Urgency for Resistance: Interview with Madison Abortion and Reproductive Rights Coalition for Healthcare (MARRCH)

by Puntorojo Editorial Collective · Published April 24, 2023 · Updated May 8, 2023

Puntorojo Magazine spoke with Destiny Smoot, Victoria Gutierrez, and Kim Gasper from the Madison Abortion and Reproductive Rights Coalition for Healthcare (MARRCH), based in Madison, WI. Below is an edited transcript of that conversation.

Puntorojo: Can you take us back to the beginning of MARRCH, what led you all to come together?

Victoria: There were things that were happening and bubbling around Madison since the Texas abortion ban. So, since that time there were just small bubbles and no specific group had formed. I think it was literally Kim, me and another person. Destiny can chime in about what happened.

Destiny: On July 4th of 2022, there was a very large gathering at the state capitol in Madison, and there was a speak-out, inviting community members to come up and speak on a bullhorn about how Roe v. Wade being overturned had affected their reproductive rights, fertility, and just life in general. And they shared stories that were very personal. The organizers there had passed around a notebook asking for those serious about joining a social movement or creating a social movement to put their name and email or phone number in there so that they could follow up later.

I got my first email about a week after. We started really small, with seven people and went from there. We immediately knew that we needed to grow because we knew we couldn't do it with just seven people. And then we started hanging out on the streets and tabling, sharing fliers that we created about coming up protests, speak-outs, rallies, meetings. We targeted college students to join. And we now have two separate college student groups that we work with. We're trying to grow further with both of those groups. Anybody else want to share what else we did?

Victoria: Well, I think the urgency for it has been so important, because Wisconsin is a trigger law state with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. In June, Wisconsin was back to the 1849 statute on the books. That is an abortion ban that makes it a Class H Felony that criminalizes providing an abortion of up to six years in prison and/or $10,000 fine.

It wasn't bad enough that it was the overturning of Roe, immediately Wisconsin is under this statute from 1849, when slavery was still the law of the land. Prior to the ban, there were four abortion clinics operating in Wisconsin and, within days, weeks, months, the 1849 abortion ban left zero clinics in Wisconsin operating. Zero.

Photo: Destiny Smoot

Puntorojo: MARRCH has organized several speak-outs. Can you talk more about why?

Kim: When they overturned Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs decision, there wasn't really, as Victoria said, any ongoing political organizing for abortion rights here in Madison. And there were national calls that were put out by big non-profits, but they didn't actually have groups on the ground. And so, people would just sort of show up at the Capitol. And we just started telling our own abortion stories and sometimes our stories around sexual assault and sometimes our stories around our struggles as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer folks.

And through doing that, we started to feel like we really had to come together, that we could come together, and that we shared mutual needs that were only going to be addressed on the streets. And we talked about the fact that there are three roads.

The first road being, you know, the electoral road. And then we looked at a little bit of history and we looked at the Hyde Amendment, which was signed into law under Jimmy Carter, a couple of years after Roe v. Wade was made the law of the land. It was the biggest attack, the most serious attack against Black women and all people of color and all people who are living in poverty and all those who can become pregnant, who don't have money to pay for an abortion. So that was the first of the attacks.

And then it just followed from there with 24 to 48 hour waiting periods, to parental consent laws, to forced ultrasounds, to endless restrictions on our bodies. And the politicians had really just done almost nothing to stop that. And in some cases, they were quite complicit. For example, the Hyde Amendment must be re-signed every other year and the Democratic Party overwhelmingly re-signs it every year. So, there's that.

Victoria: Can you just say what the Hyde Amendment is?

Kim: The Hyde Amendment is the legislation that makes it illegal for federal tax dollars to be spent on providing abortions. And so, the legislation road or “vote for me I'll set you free” road has gotten us to where we are now.

And then there's the second road, another road that we're hearing a lot about. That was more along the lines of mutual aid or supporting charitable organizations, whether that's Planned Parenthood or other organizations that provide either medication or finances to people trying to get abortions. And we know that none of us in MARRCH have any money. And most working people in the United States don't really have any money to speak of. And so, we came to the conclusion that we weren't going to be able to buy our way or pay our way out of this crisis.

And so, then the third road would be to build a grassroots; a bottom-up movement of all those who can become pregnant and for all those who support people who could become pregnant to fight for bodily autonomy. And that we would have to be an independent organization, so that we wouldn't get our money from the government or from politicians or from wealthy donors. We didn't have money, but what we have is numbers, right? Because the overwhelming majority of people in the United States don't have any money. But the overwhelming majority of people in the United States need and don't have bodily autonomy. So, the idea that we could come together and organize a fight back was what we were looking at.

Victoria: But I think the thing that just makes this even harsher is to try to have [organized] labor, like never before, taking a stand on this issue. Labor has been really slow to get involved in this struggle. If it’s addressed at all, it would be in women's committees or very, very low on an agenda in a union hall.

It was during the Texas ban that I wanted to try to really get unions to come out. With the Democratic Party in retreat over the decades, and not even wanting to say the word “abortion” to not “alienate voters,” and that whole thing. The same thing is seen in unions. After all, the AFL-CIO did not say anything during the Texas bans or after the Dobbs [Supreme Court ruling] when it was certain some states had accessibility and other states had it outlawed.

Abortion is health care. That's really fundamental with MARRCH. Abortion is health care and, after all, for me, a union labor activist, our health care is provided by our employer. If we're able to even get health care through an employer, it's through the “goodness of the heart” of a CEO of a company to provide it. And with the overturning of Roe as you have now, that only half the population has access to health care. And so, it really is an access issue. It's an access issue that unions and working people need to urgently take up.

Puntorojo: A few months ago, MARRCH protested against a transphobe who spoke at the university and more recently supported a unionizing drive. Why has MARRCH decided to get involved in issues that go beyond abortion?

Destiny: I think it's important that we recognize that this is all very intersectional. We can't provide childcare and housing when our jobs don't provide us the means that we need, which can potentially lead to one of the many reasons why somebody would need and require an abortion.

Victoria: It's not just abortion. It's free abortion on demand. Abortion is health care. Health care is a right. When you start to peel that away, what is it that is making all of this happen? It is not an accident. At least you know the same people that are creating these laws, this injecting a pro-life agenda into the sphere of our state houses, are the same people that have an anti-worker agenda, anti-union agenda, anti-woman agenda.

And it's the society that we're living in. And so, it's not complicated. The answer in some ways is complicated, but yet it's not. It's a for profit system that we're living in for health care, for housing, for education, for all of it. These are the same people that are defunding our public schools. And these are the same people that are just really attacking the unhoused in our communities. I mean, since COVID, there has just been an increase in homelessness. It's all connected.

Kim: We're suffering. This multi-pronged attack, the racism and sexism and the homophobia and transphobia and the ableism; all these things come together and divide us as working people and really pit us against one another. Or at least that's the goal, right, is to divide us up and pit us against one another. And the racism and the sexism and the homophobia and transphobia and all those other divisions really don't benefit any of those groups.

Those divisions only benefit the richest people in the country. And the reason it benefits the richest people in the country is that so long as we're pointing our fingers at one another, we don't point our fingers at them. And so, the need to divide and conquer is really just essential to capitalism. And we figured out a long time ago that we need to come together and the reason we say that in order to be a part of MARRCH, you have to be in favor of free abortion on demand, and anti-racist, and pro-LGBTQ+, and pro-labor union is because we aren't going to let those divisions ruin our movement.

And so, the need to divide and conquer is really just essential to capitalism. And we figured out a long time ago that we need to come together and the reason we say that in order to be a part of MARRCH, you have to be in favor of free abortion on demand, and anti-racist, and pro-LGBTQ+, and pro-labor union is because we aren't going to let those divisions ruin our movement.

I think the quickest one to talk about is free abortion on demand. Why does it have to be free? Because we can talk about the Dobbs decision for days. But, prior to Dobbs being decided, poor and Black and Brown people who could become pregnant and migrants and trans and non-binary people are the ones who didn't have the money, couldn't get abortions. That was before Dobbs.

If you think about the fact that in 1980, there were on average 20,000 abortions a year in Wisconsin and in 2022 there were 6500. That's because there were less than half the number of abortion clinics available. That's because people just simply couldn’t afford to pay to have abortions. So, many people who needed access had already lost it. 89% of counties in the country didn't have abortion clinics by 2022. That was pre- the Dobbs decision.

The on-demand part is essential because it has to be available whenever a person who could become pregnant needs it, whether they are a 10-year-old, or whether they are someone in whatever week of a pregnancy. It has to be on demand. These are our bodies. And as the phrase goes, these are our bodies and it's our right to control our own bodies.

So we're fighting for bodily autonomy. So, for me, free abortion on demand is non-negotiable. And we in MARRCH have to date, focused on that slogan, not just because it sounds good, but because it's essential if you're actually going to have an intersectional movement. If you're actually fighting for black trans people, if you're actually fighting for the people who have the least right to have what they need, you can't put free abortion on demand on the side. It has to be front and center.

Victoria: In conjunction with that, I guess I would also just say as the labor person, it's more than just unions. Not every place has a union. And the AFL-CIO has yet to really come out in a concerted way with unions, even like, look, here we are. The longer time goes on, the more things get worse. First, it's the Dobbs decision. It's Mifepristone now.

So, it's free abortion on demand because that takes it out of an employer's goodwill. And that means people with a union or without a union, people fighting for workplace justice in whatever manner they can, will have access to an abortion. You're the working poor. You're part of the invisible economy. You might be here undocumented or DACA and you need to have free abortion on demand in order to have bodily control.

Puntorojo: It seems like the attacks on abortion access are never-ending. Media outlets such as the New York Times are downplaying the recent Texas Judge’s ruling. So, can you explain why the newest attack on Mifepristone is such a big deal? What do people across the US need to do to defend access to Mifepristone?

Destiny: Mifepristone has been one of the safest, most effective medications for abortions and miscarriages. It works in conjunction with misoprostol, which, without Mifepristone, is more painful. There's more bleeding, and it's less effective. So, it's a huge, huge access barrier to what we currently have. They could potentially move forward and attack Misoprostol. It would be harder because that medication can be used for other medical conditions. But they've made it clear with this current ruling that they don't care if the medication is safe or not. They just don't want it available. Also, the ability of one single judge to take away that specific type of healthcare from half the population is not democratic at all.

Victoria: I think the main thing that needs to happen is building a social movement in the streets. That's how Roe v. Wade came to pass. It wasn't the goodness in the heart of Richard Nixon in 1973. It came out of decades of struggle. If you go back a decade, it was the Civil Rights Movement. It was the Freedom Rides. It was 1965, the right to vote for African-Americans in this country and the whole movement of voter registration and the Black Power movement. The birth of LGBTQ movement in this country was Stonewall in 1969.

I think the main thing that needs to happen is building a social movement in the streets. That's how Roe v. Wade came to pass.

And then through all of that you had consciousness raised. You had revolutions in other countries and a sense that it could that happen here. And in 1968, the Democratic convention, all of that contributed to Roe v Wade happening. And the only way that we're going to be able to move forward is by building a social movement with all of that. That's not a glamorous answer. That's not a quick answer. That's not the “next election” answer. But, I think that's a fundamental answer.

Kim: I'm thinking now that Mifepristone is endangered. We have to think about the fact that five million doses of Mifepristone have been delivered since it became legal some 20 years ago. Five million doses. So, we're talking about millions of people who need this drug and use this drug to have safe abortions in this country.

The reason I think this is going to shift everything so dramatically is that more than 50% of abortions that happen in the United States are medication abortions, relying in part on this drug. And it isn't even just about this drug. It's about mailing either drug. There's something called the Comstock Act, which is what's being used to make this drug potentially unavailable, and that would, in fact, make it illegal to mail particular kinds of items in the US mail.

And that's what's endangering so much access to medication abortions in Wisconsin. That's the only way to access abortion right now, through a medication abortion that comes to you in the mail. But the difference now will be that although Wisconsin hasn't had abortions since last June 24th, Illinois and California and New York and so on, still have access to abortion. There were 138,000 abortions last year in California and half of those were using this medication.

Clinics in Illinois are now having to do abortions for people who could become pregnant in Wisconsin and all over the south. And so there's already this long waiting list to get an abortion in Illinois. And if half of all abortions that happen in Illinois are medication abortions and can no longer happen, it will become untenable for the states that have legal abortion to provide and support the states that do not. So, this is a national crisis.

And I think that it will change the complexion of the movement because it will impact not just those who are having surgical abortions, but half of all of those people in the entire country who need an abortion every year. But it'll be up to us to figure out whether we can build that movement and to try to build that movement.

In Wisconsin, we just had a very important election for the Wisconsin state Supreme Court justice and the justice who is pro-choice, who is on the ballot named Janet Protasiewicz, won the election. It was an election that cost $50 million. That's three times, almost four times the amount of money that's ever been spent on a state Supreme Court election in history. The last one was $15 million, and that was in Illinois. About 39% of the population that is registered to vote, voted in that election. But more than 60% of those who voted, voted for Janet Protasiewicz.

Before the election occurred, she made it very clear that she is pro-choice. She was adamant and forward about her pro-choice position. Supreme Court justices are not supposed to legislate from the bench. She has already been accused of proposing to legislate from the bench.

Republicans will demand that she recuse herself. And, in an effort to win this election, Protasiewicz already alluded to the idea that she would recuse herself from any cases having to do with the Democratic Party. And she suggested that she would consider recusing herself around any cases that have to do with Act 10, which is the legislation that made Wisconsin a right-to-work state, which basically destroyed our access to public unions for the public sphere in this state, putting us in a position of being much more like the states in the South.

She also made it clear that she was only going to run this one term. And so, a lot of the people who were hoping that she was going to do a number of things for us, including taking on gerrymandering, for instance, are going to be disappointed. She is potentially going to recuse herself from cases related to all of these issues, including voting to overturn the 1849 ban, without using those exact words.

And she won. And it was a big win. It was a hard fought one where thousands of people worked very hard to help her win that seat. And unfortunately, because of that gerrymandering that I was referring to, a politician named Dan Knodl, who was running in a gerrymandered seat in Milwaukee, won the state Senate seat there. And so now we have a Republican supermajority in the State Senate. And a few days before the election, he came right out and said that it would be his project if he was elected to impeach Protasiewicz. And now they have the numbers to do that.

And I think that this political picture makes it clear that politicians aren't going to be able to save us regardless of their intentions, even if they have the very best of intentions because the system isn't set up to ensure democracy, justice, equality, bodily autonomy, safety, humanity. It isn't set up for that.

It's set up to make a very small number of people very wealthy. And to keep the rest of us working every day, trying to pay our rent, trying to pay for our health insurance, trying to put gas in the car, trying to buy $6 a carton eggs, trying to put our kids through college, trying to do all those basic things. And so, I think it is possible that people will feel demoralized by what's just happened with Protasiewicz and with what's happened or what is potentially going to happen to Protasiewicz.

I think people are coming to really understand that solidarity is it, we are saving each other and ourselves and that's really the only way that we're going to win and that lifting each other up, helping each other be safe, helping each other form unions, helping each other speak at speak-outs, helping each other do all the things we need to do just to get by day to day, supporting each other emotionally, becoming a group of people who really care about each other and really want to see a different kind of world is possible is a necessary part of our movement.

And I feel that every additional day that I am a part of MARRCH, I feel that more and more because I saw what happened when they overturned Roe v. Wade. People were on the phone. How do we get out into the streets? People wanted to be in the streets. I want to be out in the streets right now. How do we get out into the streets right now? People feel it in their bones that they need to take a stand.

Victoria: I think coming out of 2011 when Scott Walker won has put us in a situation where it just feels like Sisyphus and the big boulder up a hill. Every single election is like, are we going to get up there? No. You're going to go back down. It's just every single election. So, it's not very difficult to have an argument with people about why it's really important to have a social movement.

I think what it is that people get tired. You know, 2011 is when Act 10 happened and just a correction is Act 10 is for public sector unions and right to work is private sector unions and the state assembly and our state Senate have just been virtually Republican-controlled. And the gerrymandering that goes on in the state just keeps that status quo and has enshrined it—and it's really depressing.

I mean, you start saying it out loud. It's just really depressing. But on the other hand, here we are in 2023 and being out on the street it's like they can't bear it. Yes, they can't bear it. Yet here we are.

Puntorojo: You've talked a lot about the need for a social movement, that it's going to take getting into the streets, lots of people in the streets to win back abortion access. But we don’t see a mass movement for abortion rights yet. What can people do to help create this? What’s one next step someone can take?

Destiny: So back in 2020, I joined my first few activist protests for the Black Lives Matter movement. And I very desperately wanted to do everything that I could to fix things that were going on in this country and make things fair. I donated money to numerous nonprofit organizations that claim to be helping and building a movement for Black Lives Matter. And I also joined the Diversity Equity and Inclusion committees or subcommittees at the hospital that I work at. And nothing was moving forward. Nothing was changing.

It almost seemed like things were getting worse or the status quo was just being strengthened further as time was going on. And then Roe v Wade was overturned and I learned that I had no choice but to delve into political discussions and learn more about politics. I've never wanted to play the game of politics. I never understood it. I thought it was complicated and it just seemed wrong to me. And I know things are much more complex and it's not black and white, but my perspective on the way things should be, is with morals. And I think that's how things should be run.

And I don't feel that the Democratic Party or the Republican Party operate that way. It seems to just be a game that we continue to play in hopes that the lesser of two evils will save us. And I joined MARRCH because this is the first time that I've ever felt like there is hope to make a change. And I think that a social movement is the way. I don't think voting blue or voting red is going to fix anything.

Kim: I'm just going to back up a little bit to what we were talking about earlier. When Texas decided to put a $10,000 bounty on the head of anyone that helped anyone else to acquire an abortion, which was about a year before the Dobbs decision, Victoria and myself and a couple of very close friends of ours made a little leaflet and we went to Library Mall, which is out in front of the University of Wisconsin Madison campus, and we started handing out those leaflets. We handed out five or 600 of those little leaflets, and we asked people if they would like to come together and tell their stories or hear other people tell their stories at a speak-out where you can say what you think about the world. We did that maybe four or five or six different days and handed out leaflets at lunch hours.

And, Victoria, was it Labor Day? So, we had literally less than a week on Friday.

Victoria went around from union to union, and union-member to union-member. And between handing out all those leaflets on campus and whatever magic she did with all the people that she’s worked with all these years, about 120 people altogether came and told their stories, and ten of those people were union people. And it had been decades since I had been to a demonstration where 10% of the people there were from unions and union activists. And so about 120 people came together, and 20- 25 people told their stories.

We stood there, we listened, we cried. We cheered. We chanted. And in my head, it was like, “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding”. Here's what you do! You bring people together and you learn from each other, and you listen to each other's stories and you share your own story. And when you share your own story, it moves people because they have their own lived experience.

And it's not very different from yours. And so really that was recreated later. That's what we did when the Dobbs decision happened. We all met up at the Capitol because somebody said there was going to be an event up there and we all just started to tell our story. And that was on the 25th. And the people who talked to each other on the 25th said, “hey, maybe we should have an event on the 4th of July.”

Let's make a leaflet. Let's hand them out. Let's make a Facebook thing and say, hey, we're going to meet up on the 4th of July. This is the capital. We should have our rights. We're going to go to the capital and talk about what our rights should be or we’re going to tell our own stories. And 400 people showed up to the Capitol with pots and pans and drums and whistles. And we had a big old heavy bullhorn, and we told our stories and chanted and screamed.

And, like Destiny said, we handed around this little notebook. I still have this little notebook that got rained on a little bit. And that's when some other nice person I don't even know from another city, put all that information into a spreadsheet. And we sent out an email to everybody and we held a Zoom call and then we started meeting at the library. We didn't have a name or anything. We just started kicking stuff around.

And Madison Abortion and Reproductive Rights Coalition for Health Care came together, and the fact that MARRCH was the acronym was brilliant, because marching is what we do. It's who we are. It's what we believe in. And then we did a counter-protest to the right to life, so-called right to life, anti-abortion bigots. And we scared them. They were not used to having 60 angry, screaming people, demanding bodily autonomy in their faces. We scared them. It made a difference.

Victoria: Well, back up a little bit. I think that was in October. So from July to October, you know, Labor Day happened. And I've been involved with our local labor council. This was the first Labor Day that we had actually had an event because it had been suspended due to COVID. And even prior to that, for decades, this was the first time that I saw a group with abortion in the name at that event.

So MARRCH got a table, a community table, and it was a way, in a selfish way, easier for me to be able to point unions and working people and worker organizations here in Madison to a group. I mean, again, my goal since the Texas abortion ban was to try to get this out of the corner, the women's corner and a women's issue, and like Kim said, saying the word “abortion”. Getting these stories out, spoken out loud and saying it out loud.

The Democratic Party could not say the word abortion. And saying that word, taking the stigma out of it, taking the stigma out of health care was an important part of being at Labor Day. And then, I think any way that MARRCH could get that banner that ends up in this picture out into the streets, you know, whether it's a festival or whatever way to just get that out there, we did.

Kim: We’ve had about eight or ten different demonstrations that we have called or worked on. But maybe one of the most important of the actions that we've done, that I am the very most proud of, and we'll always be proud of, is that some of our trans members came to a meeting and said, you know, this bigot, transphobe, self-described theocratic fascist, is coming to speak at University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, and a campus group is paying him thousands of dollars.

And that UW money is going to a fascist to speak on campus, to show this hateful movie and then talk about why it is alright to be a transphobe. And we called a counter-demonstration. His name was Matt Walsh. And he's actually toured across the whole country. And we didn't know how many people would come out. We didn't know if it would be a dozen or a hundred.

And in the end, three or 400 people came and we protested Matt Walsh. And we made it clear that MARRCH believes that trans lives matter and that we are going to stand up in front of the bigots every single time. They're not going to step on our trans siblings, period. That's a part of who we are.

And I can tell you I've been to thousands of demonstrations in my life, and I was very worried and fearful about that one because our trans comrades are always at risk. It is a very dangerous place to be. UW-Madison is a very dangerous place to be for somebody without a home or to be a non-binary person or to be a trans person. And I will be forever proud that we didn't think twice. It wasn’t: “do we stand up to Matt Walsh?” It was: “how do we stand up to Matt Walsh?”

Puntorojo: So just to end on a high note: where does your hope come from? The three of you are so committed to this struggle that is both decades old and only just getting started. Where does your optimism and your belief that we can win this fight come from?

Victoria: I don't feel I have a choice. It's a small minority of people on the Supreme Court who are in this position to be able to make these decisions for the vast majority of people in this country who are so needing this. But it's small victories that keep me going, and caring people. I recently organized a panel on why abortion rights are worker rights, and hearing Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, CWA talking about standing on the shoulders of Mother Jones, mourn for the dead, but fight like hell for the living.

I just feel like we don't have time. Not that I don't get depressed, but, there are so many people that I truly believe really want to be out in the streets and fight for what is right. And you will not let these few politicians take over. It's really just feeling that burning drive.

Destiny: I agree that it feels like we don't have a choice. And I think that, especially with the way Mifepristone appears to be going right now, and where things are going to continue to go from there. I really hope and think that people will also start feeling like they don't have a choice anymore, to step up and do their own part for themselves and everybody else.

I definitely get strength and hope from the individuals I have met in MARRCH. I feel less crazy; in a world where the status quo that we live in is what is supposed to be sane, and it's absolutely insane. I don't see myself moving forward in life in any other way, shape or form, other than to continue to fight for a social movement and a better world, because there's no reason that it should be this way other than greed.

Kim: I get asked where I get hope from all the time because I'm the older person in the group. When I got my abortion in England 38 years ago now, a young group of socialists, mostly men, and a young group of women, mostly Palestinian, came together. At that time, I was having a late second trimester abortion and I needed a private abortion. And it was very expensive. I needed what in today's dollars would be like $4,000, and I didn't have any money.

And people I didn't know at all, who I had never met, came together and found $4,000 for me, somebody they didn't know, from the United States, and paid for me to have the best quality abortion, a late second term abortion, and they gave me my life back.

My life would have been ruined. I was raised Catholic. I would have been out of my family. I would have been ruined. I would have had to leave college. I didn't want to have children at that time in my life. I didn't have a partner that I could trust, that I could lean on. I would have had nothing. I would have been ruined if I had had a special needs child then. I could not have cared for that child. And so, I think we need a social movement. I think we need a socialist movement. I’m a socialist.

I think that we should take the money from the rich and give it to the poor and that we should all have real democratic say in our lives every day with a small “d”—real democracy. We try to show that in MARRCH, we vote on what we do all the time because we want all of us to participate as much as possible. Collectively making decisions is important because when you make decisions together, then you really want to build things because your input was taken seriously.

And that's the world I want to live in. I want to live in a world where what I say and think and care about and what matters to me gets taken into account. Maybe that isn't the thing that happens that day, but it gets considered. And I want that for everybody. I don't want that any more or less for me than I do for any person who can become pregnant in Texas or Tennessee or Florida or Mexico or Poland or Ireland. So that's what motivates me.

The Madison Abortion and Reproductive Rights Coalition for Healthcare (MARRCH) is located in Madison, WI. You can see more of their work on MARRCH’s Facebook page , follow MARRCH on Instagram and TikTok @Madison.MARRCH, or email madison.marrch@proton.me

If you’re looking for support in forming your own abortion rights group, Destiny is available for zoom presentations.