In the Press
Everyone Loves Someone Who Had An Abortion.
We Testify storytellers share their abortion stories and how their experiences were impacted by love and support, as well as financial, logistical, legal, and stigma-based abortion barriers, racism, classism, and other forms of systemic discrimination. They’ve been interviewed in and authored hundreds of news articles, opinion editorials, podcasts, and documentaries. To interview a We Testify storyteller, contact us.
Vikki Brown, 33, who works in education in New Orleans, says she initially tried to end her pregnancy in Louisiana. When she called her gynecologist for advice, a receptionist said she was "disgusted" by the request. Brown sought out the lone abortion clinic operating in New Orleans but found it besieged with both protesters and patients. "I knew but didn't understand how difficult it was to get care," says Brown, who moved to Louisiana in 2010 from New York City. "The clinic was absolutely full. People were sitting on the floor. It was swamped." It took her six hours to get an ultrasound, which cost $150, she says.
The coronavirus had started to shut much of the country down in March 2020 when Larada Lee found out she was six weeks pregnant. She wanted to end her pregnancy and decided that instead of a surgical abortion, she would use medication, a process she could complete at home. This, she thought, was her best chance of limiting her exposure to Covid-19.
Kay Winston was just two months postpartum when she found out she was pregnant again. After discussing the unexpected pregnancy and her options with her fiancé, Winston decided to have an abortion. “It was the very first abortion that I had, and I had a perspective that was very blind,” the 27-year-old from Texas tells Marie Claire. “I was just going off what I knew, what people told me, [and] what I did and didn’t see on television. And I was scared.”
As a non-binary transgender person, my abortion experience led to a lot of gender dysphoria. Every clinic had the word women’s in the name, all the pamphlets used gendered language and featured images of gender-conforming people, and clinicians were kind but didn’t understand trans and non-binary experiences. It felt dehumanizing. I had to emotionally disconnect from the experience entirely because of how gendered it was.
Republicans have started to blur the lines between birth control and abortion in the hopes of making it harder for American women to get both birth control and abortions. And nowhere is this clearer than in the Missouri statehouse, where lawmakers debated whether they needed to restrict Medicaid coverage of birth control and limit payments to Planned Parenthood. Yes, as the Kansas City Star reported, lawmakers there spent hours last week in a discussion that “resembled a remedial sex-education course.” It was a tricky play, attacking birth control as a way to attack abortion, and it didn’t work…this time.
CoWanda Rusk was weeks away from graduating from her Texas high school, and preparing for college, when she learned she was pregnant. "I immediately knew I didn't want to be pregnant," she recounted to Salon. Rusk had grown up a part of the church where her father was a youth pastor, and she remains a person of faith to this day. "I always rely on my faith for everything, even small decisions — what colors to wear today, what will align with the universe today," she said.
As states continue to introduce, and in many instances pass, anti-abortion laws that would further deny pregnant people from exercising their constitutional right, abortion storytellers are leading the fight to protect and expand access to care. And it comes as no surprise that these storytellers are often young, Black, brown, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ people and are continuing the work of the Black and brown advocates who came before them.
“I’m thankful that I had my abortion, and I’m worried that people won’t be able to live [their] lives as my abortion has afforded me,” said Bracey Sherman, the founder and executive director of We Testify, an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions.
Last October, abortion advocate Brittany Mostiller spoke at a virtual rally hosted by then-vice presidential candidate Kamala D. Harris. In hopes that the Biden administration would advocate for Congress to repeal the Hyde Amendment, a provision in the federal budget that bars Medicaid from covering the cost of abortion in most cases, Mostiller told her abortion story.
When Jessy was 20 years old, she needed an abortion. At the time, she was a student at UC Riverside, where she led a campus reproductive justice advocacy group—she was quite aware of what was happening to her body and familiar with what needed to be done. What she didn’t anticipate were all the barriers she herself would face, all the stumbling blocks that sprang up between her and the care she desperately required, even in a state that’s considered to be a bastion for abortion access.
"It angers me because when you look at the anti-abortion movement and you look at the laws that are being made, a lot of times they're made by males, they're made by white males," said Peterson.
Ten years ago, Renee Bracey Sherman shared her abortion story for the first time. In the decade since she’s earned the nickname the Beyoncé of Abortion Storytelling through her work helping others talk (or not talk) about their own abortions.
“Maleeha, an immigrant from Pakistan who now lives in Texas, says she was stunned at the number of hoops she had to jump through to get an abortion seven years ago…”
The impact of whatever the Supreme Court decides to do, will be felt by people who are already subject to criminalization and lack of access,” says executive director of We Testify Renee Bracey Sherman
Jessy Rosales did not realize she was pregnant for weeks. When she found out, Rosales - a 20-year-old college student at the time hid it from her family, whose judgment she feared, and struggled to find an abortion clinic that would accept her student health insurance…
Advocates see the decision to take on the case as a massive threat to abortion rights—and one Biden may not be taking seriously enough.
Rather than use the word “abortion,” both Biden and Psaki have continued to opt for euphemistic terms like “reproductive health” or “access to choice.” To be clear, an abortion does technically fall under the larger umbrella of reproductive health; however, avoiding the word enables the stigma.
Perhaps the omission wouldn’t be so glaring if it hadn’t already become more or less for the Biden administration. Renee Bracey Sherman, founder of the abortion storytelling organization We Testify, has pointed out administration officials’ avoidance of the word on multiple occasions; at this point it’s become “comical” watching them try to get around it, she said.
When Stephanie Loraine Piñeiro was 17, she found out she was pregnant. Loraine Piñeiro decided to have an abortion, but because she was a Medicaid recipient — like more than 72 million other Americans — her insurance wouldn’t cover the costs of the procedure. So, Loraine Piñeiro picked up extra shifts at her restaurant job, earning $2.17 per hour in base pay, to earn the necessary $450. She was still in high school.