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The Spark: Reproductive Rights Matter to Everyone
Welcome back to The Spark, our monthly celebration of how people just like you are creating positive change, one meaningful step at a time. The Spark is generously supported by Laura Rice. Sign up to Reasons to be Cheerful’s weekly newsletter here and you’ll get The Spark in your inbox at the start of each month.
In this issue:
A text-chat hotline for people to talk about abortion
Peer-led networks make contraception available on college campuses
Getting men into the conversation about reproductive rights
‘It’s never just about the abortion’
When Angi Connell starts her shift on Exhale Pro Voice’s free text line, she lights a scented candle, puts on a relaxing playlist and opens a platform on her computer that allows her to text message confidentially with people across the U.S. and Canada.
Over the next two hours, Connell might text with a mother of two processing her decision to terminate a pregnancy, or someone about to take a first dose of medication to induce an abortion. The texters aren’t only people who have had abortions themselves: Early in her involvement with the volunteer-run organization, she chatted with a father who wanted to support his teenage daughter after she ended a pregnancy.
“It’s never just about the abortion,” says Connell, who is now the director of peer counseling services for Exhale Pro Voice. “There’s so much more there.”
Through these one-on-one conversations, Connell and her fellow peer counselors are offering an ear to anyone looking to process the psychologically complex experience of going through an abortion, which can linger long after a patient leaves a clinic.
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“We do need community, and we do need to tell our stories,” Connell says. “Exhale can do that for individuals: Help name the emotions and unpack things slowly.”
Terminating a pregnancy is never a black-and-white decision, explains Exhale’s co-executive director Jess Bryski, and the polarized rhetoric and stigma around abortion can make the emotions around a termination even more intense.
In the U.S., this has been exacerbated by restrictions to reproductive health care since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, with 19 states implementing near or total bans on abortion. Dealing with high levels of demand, the remaining health care providers have limited bandwidth to offer mental health services after a termination. That, Bryski says, is where peer support comes in.
Exhale Pro Voice first launched in 2000 as a phone hotline staffed by volunteers. Over the years, the organization developed an approach that creates a judgment-free environment for people to anonymously share their stories. In 2020, amid concerns about financial stability, the service switched to text-only, and transferred talk services to partner organization Connect & Breathe.
Volunteers join from across the U.S. and Canada, and go through 30 hours of training where they learn strategies for active listening, framing open-ended questions and creating space for people to open up. “There is an art to making people comfortable and giving them the space to just tell you their experience,” says Bryski.
The need for emotional support related to abortion seems to be growing, according to Bryski. Since the end of Roe v. Wade, Exhale has seen a 200 percent increase in volume. Text line volunteers responded to 4,000 unique conversations in 2024.
The issue of abortion is personal for many Exhale volunteers, including Connell. She learned about the organization a few years after she terminated a pregnancy while in an abusive relationship. She signed up for a training and started volunteering on the text line in 2021.
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Connell recalls a mix of emotions related to her abortion — both feeling that it had been the right choice for her, and also that it was tied up in the trauma of her circumstances around that time. Though she never shares these details with the people she texts with, she’s found that providing emotional support to others has helped her process her own experience.
“It was like, ‘I can’t really talk about my story yet, and I’m still feeling kind of like I’m in my own healing period, but how can I give back?’” she says. “How can I, like, pour into someone else and take my pain into purpose?”
Texting works well for these conversations because it’s discrete and broadly accessible, explains Bryski. Some people become repeat texters, though they are not paired with the same volunteer. While the service provides support in the short term, it’s not a long-term form of therapy.
Still, Bryski says, texters report that the brief encounters are a big help. “We hear a lot that people are relieved to have found a safe place to land.”
Learn more about Exhale Pro Voice here, and similar volunteer-led peer support here.
Students help each other access contraception on campus
On certain college campuses, particularly those with religious affiliations, contraception options can be limited. Plan B is available over the counter at pharmacies, but the price tag — from $35 to $50 — can strain many students’ budgets.
A student group at one university in the U.S. has handed out more than 150 boxes of the emergency contraceptive Plan B since fall 2024. Credit: Rebekah Zemansky / Shutterstock
Now, college students around the country are helping their fellow classmates access contraception. Peer-led networks have been emerging from the University of Texas-San Antonio to DePaul University in Chicago to make sure their classmates have access to reproductive health resources. Some student groups are assembling “just in case” kits that contain educational materials, condoms, pregnancy tests, and the morning after pill; A Loyola student group has handed out more than 150 boxes of Plan B since fall 2024. Campus organizations can get support through national initiatives, like the EC4EC project of the American Society for Emergency Contraception.
Making men a part of the conversation
More than 60 percent of men in the U.S. believe abortion should be legal, yet as a rule, men have not been at the forefront of the movement for reproductive rights. That’s now changing, as more men are organizing and hosting conversation groups to encourage their male peers to use their voices.
During the 2024 election, groups like All Above All and Men4Choice urged male voters to take action on reproductive rights — work that has continued beyond the election. Men4Choice, for instance, recruits fellows and trains young men on how to talk to their peers about abortion and misogyny. Graduates of the program hosted 240 small group conversations in their communities around the country last year.
The post The Spark: Reproductive Rights Matter to Everyone appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
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