One month ago, US president Donald Trump was inaugurated again. The whirlwind of Executive Orders and declarations in the four short weeks that have followed have left many of us feeling understandably terrified and overwhelmed. Clearly, the project of removing access to abortion is in full-swing: Trump’s administration has already removed abortion information from the Department of Health and Human Services website, closed reproductiverights.gov, released an executive order targeting trans people that defined life as beginning at conception, and reinstated the Global Gag Rule, which restricts U.S. foreign assistance to organizations providing, counseling, or advocating for legal abortion services.
But as American feminist writer Jessica Valenti says “we can’t sit with the horror for too long. We can’t let it overtake or immobilize us—because that is exactly what they want.” That is why we at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, BPAS, the UK’s leading abortion care charity, teamed up with Amnesty International UK to co-host a sell-out film screening of the powerful documentary Zurawski v Texas on Trump’s inauguration day. More than 130 people attended and we took the opportunity to raise money to support the work of both BPAS and the Brigid Alliance, a US-based organisation providing essential logistical and financial support to pregnant women and people needing abortions.
As the attack on our reproductive rights reaches new heights, we want to share our panelists’ ideas for action in order to inspire and equip us to fight back. Here are our top five things that you could do:
1. Share the human impact of restrictions on abortion Bring to life abstract debates about rights by highlighting the lifelong physical and mental trauma to women denied abortion care when they need it. As the film’s producer Amy Flanagan explained, films like Zurawski v Texas, which follows a group of women with wanted pregnancies that go wrong, and who then cannot get the healthcare they need, can make a huge difference. Stories and storytelling are powerful tools.
2. Don’t mourn, organize! This is the biggest fight for abortion rights of our lifetime – whether we are resisting rollbacks in the US or pushing for decriminalisation in the UK. US anti-abortion groups are emboldening and funding anti-choice activists here in the UK, as Stella Creasy MP told us. And they’re getting involved directly too – US Vice President JD Vance recently used a high-profile speech at the Munich Security Conference to attack abortion clinic safe access zones in the UK. In response, we need to renew our efforts to organize, strategise, coordinate, recruit and fundraise.
3. Be bold.We should be ambitious and radical in our demands, rather than only defensively responding to attacks, as Dr Sonia Adesara, an NHS GP and Spokesperson for Doctors for Choice, said. That boldness is needed in the UK as much as it is in the US. As Eszter Kismödi, the Chief Executive of Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, reminded us, while abortion bans in the US are extreme, closer to home in Europe and the UK, access to abortion is made difficult by unnecessary and restrictive regulations, such related to conscientious objections, unjustified waiting periods and authorisation requirements. With that in mind, we urge you to support efforts to decriminalise abortion for pregnant women and people here in the UK and remove all necessary barriers to access to safe abortion services that are contradictory to health evidence and human rights.
4. Take back control of human rights language and frameworks. Young, British anti-abortion activists are expropriating human rights language to generate fresh support for their cause. Chiara Capraro, who leads the gender justice programme at Amnesty International UK, says we need to call out and challenge those twisting what human rights protections are to clamp down on reproductive rights. In international law, it’s clear that human rights only begin at birth and that the right to abortion is intrinsic to the right to health and therefore critical to fully enjoy all our human rights.
5. Keep bending the arc of justice: US President, Barack Obama once said – “The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice, but it doesn’t bend on its own.” We need to keep bending that arc, so that we ensure it keeps bending toward justice. Nothing can be taken for granted. The time for complacency is over. We need to remain vigilant and keep on working together to secure hand-won reproductive rights, and to expand them further.
We hope we have provided you with the energy and ideas to help you to rise to the immense challenges that will confront us in the weeks and months ahead.
If you have any ideas – big or small – for organisations or individuals – please do tag us on social media. Let’s Fight Back Together.
