here's how to get an abortion anywhere
telehealth services can give you options in a country gone mad.
Roe has been overturned but as I’ve said before: no, they can’t ban abortion. Women had abortions before Roe, and they will continue to even if it’s been struck down.
While I’m not denying the seismic devastation and incontrovertible rollback of women’s rights, it’s important to frame this fight pragmatically. We cannot control what the Supreme Court decides, but we can control how we react to it: by using this travesty of a decision to disrupt and reinvigorate the abortion access movement. To quote a true american patriot Kelly Clarkson, “what doesn’t kill you make you stronger.”
Women’s rights organizations have known this was going to happen and have been making incredible strides in coming up with creative solutions to provide access to people who need it, especially in red states where abortion access is already mediocre even before Roe vanished.
Even with Roe v Wade overturned, you can still get an abortion in all 50 states through the mail. The reproductive rights organization mayday.health is a tremendous resource you can use but I’ll also lay it out right here so you can forward this article to anyone you know, especially if they live in a red state. Abortion bans will always hurt poor women the most, so it’s crucial that the right support and resources finds them. By spreading this message you are helping close that resource gap. A lot of people don’t have internet access or don’t have a media diet that would lead them to consume content that contains these resources so talking to your friends and family also helps tremendously. So yes, you can make a difference simply by talking to your loved ones about how it’s still possible to get an abortion.
So how do you get an abortion all fifty states? I’m glad you asked. Abortion pills! They are 97% effective if they are used in the first trimester and extremely safe. In fact, they lead to fewer hospitalizations than Tylenol. And even if you live in a state where abortion is punishable by law, an abortion pill is medically indistinguishable from a miscarriage which means that even if you end up at the hospital, no one will know that the pregnancy didn’t end naturally. However, given the state surveillance and coercion of women’s bodies, it’s better to stay discreet about your decision. The extreme right-wing radicals don’t just want to ban the procedure, they want to make it illegal to talk about it. The National Right to Life is trying to criminalize disseminating any information about abortion. This would mark a return to a pre-Roe dystopian reality where it’s illegal to advertise the number of an abortion referral service but fine to advertise that "Abortion is Murder", as was the case in New York in 1971.
But like many things that are illegal, a lot of people tend to find a way to do it anyway. Just ask any millennial who had Napster or who has ever downloaded a movie without paying for it. It’s sad that the strategy to get an abortion mirrors the one I used to download my first Limp Bizkit album, but here we are. Just because the right is getting creative, it doesn’t mean we can’t either.
Reproductive health advocates say that to get abortion pills, no matter what deranged laws the politicians in power are passing in your state, take these three simple steps:
1)Sign up for a mail forwarding service in a state where abortion rights are protected. This means states like New York, Illinois, or any of these states. Mail forwarding services will cost you about 25 bucks and will forward any mail sent to that address to your home. That means, you can receive abortion pills anywhere (for now).
2)Make an appointment with a telehealth abortion clinic like Hey Jane or Carafem and give them your new cool address so you can get the pills delivered right to your door.
3)Take the medication you were sent following the medical guidance you were given. If anything happens, you can go to your doctor and say you had a miscarriage.
For any questions you can call the Reproductive Legal Helpline: 844-868-2812 or visit shoutyourabortion.com another great resource.
It’s easy to feel defeated in this moment, but know that women have always faced backlash when we have been the most unfuckwithable. Feminist scholars and civil rights activists have widely documented this exasperating, yet telling phenomenon. Progress has always been a squiggly line. To quote Eric Holder and Sam Koppleman in their telling of the frustratingly turbulent and at times deadly fight for voting rights in the book Our Unfinished March “you could find the entire story of America, a nation where liberation so often leads to assassination, where broken barriers so often lead to pierced arteries, where hope and fear, love and hate, beauty and brutality dance together, swaying back and forth to the alternating beats of pain and promise.” Progress comes with unexpected twists and twirls but ultimately always wins out, especially when other groups realize that one person’s freedoms always impact theirs too.
The powerful want to control us because they’re afraid of us. If we weren’t threatening, they wouldn’t even be bothering with us. Nothing that’s beautiful demands attention and nothing that’s secure necessitates force. They are losing and they know it. So let them be scared. And let us rise and savor the power that they are so petrified that we possess.
Important info that must be shared. Thx from an old but still feisty feminist!
CRY BITCH