A Year of Abortion, Every Day

Our work is just starting

Abortion is all over the media today: pundits predicting what happens next, profiles of those who’ve been denied care, graphics of polling data and state maps of where abortion is no longer legal. The anniversary of the end of Roe means abortion rights is in every newspaper and on every cable news show. And it should be! 

But Abortion, Every Day will be the only place still writing about it on Monday. And Tuesday. And every other day after that. 

When the anniversary passes, the coverage will slow down—but we’ll still be here. Because to us, every day is an important one for abortion rights. I know you all feel the same. And thanks to you, Abortion, Every Day has had a bigger impact than I ever could have imagined or hoped for. Here’s some of what we accomplished over the last year:

Exposed the anti-abortion movement

Our investigation into Texas’ abortion ‘complication’ reporting law uncovered how conservatives fabricate data in order to make abortion seem dangerous. (We also revealed how they plan to cast doubt on maternal mortality data.) We uncovered conservatives’ plan to open a national network of crisis-pregnancy-center-led ‘maternity homes’, and caught the president of one of the most powerful anti-abortion groups in the country claiming that rape prevents pregnancy “because of your body’s natural response.” The newsletter even revealed how the largest and most powerful anti-abortion group in Texas scrubbed its website after their political director was arrested for solicitation of a minor. 

Uncovered Republican extremism

We broke the news that South Carolina Republicans were pushing legislation to make abortion punishable by the death penalty; it was a full month before the mainstream media caught on. The newsletter spoke to a Tennessee woman whose state representative told her that IVF was a felony, flagged Arkansas legislation that would have women to be prosecuted for ‘causing’ their miscarriages, and were the first to report on Texas legislation seeking to make pro-choice websites illegal. We also broke the news that Republicans were trying pass legislation that would create a government-run website that collected data on pregnant women.

And in one of the stories I’m proudest of, Abortion, Every Day exposed the Alabama Attorney General’s plan to arrest women who took abortion medication using a ‘chemical endangerment’ law. The resulting local and national coverage forced him to publicly reverse course.

Tracked the consequences of abortion bans

We followed the nationwide care crisis: from the shuttering of maternity wards and an OBGYN exodus to story after story of care denied. We broke the news of a young Texas woman unable to get an abortion despite her fetus having developed without a head—profiling her journey to New Mexico, where she traveled in secret from her friends and family.

The newsletter highlighted when women were being refused their prescriptions—and told you which pharmacies were denying them. We looked at the skyrocketing depression rate among teen girls, and how college students were avoiding anti-choice states. Abortion, Every Day spoke to state lawmakers dealing with the fallout of abortion bans, and featured expert voices to make sure you understood the attack against mifepristone in detail.

Revealed anti-abortion strategy

Abortion, Every Day showed how conservatives were dismantling democracy in order to ban abortion—from the war on ballot measures to bills allowing the state to remove district attorneys who declined to prosecute abortion cases. We followed the activists who used local ordinances to pass abortion bans in pro-choice states, blasted the lawmakers introducing empty ‘exceptions’ to paint themselves as softening on abortion, and analyzed how conservatives were preemptively blaming doctors in anticipation of the first reported post-Roe death.

We predicted that Republicans would claim their bans were ‘reasonable compromises’—a strategy the mainstream media caught onto eight months after Abortion, Every Day’s first piece on it. We wrote about conservatives redefining the middle, how activists were shifting their language to avoid using the word ‘ban’, and warned about legislation to “streamline” adoption—bills that would make it easier to terminate vulnerable women’s parental rights.

We reported on the war against birth control: from insidious TikTok campaigns telling young women that hormonal contraception was bad for them, to sly legislative attacks conflating emergency contraception and abortion.

Led the national conversation

Abortion, Every Day surfaced the story of a Nebraska teen who was arrested for abortion after police obtained her Facebook messages—a case that has become the primary national example of how law enforcement can use digital data to criminalize women. After we published pictures of early abortion, the images went viral, helping to debunk long-standing anti-choice disinformation. And when journalists suggested a 10 year-old rape victim’s story was a fabrication, Abortion, Every Day called them out—and started a conversation about the way mainstream media isn’t prepared to properly cover abortion. (An investigation later found The Washington Post fact-checker whose article fueled attacks against the girl’s doctor had lied about his reporting.)

Again and again, we reminded readers that Americans support abortion—despite the mainstream ‘both sides’ media intent on reporting that the country is evenly split.

Help Abortion, Every Day keep going & growing

This is where I ask for your help. I’m so proud of all the work we’ve done in the last year—but I’m also exhausted. As you all know, it’s a tremendous amount of work to get the newsletter out every day! And as we’ve grown in size, we’ve also grown in terms of reader expectations: I’m getting hundreds of messages a week from people who want to share their story, politicians eager to explain what’s happening in their state, and activists who want to reach the incredible audience at Abortion, Every Day. Which is wonderful! I want to hear from everyone and write about everything. But I don’t quite have the capacity yet.

Thanks to reader subscriptions, donations, and the all-around wonderful community here, I was able to bring on our amazing researcher, Grace Haley. Which has made a huge difference! But now I’d like to expand even more. I’d love to bring on another reporter and—eventually—a community manager. I want to turn Abortion, Every Day’s not-quite-a-podcast into something a lot better and more formalized. And I want to have the time, energy and resources to continue to bring you the newsletter while doing more of the columns I love.

Because while today’s anniversary will likely mark the end of a lot of mainstream coverage, our work here is just beginning. We’ve already accomplished so much together: please consider helping me take the next step.

If you haven’t signed up for a paid subscription yet, please consider it! If you’ve already upgraded, you can support Abortion, Every Day even further by gifting a subscription, donating a subscription to someone who couldn’t otherwise afford it, donating directly, or sharing the newsletter with friends or on social media. Anything and everything helps!

If you can’t afford a paid subscription, just let me know and I’ll give you one; I never want affordability to stop someone from joining the community. But if you can afford the $5 a month, signing up is a terrific way to show you value independent feminist media and the work I’ve done here over the last year to keep abortion rights in the spotlight every single day.

Regardless of how you support Abortion, Every Day—even if it’s just by reading!—THANK YOU for being here. You all have made the last very shitty year bearable. I hope my work has done the same for you. x Jessica