AP News: MAC and Goats 🐐
Hi Abortion Access supporters, this is Alison at MAC here. Over the past few months, the Associated Press has shadowed and interviewed staff at MAC and some of our closest movement friends to get a better understanding of the work we do and how we're all connected. Going into the interview, I just thought I would be talking about how my relationships with people like Pamela Merritt, Robin Marty, and Meg Stern have become more like family and how we collectively need that to survive. I wasn't prepared to be featured to this extent, but apparently my goats were particularly interesting to the reporters!
She started this job with the Midwest Access Coalition in November, and she said it feels good to keep her head down and do the pragmatic tasks of booking flights and telling pregnant people to feel no shame.
“That fills me up a little bit more than constantly being on the defensive, and I need to be filled up a little bit more right now because I was on the defensive for a really long time,” she said.
The clients are often among the most vulnerable, those who’ve never flown on a plane before, who have no phone, no car, no credit card to book hotel rooms. She doesn’t ask questions about what brought them to this point, she said, but many offer explanations anyway: homelessness, domestic violence, fetal abnormalities during pregnancies that were very much wanted.
“Your heart just breaks for people,” Dreith said. And so she tries to make their travels as painless as possible.
One woman from Arkansas said she’d never eaten White Castle and she’d heard it was delicious, so Dreith booked her a hotel next to the restaurant. The woman said it tasted as good as she’d always imagined.
Read the full AP article here.
Some of the hundreds of emergency contraception boxes we distribute throughout the Midwest are in my little free library next to my canned goods and books:
A box of emergency contraception tablets, also known as the "morning-after pill," sits in the bottom left corner of a roadside pantry near the southern Illinois home of Alison Dreith. The pill box sits alongside farm produce she has canned and books. She said she and her friends were excited when someone took the first box. She keeps reserves in her attic to restock the pantry. (AP Photo/Martha Irvine)
And here is the great Pamela Merritt, founder of ReproAction and executive director of Medical Students for Choice, holding a baby goat!
Pamela Merritt, right, holds a baby goat at the farm. Both women have worked for years on reproductive rights and are part of a network of people who vow to maintain access to abortion, even as more states restrict that access. Merritt says, "We've been through so much together, politically, professionally and personally." (AP Photo/Martha Irvine)
THANK YOU to everyone for the amazing support we've received these past few weeks. So many people, local and national, have fundraised for us including Alexandria Ocacio-Cortez and Bon Iver! Check out our Instagram to see what other awesome MAC fundraisers are doing to support abortion access for all <3
MAC has been working closely with a volunteer pilot and long time MAC volunteer to create a new organization that will provide free medical flights for providers and clients in remote areas who are forced to seek abortion care far away from them. We've been on some fun test flights and Elevated Access is currently going through many pilot applications thanks to a viral Tik-Tok. Hopefully soon there will be flight coverage for most of the country!
Our Executive Director Diana Parker-Kafka spoke at City Hall this month for the Mayor of Chicago's announcement of the Justice For All Pledge. Chicago will be providing $500,000 for abortion procedure and practical support funding and will call on businesses, philanthropists, and other municipalities to invest in the reproductive autonomy of our neighbors who will be traveling long distances to get the abortion care they need in Illinois.
“Because of the economic and racial inequities in this country, most of the people reaching out for our support are people of color, and most of our clients are parents. As a result of a lack of living wages and universal childcare, the barriers they have worked with us to overcome are immense, cruel, and continue to grow. It cannot be overstated how much the need for our services will grow once the protections of Roe and Casey are removed from surrounding states. We are estimating that in this country, land of the free,100,000 people next year will be to access the human right of bodily autonomy. But in the words of Mariame Kaba, hope is a discipline, and we’re asking everyone to practice it with us.”
Speaking of hope, we're going to end with some EXCELLENT news. We're going to have two brand new clinic partners! CHOICES is opening a new location providing essential abortion and birth care in southern IL this summer and Partners in Abortion Care is opening a clinic in DC. Our friends at both clinics offer exceptional models of care and we're so grateful for their commitment to expanding abortion access when this country needs it most.
Hear and read about them below:
Why We Are Opening a New Abortion Clinic in Maryland -Morgan Nuzzo, 5.20.22 Washington Post
I graduated Alton High School with Jennifer, and used to let Jen borrow my car at lunch! How many other abortion champions were the class of 1999??
In Solidarity,
Alison Dreith
MAC Director of Strategic Partnerships