Hope is a Doing Word - Abortion Support Network

How to keep going when the odds are stacked against us.

We know things are tough out there.

Trump’s aggressive approach to his first month in office affects us all – particularly global majority communities. We are witnessing a regression of Reproductive rights and bodily autonomy in the US, and the devastating impact this has on global communities with the implementation of the Global Gag rule.

And it affects Europe too. Vice president JD Vance has publicly criticised the UK’s Buffer zones, which protect abortion seekers and clinic staff from harassment within a certain distance of clinics – hard won protections. While Trump and Vance have no legislative power here, they do have influence. Stigma knows no borders, and the normalisation of anti-abortion rhetoric bleeds into the way our government and society speaks about abortions.

On our own helpline, since the election we have noticed clients are more fearful about travelling, as well as feeling heightened anxiety about travel documentation and borders. The stigma and shame our clients feel around their abortions, and having to travel for them, has also increased.

We are seeing a Europe-wide political shift to the right. Although in the past few decades abortion access in Europe has seen an overall liberalisation, in many places our rights are being rolled back. Abortion rights are fragile – we cannot be complacent.

On top of this, we cannot overlook the catastrophic impact on reproductive justice and women’s rights of the genocides in Palestine, Congo and Sudan, of the erasure of women in Afghanistan and of the oppression of women in Iran.

The attack on trans rights in the West and the vilification of the trans community makes the message at the heart of it clearer still: according to the patriarchy, our bodies don’t belong to us.

In this landscape, it would be very easy to lose hope. It’s coming from all angles – and there is so much to fight we can’t possibly fight it all. But that is by design, to discourage and dilute our resistance – and we must resist.

It’s important to remember, too, that we have been here before – and we are still here. We only need to look back over our shoulders to see the incredible history of resistance that paved the path for us to continue that legacy. We only need to look further than our imagined borders to see the vast and powerful reproductive justice movements in the Global South that have been doing this work for far longer than us, and who continue to innovate and show us how it’s done.

When it comes to abortion access, there is a very direct way to help. States prevent people from accessing abortions, and abortion funds make sure they can get a safe abortion anyway. From distribution of abortion pills to places where they are inaccessible or illegal, like Poland, to helping people travel and access clinics abroad – for example from Ireland to England, France to Spain or Poland to the Netherlands. Helping someone get an abortion is a very direct and radical way to resist state control over our bodies.

We cannot wait for lawmakers to wake up one day and decide to return our bodily autonomy to us. We cannot wait for capitalist society to decide it’s no longer interested in growth. We must act now to build and imagine the world we would rather be in – to create that world in our communities, in our relationships with others, and in our solidarity. From the campaigning organisations fighting for better access to abortions and better maternal healthcare for all, to the clinics providing the care, the abortion funds paying the fares and abortion doulas providing companionship – the ecosystem of the reproductive justice movement shows how we can work together to create this world.

Hope is an action, not a feeling. By choosing not to despair and to stay strong in our resistance to these threats – we choose to keep ‘hoping’, as an adjective.

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal… To hope is to give yourself to the future – and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.” Rebecca Solnit, ‘Hope in the Dark’

How to make ‘hope’ a doing word – the Abortion Activism version.

1. Donate to your local abortion fund –

In a landscape of fear around access to basic healthcare, helping to fund someone’s abortion is an act of radical empathy. Abortion funds have a rich and powerful history. Activists have funded people’s abortions under far more oppressive and restrictive circumstances and will continue to do so, no matter what, until we’re no longer necessary.

Liberating your own money, if you are able, from the endless cycle of ‘get paid, buy stuff’ is an act of radical hope. In a capitalist society, where everything we do has been designed to generate profit, removing our capital – whether it’s £1 or £10,000 – from the cycle of growth and using it to fund grassroots movements resisting these systems is one of the most direct actions we can take.

2. Organise in your communities –

Hold an event to share ideas and raise awareness of barriers to abortion access, raise funds, and build community connection with other reproductive justice activists. Set up a local reproductive justice group, or book club. Start a local campaign to pressure your representatives to protect our rights. We, and countless other reproductive justice activists, are here to support you with this – you are not starting out alone!

Solidarity within our communities builds power, connection and makes us harder to beat. Stoking up in-fighting on the left is used as a tool of the imperialist state to ensure we remain divided rather than turning our attentions away from one another to face our common enemy together. Solidarity is not the same as friendship – we must have solidarity with one another, and people oppressed by the same powers, and be able to hold our differences with compassion and humility

3. Talk about abortions –

Tell your abortion story, support your friends with their abortions so they don’t feel alone. Destigmatising abortions is a critical element of the reproductive justice movement – so much anti-abortion power lies in creating and sustaining stigma and shame. Our #ITravelled campaign was created to bear witness, offer a peer support space, and break down the stigma around being forced to travel for an abortion by repressive state laws.

Whilst our campaign focusses on abortion travel, sister campaigns to destigmatise abortion care and create space to talk about all abortions are run by our friends at Shout Your Abortion, and Level Up.

4. Do what you can, and trust someone else will do the rest –

Every time we turn on our phones, open a newspaper or turn on the tv, we see the worst imaginable injustices. It can be easy to become overwhelmed and feel like we’re not doing enough. But we need to have trust in our communities. As we work to overcome barriers to abortion access in Europe, so too are people working to do the same in America, and so too are people lobbying and taking action to encourage divestment from the arms trade, to decolonise, to prevent the climate crisis. No one individual person or group can do it all – but we can trust that each part of the network is fighting their fight and let them inspire us to keep fighting ours.

5. Rest – and find joy –

‘If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.’ Emma Goldman.

While it’s important to recognise that we live in a critical moment for organising, activism and resistance – it’s also vital to take moments to experience the joy in the community we are building, and to take time to rest. Only by ensuring we do not burn out and taking time to enjoy the lives we are fighting for can we be sure the movement is sustainable.

Now is the time to imagine the world we want to live in – and as well as imagining reproductive justice for all, freedom for all, and the end of capitalist, patriarchal greed – hopefully we can also imagine enjoying the company of our loved ones, taking long walks in the sunshine and having a lie in on a Sunday.

Our journey to ensure abortion access for all is a long-term commitment, far beyond this current political climate! We cannot burn ourselves out with despair and unsustainable running without strategy, rest, breath and collective joy. Together we will build the worlds we’re worthy of.

We are not simply trying to survive in this new political era—we are co-creating worlds where we can thrive together in community. We have years, decades, and centuries of collective power and movement-building experience on our side!

National Network of Abortion Funds: 100 days toolkit

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