In a historic first, abortion rights advocate Renee Bracey Sherman explains a step-by-step process of how to self-manage abortion using pills.
Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe V. Wade stole the constitutional right of women, girls, and people with the reproductive capacity to choose an abortion, affecting millions in the United States of America.
The landmark 1973 ruling’s reversal gave autonomy to individual states to ban abortion. While some Republican-dominated states restricted abortion or banned it immediately after June 24, some states led by Democrats took measures to protect the availability of abortion. Mississippi, Alabama, Ohio, and South Carolina are among the eight states with a ban.
The 6-3 decision to overturn Roe V. Wade will force millions of women to opt for unsafe abortion methods. However, Bracey Sherman comes to rescue abortion seekers at Congress, explaining in detail a safe and legal process of self-managing abortion.
Speaking with TrillMag via Zoom, she said: “the future of abortion rights, which also include transgender rights and gender equity.. feels really grim.” Bracey Sherman added: “we are in the US living under a minority rule in which people who are not in the majority of the country and are not winning a majority of elections, have rigged our system.”
Bracey Sherman, the founder and executive director of ‘WeTestify’, spoke on Tuesday at a House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations panel hearing. Sherman confidentially maintained: “I know some will try the methods that I did,” iterating that she “want[ed] them to know that there are safe methods to self-managing their abortions according to World Health Organisation.”
The absence of Roe also means that doctors and surgeons performing abortions or attempting to provide abortion would be prosecuted or sued. A 10-year sentence and a fine of up to $100,000 will be charged with a felony.
Before describing the method, the co-author of ‘Abortionsplaining’ revealed before Congress how she handled pregnancy at the age of 19 when it was legal to get an abortion in every state. She said: “I didn’t know if I could hold on. I didn’t think I could be pregnant for another moment”. Bracey Sherman hoped it would all go away, but “when it didn’t,” she revealed that she considered throwing herself down the stairs as she “had seen in movies and history books.”
She recalled that one night “I drank an unsafe amount of alcohol believing it would cause a miscarriage.” Adorned in green- a color that advocates support for abortion rights- Bracey Sherman disclosed: “It didn’t.”
“It is one mifepristone pill followed by four misoprostol pills dissolved under the tongue 24 to 48 hours later, or a series of 12 misoprostol pills, four at a time, dissolved under the tongue every three hours. There’s no way to test it in the bloodstream and a person doesn’t need to tell police what they took.”
Although Nevada, South Carolina, and Oklahoma have laws to criminalize people for self-managing abortions, legal experts say it’s unclear if those laws would even stand up in court today.
These medications are highly regulated and complicated to access now that the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade.
In a conversation with TrillMag, the Beyonce of Abortion Storytelling expressed her disappointment in the federal government, believing that the federal government is not necessarily taking the steps needed to protect the right to vote “so that people can vote this out”.
She further added that the federal government’s investment and engagement with the police industrial complex and military-industrial complex “means that people who try to speak out are having their votes, voices and rights suppressed.”
Bracey Sherman explained that there are ways President Biden and the incumbent government can legalize and protect abortion rights. “We have been asking President Biden to declare a public health emergency which would basically allow more latitude from our different government agencies to make abortion more accessible”, she commented. “But he has not done it yet and he won’t”, she mentioned.
Expressing her disappointment over the “really archaic, old rule that was used a lot to tamper down on civil rights movement and black liberation movement”, Bracey Sherman said that Filibuster is preventing Women Health Protection Act (WHPA) from being passed. “What is really frustrating about it is that that there are two democrats in the Senate that are upholding a really old, archaic rule”, she said.
The filibuster rule requires at least 60 votes to have a discussion over legislation “instead of having 51 votes to pass legislation.
Bracey Sherman stated that state governments need to step up and reinforce the legalization of abortions in their jurisdictions and their state borders. “We need them to commit money to help people who need to travel for their abortions and help them afford abortions”, she demanded. “At the end of the day, there are always going to be people that cannot travel because they are undocumented and because they are in state custody or something else or cannot get time off work or are on payroll-that would bring on more criminalization”, she noted.
“Lastly”, she said, “stop prosecutions of people for this outcome of their pregnancies including people who self-manage their abortions”.
In her interview with TrillMag, Bracey Sherman stated that the United States should be “absolutely” met with international pressure. “People, I don’t think, are understanding how much the US ant-abortion movement is exporting these anti-abortion policies and that they are really pushing White-Christian nationalism through colonialism all around the world”, she said.
She hoped American politicians are met with protests while traveling the world “every step of the way because it’s not just the way they have allowed abortions to fall in the US, it’s the way they are controlling and maintaining lack of abortion access all around the world.”
Bracey Sherman concluded that anybody who wants and needs an abortion “I hope that they know they are supported and loved and there are a lot of people who are working really, really, really hard to make sure they get the care that they need.” She commented that everyone should have abortion access irrespective of the case, as a distinction is not fair.
