Need Help Getting an Abortion? r/abortion Has Answers

That means I have a four day weekend coming up and I am pretty excited and I have nothing planned and I am very excited about that. Probably we'll do some baking question mark . Um, yeah, dunno about that. We'll see. Uh, but mostly it's gonna be pretty chill. I have some things I need to do to prep before a trip that I have coming up, but yeah, I'm just really looking forward, looking forward A quiet, chill weekend.

Um, and you know, honestly, with that I have kind of a long interview that I'm so excited for y'all to hear this week . But yeah , so I think I'm just gonna like cut out the chit chat and jump right to the interview.

I'm so excited to have on the podcast , uh, today , today Ariella messing with the online abortion resource squad to talk to us about misinformation and the amazing work that Oars is doing on the our abortion subreddit. Um , y'all, it is such amazing work and I am so grateful to have Ariane here to talk about all of the amazing things that ORs is doing.

So with that, let's just hop right into my conversation with Ari . Hi Ari . Thank you so much for being here today.

Our abortion is a public discussion board hosted on Reddit where people from all over the world , um, go every day to get information about how to access abortion or to process their abortion , uh, emotions or to ask medical questions or to seek , um, out community about their abortion.

So like, I'll give you, and, and so like anytime people I know, at least anytime I need information about pretty much anything, I go to Google, I write something in, and you , uh, the results are often like, just like either SEO driven or they're all based off of the same random piece of information that was published years ago.

Or like, even just yesterday, I was looking up like, in New York City, where can you donate winter clothing for migrants ? It was astounding how difficult it was to find updated information in a , just in a clear way. If you wanna donate, here are your options.

Instead, it was a mess of broken links and , um, outdated information that then was corrected further down and I didn't get an answer in the end and it felt very frustrating . And take that with abortion , which is highly stigmatized information and policies are constantly changing and , um, there's also like intentional disinformation about this.

While there , you know, if we keep on with the comparison , like I don't think there's intentional disinformation about where to donate winter coats , but there is about abortion. So you have to navigate misinformation, outdated information, just like unhelpful information and details and then disinformation.

And so it gets really difficult to navigate and add in the stress that people feel or , and the urgency as well as the lack of, you know, a lot of people, no matter how pro-choice their friends and family are , or they feel , you know, isolated when they maybe need an abortion and , uh, in a way that they don't, let's say if they need a recommendation for, you know, a primary care doctor or if they need knee

surgery , uh, if you need knee surgery, you probably feel more comfortable posting online or asking around, Hey, does anyone know of a knee surgeon ? But , uh, for abortion, people unfortunately , um, live in a world where that's not , uh, something that most people do. And so it feels extra important to have that be available on the internet.

And I know that for myself and for many people I know there's sort of like this internet meme about do you add the word Reddit to the end of your Google questions ? Um , because that will take you to Reddit where you'll find more specific and niche communities where people are with like experience . Like if you ask like , what are the best XYZ restaurants in this place , you're gonna get an SEO answer .

But if you ask on Reddit in that city's subreddit, you're gonna get answers from real people . And so that's what we're trying to do is to make sure that when people do that kind of Googling, go to Reddit, they're getting really helpful responses.

And if abortion isn't something you're super familiar with, like you might not not have the language to, that'll get you to the right places. Meanwhile, navigating the disinformation and misinformation that's out there, like it , it really is hard to find the right information , um, when you're just Googling.

And it's one of the main issues that I see with pro-choice, you know, pro-abortion resources on the internet, is that they're often not clear about who their target audiences and who they're aiming at .

And , and not even just explicitly, but I feel that they often , um, I I try to help organizations and people make sure that their content, like that they're clear to themselves on who their audience is and who they're prioritizing , um, and getting out the information that helps that person understand rather than putting things in political context or , you know .

Um , and so when you Google , even if you knew , like let's say you Googled like how to get an abortion in New York City , you might get all these articles about the New York City abortion Access Hub, or you might , uh, get companies that provide abortion services on the internet in New York, or you might get articles about , uh, the, you know, RHA from 2019 or, and so you're not getting like, but what people

often want when they write in how to get an abortion in New York, what they want is somebody to say, step one, do this, step two, do that. And then also to understand what else they need to know. And like people often, myself included, like we don't often know what we wanna know , like , so we might ask one question and we want an answer to a different one .

And so on Reddit , um, people sort of , they tend to write often a long , uh, a long post with a lot of details. Sometimes the details are focused on things that aren't , um, as necessary for the story as other details which are missing or they ask a very short question without any context.

And so when I train volunteers to , uh, provide support on Reddit, a lot of that work is about trying to ascertain like what are the questions that people are really asking or what do they really need to know and what , and , and how is that different from what you read explicitly and how and how can we provide high quality support, not just answers to questions.

Um, but I stumbled on the abortion subreddit and what I saw was that people were asking questions , um, like real practical, like, I have an abortion next week, but I dunno how to pay for it or I dunno what to do. They said there's an abortion fund. What is that? Like, things that were real , uh, or like, there's no Planned Parenthood where I live, so what do I do?

And, and these were like real questions that have like solid simple answers that I knew and I was like, why are these, like, they're just sitting there, like people sometimes were getting really good answers, but often they were getting a lot of like meth answers is what I would call it . So it's like, I need an abortion, what do I do? Call Planned Parenthood? And I'm like, right , that is not helpful.

Um, and so it , it was very uneven and I, I remarked to , uh, someone I knew from the repro world , uh, Kate Ash of the , uh, digital Defense Fund of I , I said to her like, why aren't organizations like putting together resource guides ? Because it's true . Like you just just have to sort of like know what you're looking for on the internet already. Like why isn't there just a go-to guide?

And also why isn't like a big organization just like answering these questions? Like at the time I was , um, very involved as an abortion fund volunteer. And so I knew things from that perspective, from the perspective of someone taking in the calls from people who already contacted us because they contacted a clinic and then they were told to call us. And so they had already found us.

And so I didn't know about like what was the experience like of all these other people who hadn't yet reached us. Um, and so I started to see that like, whoa, and like, all these people don't even know about these resources.

And at the time there were, there are a lot of resources that I now know of that feel like very, you know , kitchen sink to me that I didn't know at in 2019 , um, because I just like, again, was on a different side of the equation, but what I saw was like, okay, people aren't dunno about any of these . Like what's the point if the people aren't able to access them or dunno about them?

And also, like, it was in 20 , it was early May, 2019 when, which is when Alabama passed the first , uh, abortion ban. It wasn't, it didn't go into effect but caused like a lot of mass panic online. And what I saw was like a lot of people who wanted to help, but not a lot of ways to , but not a lot of people being able to say like, okay, here's what you can do to help.

And then what happens in response is like, you know, this happens every once in a while is like, then people are like, okay, let's start new organizations. And then people at current organizations are like, please don't do that. Please join the ones that exist.

But then like, no one has the capacity to take on all of those new volunteers or like, or especially not to take on the kinds of volunteers that wanna do things that your organization doesn't actually wanna do , like house people in their homes, et cetera . And so I just felt like, oh wow, we have like all these people who like wanna help and then they're like, don't have the information or skills necessary.

And then we also have like all these people that I know who are like abortion fund volunteers and , uh, work at clinics and all this stuff , and they have all this hyper local and specific knowledge that's just sort of living in their own brains , but it's not being shared. And um, to be honest, I didn't even really think through it often that much.

I just said to Kate like , why isn't anyone answering these questions? And she's like , I mean , we can . And she set up a slack and from that day on, like , I think it was May 3rd, 2019, we just said , we'll answer , we'll make sure everyone gets the answers that they need . And it's, you know, developed and evolved a lot since then and has a lot more people coming to it.

And we have much stricter rules now , but in essence we've just said like no one gets , uh, left there without the work , the support that they need. And we stuck with it. I've never, we've never stopped, we never took a day off, we never took an hour off.

Last month in December, we had , according to Reddit's data , 93,000 individuals sought out support , or at least we're reading the subreddit with over 1 million hits , um, in that month. And yeah, people are coming more and more and relying on us more and more.

I've heard of people being told by their clinics to reach out to us, which I see as , you know , a compliment as like , uh, evidence that we're doing a good job and also a seriously disappointing reflection on this world in which we live and that the support that people are getting from many of the resources that ought to be providing .

Um, I've been guilty of like giving unsolicited advice to lots of people in lots of situations where I shouldn't, but if it's like physically impossible for me to be like, this is how , like to see someone ask a question that I know the answer to and not answer it. Um, and so it just became a bigger and bigger thing in my life until it became my full-time job.

But I do think we're changing, it's hard to see because I do it every day .

Yeah. But it's now been, you know, it'll be five years in May and I really do believe in this work now, and I really do believe that we're not just like providing immediate support to people , which I don't mean to say just because it's really important on its own , but we , I'm seeing very clear evidence that we're making also , uh, bigger long-term impacts on in the field, which is pretty cool.

Um, because in March, well the whole world was just, you know , collapsing. But we , there were as many as like 14 maybe I wanna say states that , um, were trying to , uh, use the , the pandemic to close down abortion clinics . Um, and they were often like , the law was changing minute by minute . So like, it would be a ruling from a judge.

They would say, you have to open the clinics and then the clinics would possibly be opening the next morning, but then it , they would've to close in the afternoon. And so things were in , in so much fluxx that nobody knew what to do. And also that no one was updating information online.

That was when I first made like the first couple days of the pandemic, I kept saying like , okay , but like , why is there no one compiling this information so that there's like one place you can go and like see like , hey , this state clinics are open, the state clinics are closed. What do you do if they're closed?

Um, and whenever I would ask someone if they were gonna do that, they would say like , oh yes , like our NAL page says that . And I'm like , yes , the NAL page for your state . Like you can't expect people to know about these resources. Like if they're the person that's gonna go on the NA website for their state to get this information, like I'm not sure that's the person you need to be targeting.

You know, I need a nay was also doing a good job at like , at this , especially like if you looked up your state , but no one was just like giving like a step by step , here's what you do by the way, you can still get an approach . And I said , okay , I'll just make the website . Um , and so I set up like covid abortion com and um , I just put like , okay , don't freak out .

You can still get an abortion. Here's what we're gonna do . And then I listed like anytime there was an update , I , I put like , this has been updated on this date . I was updating like hundreds of times a day and it was like listing like these are the states where this is happening and just like as clearly as humanly possible.

And then I had a step by step for like what you do if you're in a different state or if you're in those states. And also like how do you get , um, birth control pills if you can't , uh, people were like moving around, right?

Like moving in with your parents all of a sudden, or you were in college and then you had to go home and nobody knew how to like get medicine because you couldn't go to the pharmacy and it was just like, there were practical issues, right? Uh , a lot of practical concerns that they couldn't wait. And so I just like made a website with that information and it was like we were getting like thousands of hits a day.

And then the second thing that changed with Covid is that eight access couldn't send pills from India and eight Access was still sort of like ramping up at the time. They started in like 2018 , but they were , they were getting pretty popular by 2020 . And so , and at the time they were sending all their pills from India and India stopped exports . There were no shipments leaving India.

And there was , um, a lack of communication, clear communication about when that was gonna change. First they said like two weeks. Everybody said two weeks. Yeah . Yeah . We were just going home for two weeks. Um, but uh, nobody knew what would happen and , and the pills , um, were at that time before covid were taking like three-ish weeks to come anyway. And so it's a lot of time to be waiting.

So that's when Plant C sort of like exploded with popularity , um, because people were going there and they had a list of other vendors where you could purchase pills on the internet, but those sites were also getting shut down multiple times a day. And so it was changing by the minute.

And so that's when we really had to like buckle down and like figure out what we were gonna tell people how they should navigate things. And then that's when also like people, it was like a vast shift from people gonna clinics to people self-managing and self-managing , um, without instructions. Uh, a lot of the websites that sell pills like send really wrong directions if they send any at all.

So that's when the first shift also happened to like, okay, we have to tell everyone in different states different things , like based on where they're , so like , let's get organized on that . And then we also need to like get an alignment about helping people with the tiny details of self-management .

And then the second shift was , um, Texas's SB eight and , um, navigating both telling people like and mis correcting misinformation about , so-called bounty hunting and uh, what's legal to do and then helping like people in Texas navigate where to go. And then it turned into Oklahoma as well.

And so it's really been like a stepwise shift , um, a stepwise changes, like not really just like one day it's the next, the changes , but every time that something big happens or a state passes some bill, even if it doesn't go into effect , like we see our numbers rise, we see the panic rise on Reddit, we see the confusion.

Um, and that's why I really harp on like journalists to not to be more careful with how they use their words and how they describe things and with , uh, sort of these like flashy tweets that are meant to elicit clicks and to , um, because what happens when people read that is that then they share that information and it goes viral , but it doesn't help anybody, right?

Like it's so important to say like in the same tweet, not four tweets down the thread that like , abortion is still legal in the state . Here's how you get one . I'm like always harping on everybody to understand the difference between the language in the about what just gestational limit is and what it actually means.

And so it doesn't matter if the bill says 20 weeks because they're defining pregnancy as 20 weeks post fertilization. So that's 22 weeks . Like those details matter because when people are 19, 20 weeks and they think, oh no, I can't get an abortion anymore, it's really important for those people to know, yes, you can.

Um, and so like all of these things have just gotten like amplified and the volume has increased tremendously of course, but it's mostly the complexity that's changed after covid. Like it used to be like someone would say like, how do I get an abortion in my state? And it was very much like, were a lot of like routine things. It was like, yeah , you go on , I need an A or abortion finder.

You search your clinic if you need money, you ask and then they call help you call an abortion fund . And now it's like people posting , like posting a complex story about like having to pay for, you know, aid access and not having the money and then being like, hold on , okay , first did you take a pregnancy test ?

Because like a lot , especially young people or like teenagers like often haven't or, or not at risk of pregnancy or , um, you know, the stress is high . Um , or like then , okay , but what state do you live in ? Okay . Um , I know you don't want your parents to know , okay , we can get you enrolled in Medi-Cal , you don't need to go this way .

Or Oh , you actually wanna a clinic it sounds like because you don't wanna do this at home , like let's help you get to clinic .

And people have like really complex situations that we have to help them navigate, especially later care , um, is much more complex now, but it's, there's just like a lot more moving pieces and you have to have like a deeper knowledge of like each state and each, like service has like really tiny details that are important to understand .

So like I give all the kudos in the world to my volunteers who have been incredible, like when I started this, when after jobs we said like, okay, you're gonna have to do a few , like two shifts a week. The shifts were six hours , but we said you'd only have to spend like an hour of the six online . That has changed dramatically.

Now we have volunteers doing three hour shifts , they have to be on the whole three hours and they're , there are volunteers doing as many as four shifts a week . There are moderator volunteers who are on 12 hours a day and we've, and they've had to learn so, so many details and such complex things. Like sometimes I have to remind them like , you're not a physician and you do not need to know all this .

You need to , like , you need to be able to spot when things are abnormal and be able to tell people where to go or what to conduct and serve as like a triage. But basically the volunteers are just incredible. Like we desperately need to , um, train more and we have a lot of people interested in it. And I've been putting it off because unfortunately, like training more volunteers is a huge , um, undertaking.

They need, like our current volunteers have done a lot of their like learning on the job , so to speak. And I've had , and that has been possible because I have spent the last two years of my life like glued to my laptop , um, giving feedback and and support to them , uh, and being very on top . But like that is not , uh, a system that is a long term . Um , they need more training.

Like new volunteers will need more training before they get started. They'll need more resources to reference , um, and more processes in place to make that happen. And to do that, we just need more staff. And so it's a chicken and egg situation of like, we can't , um, get more staff until I have more money to pay staff .

But also , um, I'm spending a lot of time doing things like supporting volunteers instead of getting , doing fundraising because yeah, one of the things feels more urgent than the other . But the volunteers, I just wanna say like, are incredible. I'm so proud of them and , uh, I probably don't tell 'em enough how amazing they're, but also just like they're spending so much time and giving so much of their lives.

Like they're parents, they're professors, they're lawyers, they volunteer for lots of other abortion organizations and they're giving so much of themselves , um, to do this. And it's, it's not just that it's hard work and also time consuming. It's like it really does , uh, tax you emotionally.

It's hard to witness and to , and to feel responsible for this amount of like , like alleviating this amount of suffering and trying to help people through really difficult moments in their lives and affirming that them in the , and explaining that this is not their fault. This is, they deserve better than this. You know?

Um, I, we try to make sure that everyone on the subreddit understands like A feels has the information that they need, but b is feels emotionally supported and C like understands that like it shouldn't be this way without allowing the conversations to head down a path of like political ranting and et cetera. But to say like, yeah, you're , you should be able to get an abortion where you live easily paid for.

This should not be a whole thing . This should not be so difficult. Like people constantly post on Reddit saying things like, I, I , I know I should be thankful that like I live somewhere where abortion is still legal . And I'm like , no . Like you do not have to feel grateful for that . That is so far . Like those , those are crumbs .

Like you deserve to like have excellent medical care and to not feel alone and to feel , um, and to not feel shame .

And to also like , not not have to go to the internet , like to Reddit strangers for medical advice, you know, but when you can't feel like you can't even trust your doctors and honestly sometimes like for good reason, not just because they're anti-abortion, like I'm happy that more people, more providers are starting to add like abortion to their services or they'll be willing to prescribe.

But we've encountered like quite a lot of people who come to us because like , they're like , oh, well I was told to do this and this and it's not working, working . But then I started googling and I'm finding like that everyone else is using their pills quite differently than I was told . And unfortunately, like a lot of those situations, the provider was wrong. And it's disappointing to see.

And so like, people deserve better. Like I'm happy that we're providing support, I think we're providing excellent support , but people deserve to be getting that kind of support from their medical providers, from their family, from their communities, and also if they want from Reddit. But like, this doesn't , it doesn't have to be this way and it doesn't, it's not perfect anywhere, I'll tell you that.

No, nowhere in the world

So before we wrap up, let's go to my usual ending and talk about what can the audience do ? What right now , what can my audience do to help ?

Like no matter what your sex is , your age , whatever , like if you care about this , go right now and find out and make , consider it like , okay , let's say you just got a positive pregnancy test. What would the steps be to get the, that the care that you need? And like, make sure you're like intimately familiar with that because don't tell me like, oh, I would call Planned Parenthood. Like , do the work.

Like take it step by step . Try Googling, try finding, okay, where's the closest clinic? How much would it cost? Okay, then if you have health insurance, go look up. What does it cover? All of these things, because the best, you can only be helpful to others once you are understand like your own situation. Um, and then I tell people like, then your next step is the people in your life.

So I can , if I had a dollar for every person that said like, I think my mom or my best friend is pro-choice, but I don't wanna tell her that I need an abortion because I don't want her to judge me . And then of course there are these people who are like, I would never judge the , you know , so make make that clear in your lives .

Like bring up the say like , I know how to get an abortion , abortion in this state and , and don't give it as like an empty , like a Facebook thing of like , anyone can stay with me . Like say it to like talk about this with your family, with your friends . If you have kids, like tell your kids like , it's not just that I support the right to abortion.

Like if you ever need an abortion or one of your friends does, you can come to me, I'm a resource. And then actually be your resource. Like actually know your stuff. And then like let's, you know, let's say you have employer based health insurance and you find out details about its coverage or lack of thereof of abortion, like then that's when you can start, you know, change . Like talking about making changes, right?

You can only make changes once you know the situation .

Uh , you can , when I was a student at UHS Hopkins, I uh , found out that the student health plan at the , uh, arts and sciences and engineering campuses did not cover abortion, but the student health plans and the employer health plans, the employee health plans at the other , at that campus , uh, the , sorry , the student plans , uh, health plans at the medical campus did cover abortion and this , the employee

health plans at all campuses covered abortion, which means it wasn't like a political thing , it wasn't intentional, it was just like, it was just not covering it. Um, and that's a problem, right? Um, and so with some efforts and a lot of pestering that got changed and what they said was like, oh yeah, it wasn't oversight.

It wasn't oversight, but there were many years of this and that is a problem and oversights affect people's lives. And so now all the student plans and all the employer plans do cover abortion at the university. Um, and then the next step was like making that known.

Um , and then, and giving clear steps about how to do that, how to use it, how to get privacy on your plan, like , and I can go on and on, but finding out, making sure you've got your , your details straight in your own state. Then you have to learn about resources. Like you don't have to know everything about abortion, but you do have to know like where to point people.

And um, one of the biggest reasons I see people go to our abortion is because there's a flood of information , even if it's all good, like being told like six different websites to go to to learn about SMA is not helpful in particular because a lot of those websites are about like learning about how to teach about sma, they're not directions for how to provide it , as well as things like , um, some of them use

have conflicting information . So like, I'll give you this example. Um, women First Digital has two separate websites that they're responsible for and that they made. One is how to use abortion pill org and another is Safe to choose org .

And um, they serve slightly different purposes, but how to use abortion pill , I see it listed all the time for people in the us but it gives you , uh, a set of instructions for how to use abortion pills that it's not , uh, has not been updated to reflect the current evidence base .

So it tells you to use only four pills of Misoprostol after the miry , even up to 13 weeks when the best protocols in the United States, like the most updated protocols and the research shows that if you're nine weeks pregnant or more, you should take a second dose of four misoprostol . Um, and so like giving people too much information can often just like lead them down more confusion.

Uh, so become familiar with the resources and don't send people down at Go Wild Goose juice . And, and I also tell people like, the one of the best things you can do for my volunteers, but for everyone is no . When you're out of your depths and learn to say that and to say, I dunno the answer , but I'll help you find it. Or I know who might know and I'll tell you to contact them , don't give your guesses .

Don't your conjectures about , uh, arrests across state lines . Maybe one day like that is dangerous. Learn to say, you know what? I dunno how to do this, but I'll help you figure it out. That's all you need to be able to do and to know like who's the next level up ? And I say it all the time, like , I'm not a lawyer and this is not, these are very complex details, but here's a phone line for that.

But not to just say, when anyone has a legal question, give them the legal number because not all the questions need to be answered by a lawyer who's prioritizing urgent cases, right? So learning to assess like what resources to give people. Um, and then in , so if people do that, that helps us, right? Because we have to do less work because people are getting support from people they know.

Um, and then if you're a Reddit specifically, like if you're someone who uses Reddit, please, if you see someone , um, who needs abortion help send them to our abortion . Uh , unfortunately people on Reddit often get sent on wild goose chases or get sent to other subreddits. It's like enormously helpful to have people referring them to us , uh, so that we don't have to go searching for them.

And then if you wanna help or is like more specifically , um, what we need ultimately is money so that we can hire staff but also hire like experts. So , um, I right now am the only person, only staff person at oars . And um, it's not the best. Like I should hire a computer developer, a computer programmer, instead of like trying to teach myself how to like, create these like apps that will help us, right?

That's an example, but like, that's not my area of specialization. It's not an efficient way to do things. And so what we need is money. And that doesn't mean like you don't have to be able to give , but what you like most people can do is say , huh , I can give 25 , but lemme also find four friends to give $25 . Explain to them why I think this is important and then ask them to find four friends, right?

Or , um, on our Act Blue page , you can also sign up to fundraise on our behalf. You can set a goal of 500 or anything you want and then send an email to your friends and say , I think this is an organization that you should support and here's why . And those small donations are what we run on.

Right now we're running entirely on small donations and right now that's , uh, we have about $4,000 a month from people who are signed up to give monthly donations. And then we usually get a couple thousand more in individ , like one-time donations. So , um, if we could get a few thousand more in monthlys , like that would make a huge difference for us to be honest.

And so that is doable and people can help us , uh, do that. If you can help find three friends who are not in the repro space but would be wanting to give 25 each . Um, and then lastly is , uh, learn the laws where you live and not just what the laws , but also what the access . And then start thinking about changes.

Talk to your doctor , ask them if they provide abortions, ask them why not , um, start making changes in in your own community because there is no state in the United States where access is amazing. Where, where things are perfect. I can give you a list for every single state in this country. You name a state and I'll give you a list of , of policies that need to , and ways that things can be better.

And it's not just about legislation, it's also about individuals. Ari ,

And , um, it is just such important work . And you know, I I definitely, if you can support oars , uh, I I do and it would be really wonderful if you could join in and donate to them because I know they could use the help. And I guess with that, I'll see all of you next week. If you have any questions, comments, or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email.

You can reach me at jenny jn n [email protected] , or you can find us on social media. We're at re pros. Fight back on Facebook and Twitter or repro FB on Instagram. If you love our podcast and wanna make sure more people find it, take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Or if you wanna make sure to support the podcast, you can also donate on our website at re pros fight back.com .

Thanks all.