up and be awesome. The world of abortion access support is built upon vetted, trusted relationships, and building such relationships, as you likely well know, takes time and tending. So please proceed as though courtesy matters, because it deeply, deeply does.
2) Learn about internet privacy and encryption, and use best practices at all times.
This is the MOST BASIC shit, and anybody who doesn’t know and isn’t interested in learning should not be involved in activism, period. I said what I said.
Because if you are sloppy under these circumstances, you put yourself and others at enormous risk for no goddamn reason at all other than willful ignorance. The information you need in order to proceed safely is available, free, and honestly not all that complicated.
Unencrypted information can be hacked, stolen, subpoenaed. Do not think this isn’t happening, because it is, and it will continue to be as long as abortion is criminalized.
Most activists simply will not communicate with anyone who isn’t already using current privacy protocols. Please let a person’s willingness to communicate or receive sensitive information over social media, unencrypted email, text or phone be a big ol red flag to you.
Where to start:
www.digitaldefensefund.org/ddf-guides/abortion-privacy
Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Surveillance Self Defense: www.ssd.eff.org
3) Learn about the orgs who are already doing this work and support them. Look on their websites to find out what kind of help they need - they need your help! - and form relationships (see #1: make yourself trustworthy.) This is especially necessary at a local/community level, because folks who actually know each other irl may have the capacity to assess and meet needs more quickly and appropriately than someone known only over the internet may be able to. i.e. it is easier to read the room when you are also in the room.
Some places to start:
www.aafront.org/operation-save-abortion
4) Learn about the movement for Reproductive Justice, the current and historical abortion underground, and the ongoing worldwide struggle for abortion access and autonomy. A LOT of people have gone down this road before you and there is a lot of amazing, unbelievably courageous precedent to lean into (as well as plenty of fuckery to know not to repeat :)) Know what you’re getting into.
5) Remember that this is not about you AT ALL. This is about solidarity.
For many of us, that is a tough pill to swallow under capitalism, where we are conditioned to competitive individualism as the basis of personal worth. But solidarity is where it’s at. This is not an arena for being a star or a boss or in any way accruing power under the banner of virtue.
So get your head into it and become a great collaborator, because that is how you can be most useful to your immediate and greater community.
Here are some things we do NOT need or want anyone to do:
6) Reinvent the wheel.
There are dozens of already-existing, already-experienced, thoroughly vetted and trustworthy public-facing organizations active in all aspects of education, resourcing, and providing support to ppl in need of abortions. If there is a need for something else to happen, the people involved in those orgs are the ones best placed to know what that is.
Starting new orgs and projects, especially by people who are inexperienced with current best practices, interferes with and creates competition for the stream of funding and attention that those orgs require in order to provide services to the people who already depend upon them.
So please don’t do that.
7) Aggrandize and center our own positions, virtue, or “work.” Please see #5: remember that this is not about you. And this goes x100000 more if you are white.
8) Draw parallels with the Underground Railroad. The conditions of criminalized abortion is NOT comparable to chattel slavery, no matter how dire it is, and that shit is appropriative and insulting, so please knock it off, especially, again, if you are white.
9) Refer to abortion access and pro-choice as a women’s issue. There are plenty of people directly affected by the lack of abortion access who are not women. Abortion is a human right and a human issue. Please update your words and your head on this. Thank you.
10) Use coat hanger and other outdated imagery suggesting that all self-managed and extraclinical abortion is desperate and dangerous. That is no longer the world we are living in - over half of all abortions in the US are self-managed as of 2020, according to preliminary data from the Guttmacher Institute - and using those images and that language perpetuates misinformation designed to provoke and manipulate extreme emotions in order to control the narrative around abortion. SMA is statistically safe and effective, and moreover, in a world where clinical abortions may or may not be available on demand, it is a necessary part of care. Please, don’t participate in this kind of fearmongering, and don’t fall for it.
11) Post publicly about criminalized activity on social media. By which I mean things like invitations to people in red states who want to “go camping.” SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT PRIVATE, EVER, INCLUDING DMs.
Here is a great thread about why not to do that: https://twitter.com/BlackPnwLady/status/1540859268114501632
12) Share ANY sensitive information over ANY unencrypted channel, to ANYONE who cannot be vouched for. This includes all social media including DMs, all regular email, all unencrypted texting, all unencrypted phone calls and video chats. Google Docs, no. ANYTHING over Google, no. Browser search histories can be subpoenaed as evidence as well. Please see #2: learn about internet privacy.
13) Invite others to share sensitive information (including name, location, email, phone number, etc) over any unencrypted channels whatsoever, ever, at all. Do no underestimate the risk. Whatever else we may think of them, anti-choice activists are not stupid, tech-illiterate, unprepared or lacking in strategy. And in many states, the law is now on their side to do insane, previously-illegal things including surveillance, theft and hacking in order to obstruct abortion access. GIVE THEM NOTHING.
I hope that all makes good sense, honeys.
XO