Bomb Cyclone! There’s this first week of 2018 in two words! Or do you prefer Fire and Fury? If it’s extremes in weather or extremist assholes running this country, those phrases sum up the new abnormal—and how it applies to repro rights too.
Even while he compared the size of his “button” with Kim Jong Un, Donald Trump was firing all the remaining members of the Presidential Advisory on HIV and AIDS. And we learned even uglier details about the Trump admin crusade to keep immigrant teens from accessing abortion care. Oh, and renewed assaults on repro rights and healthcare. Happy New Year!
But we also found out that when the cold gets brutal, the best thing to do is TURN UP THE HEAT! The folks at Bustle gave us an ass-kicking guide to expanding reproductive freedom at the state and local level in 2018, while Rewire gave us a rundown of just how much got accomplished in 2017. Our friends at Preterm in Ohio introduced billboards that destigmatize abortion with phrases like “Abortion is a second chance” and “Abortion is a blessing” And Nebraska introduced some great pro-choice license plates to counterbalance those lame anti-choice ones. No matter how cold it gets, we’re gonna put the people who are trampling our rights on Arctic blast.
And that’s the week that was.