People who came to the clinics or came to the fundraiser knew what was happening in their state but didn't realize the profundity of what was happening all over the place. But the third thing [was] that at every single clinic I went to, somebody who worked there - it could have been the doctor, it could have been the receptionist - said, "Thank you for coming, no one ever comes." And it broke my heart...I've used these services, I've had an abortion, I got to be where I am because of access to making choices to have the life I wanted.
What's blinking red on my radar is the fact that for people who prioritize abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, or voting rights, those things are coming out of state legislatures, and some of the laws on reproduction stuff is coming out of city council, and so what's getting at me is the fact that there's just a fundamental lack of understanding that these laws are happening and being created by people who often won by ten votes in a midterm election.
Legislators could easily be out-voted if people voted in midterm elections. The fact that we don't talk about all this stuff [ abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, or voting rights] very much because Donald Trump and the general election is sucking all the air out of the room - if people aren't paying attention to their state, they're certainly not paying attention to what's happening in other states.
It's really nice to see that, looking at all sides of the abortion issue - from the person who doesn't want to have kids so they're going to have an abortion and that's not traumatic for them, to somebody who loses a wanted pregnancy, to somebody who has complicated feelings because of their religion. We can talk about all of those complicated and individual stories and not feel like there's any one abortion story that's right or wrong.
To really start talking about a narrative where there's no good abortion or bad abortion; there's only the abortion that you need, I think that message is really resonating and changing the landscape of how we talk about it. We're really moving forward.