Organization encourages women to shout their abortions

Shout Your Abortion grew out of a popular hashtag on social media

When Amelia Bonow had an abortion in 2014, she found it to be incredibly empowering. She never felt sad, guilty or conflicted. That ultimately led her to start encouraging others to discuss their abortions as well. 

“I was really just inspired by getting to participate in abortion care,” Bonow said. “Essentially, I had this moment of kind of realizing this is an ancient thing that women have been doing for each other.” 

It radicalized her in some ways. At the time, she bartended and volunteered at a suicide hotline. Around then, antiabortion operatives misleadingly edited and produced videos that attempted to frame Planned Parenthood employees selling fetal tissue. It upset Bonow that other Democrats seemingly hedged when they had to defend the organization. 

There was always a circuitous defense–something else that Planned Parenthood did that should offset the abortion care it offered. Bonow wanted to defend it outright and remove the stigma. 

“I was super, super pissed about all of this,” Bonow said. 

So she spoke about her abortion. Then others did. So she wrote a status update on Facebook about her own experience and included #shoutyourabortion

Her friend used it on Twitter and it went viral. 

“There was of course a huge range of experiences from stuff that was really liberating and people feeling good about their experiences like I did,” Bonow said. “And also people who were totally heartbroken and it was a super horrible and difficult thing, but they were glad they had the choice and they were ready to talk about it.” 

Reporters interviewed her and then she took the campaign and gathered more stories, told through many methods and art forms. She got funding and started a nonprofit that took its name from the hashtag. 

“We've really impacted the cultural conversation in a way that I'm super proud of,” Bonow said. 

Now the organization is in its seventh year. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe, Bonow and her staff decided to move more into the organizing space where they will help people build support for abortion rights in their communities. 

“We can still have abortion access in this country in post-roe America, but we need people to start participating and supporting access actively in their communities,” Bonow said.