Outrage and horror spread across the globe on Friday when the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade – a vital decision made in 1973 that legalised abortion in America.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said: ‘Because of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Party and their supermajority on the Supreme Court, American women today have less freedom than their mothers.'
Meanwhile, president Joe Biden added: 'I believe Roe v. Wade was the correct decision as a matter of constitutional law and application of the fundamental right to privacy and liberty and matters of family and personal autonomy. It’s a sad day for our country but it doesn’t mean the fight is over. 'We need to restore the protections of Roe as law of the land. We need to elect officials who will do that. This is not over.'
As marches surged across the States and protestors gathered to demonstrate in numerous cities throughout the country, many more women also took to social media to share their powerful abortion stories.
‘This is the face of a woman who has had an abortion,’ TikTok user Rocio Castillo told her thousands of followers. ‘It was hard, but I don’t regret it'
'I had an abortion when I was 19 years old,' 33-year-old mother of two, Caroline Parker, shared on TikTok. 'I controlled my own body, controlled my own decisions and did it in the UK where it's human rights. Why I did it is none of your business, it's nobody's business why anyone would do it. It's not a decision that's taken lightly.
'I'm glad I did it. I'm happy I had it available. Today is a very sad day for American women. My daughter is American. I now live in America. And it's sad for my son as well that he's going to be raised in a country where men make decisions about women's bodies.'
Elsewhere, a Christian priest, Lizzi Green, challenged pro-life stereotypes often linked to religion when the Roe v Wade draft was leaked earlier this year by talking about why she had terminated two pregnancies: the first after she was sexually assaulted and the second when her pregnancy endangered her life.
‘I'm a Christian priest. I've also had two abortions,’ she wrote. ‘One, incredibly early, after a rape that left me broken. The second, very much later, my precious Ahava, who should be in nursery right now, but her pregnancy was killing me.’
‘Abortion saves lives,’ she continued. ‘But I've come to the conclusion that actually, people know this. You know the astonishing complexity of pregnancy, you know people get coerced, you know people are simply too poor to cope, you know all the myriad reasons someone might need safe access to abortion. The sickening thing is you just don't care.’
Across the internet, women showed the importance of their liberty to choose to have an abortion and expressed concern at those potentially unable to follow in their footsteps.
‘This is the face of a woman who has had an abortion,’ TikTok user Rocio Castillo told her thousands of followers. ‘It was hard, but I don’t regret it…It doesn't matter why I had them. I'm sharing because I think we need to start putting faces to the women who had them.’
‘When the procedure happened, I quite literally felt the life sucked from my body,’ another woman, Jennifer Arroyo, said on the app. ‘I made that decision because it was the best decision at [that] moment. And as much as it hurt, I don't regret it…[this is the] hardest video I have ever made.'
Ending Roe won't make the end of abortion—it will just mark the end of safe practice. Globally, 23,000 women already die every year from unsafe abortions, according to the World Health Organisation – a number experts have warned will rise now this reversal has taken place.
Women will continue to brave judgement, vilification, and hatred to share their stories online in the hope that humanising the right to choose will eventually determine abortion as a fundamental right, one that needs to be re-instated, rather than a debatable moral quandary.
‘My abortion is as personal as my birth, and just as much my right as an American woman,' Arroyo said on TikTok defiantly. 'Don't stay silent.’