Wendy Davis, who unsuccessfully ran for governor of Texas, and also unsuccessfully took a run at Congress last year (beat by the reprehensible Chip Roy), is not whining.
She is the founding director of Deeds Not Words, a non-profit that seeks to empower and activate the voices of young women in public and political discourse. As stated on the website, its Mission is “Creating today’s Changemakers and tomorrow’s leaders by galvanizing the power and building the leadership of young people through organizing, policy-making, art, and voting” and its Vision is “An intersectional community that stands for women’s social and economic opportunity, access to reproductive health, freedom from sexual assault, and equal representation in every space and at every level. Founded by Wendy Davis and led by YOUth, we’re uniting women to push progress forward — not through talk. Through deeds.”
As I penned last Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a bill, pushed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Governor Abbott, and House Speaker Dade Phelan, that bans abortion the moment a fetal heartbeat has been detected, making it one of the harshest abortion bans in the country.
If you’re in Texas, Deeds Not Words has organized a rally and march scheduled for May 29 to let the entire state know not to mess with Texans’ abortions. As stated in the details section of the Facebook page, “While the Texas legislature remains fixated on banning abortions instead of using its legislative power to address Black maternal mortality, housing insecurity, expand Medicaid, and many other issues, Texans still have the power to rise up and support one another.”
Share this with any Texans you know and you can also donate a few bucks on either the website or the Facebook page if you’re so inclined.
Another group of women who have been speaking out on this subject for a few years is writer (opinion writer for the NY Times), comedian, and activist Lindy West, along with Amelia Bonow, and Kimberly Morrison. They founded Shout Your Abortion, a social media campaign and grassroots movement for women to share their stories in art, media, and community events. It was created in response to the United States House of Representatives defunding Planned Parenthood in 2015.
Interviewed in The Fold Mag, Bonow said, “Shout Your Abortion is not a directive or a political imperative. We don’t believe that speaking out is a better or more righteous path, or that anyone needs to speak publicly about their abortion in order to be a ‘good feminist,’—we simply believe that we’d all be better off if conversations about abortion were normalized. For some, speaking publicly about their abortions would be unsafe, traumatic, or just not worth it for any number of reasons. We are simply saying that the expectation of silence is killing us, and telling the truth is much healthier, both for individuals and society at large.”
And Lindy West on Trevor Noah a couple years ago said, “Anti-choice people are not trying to stop abortion. They are trying to legislate who can and cannot have abortions. Because conservative politicians – their wives and mistresses and daughters are always going to be able to gat an abortion somewhere. All criminalizing abortion will do is keep people trapped in poverty for generations. That’s the goal, and if it wasn’t the goal they would spend their time and money on comprehensive sex education, free birth control, and free contraception.”
And now, some sensitive guys looking tough…