real women
Me, Gracie Ladd, Dr. Kristin Lyerly at exhibit opening, March 3, 2026
As I’ve worked on this project, people occasionally ask if I plan to contact the women whose stories I tell. No, I always say. It feels somehow presumptuous. Even in the cases of the women who have clearly chosen to speak about their experiences to help illuminate the devastating consequences of Dobbs, I have still felt: what if I reach them on a bad day? When the trauma of their experience is weighing especially heavily? But then a few things happened. I connected with the organization Free & Just, a national network of storytellers who testify about their experiences with abortion bans. I asked if they would contact Gracie Ladd, whose story I tell in Volume 7, to see if she would join a panel we held the night of the exhibit opening. So, on March 3, I met for the first time a woman whose story I tell. Also on the panel was Dr. Kristin Lyerly, a Wisconsin-based OB-GYN and abortion rights advocate. She shared to social media a beautiful reel highlighting four stories in Volume 2 about women she knew or had known: Amanda Zurawski, Kate Cox, Kaitlyn Joshua, and Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman. Kaitlyn responded to the reel. Lauren Miller, whose story I tell in Volume 7, found my post about her story. Most surprising and moving to me was discovering that a new Instagram follower was a woman whose story I had not told. But I dug a little deeper and found a way to include her story in the project, which pleased her. Also, Free & Just published a Substack interview with me, prompting Anna Nusslock, whose story I tell in Volume 2, to contact me to ask if I was interested in exhibiting the project in California. So many names. So many women. I catalog all of them here because I am still registering: these are some of the real people—women in Wisconsin, California, Louisiana, Texas—who have been traumatized by these laws. For the first time since I began this project barely a year ago, that weighty reality is sunking in. What an honor to represent the stories they have so bravely shared. Never have I felt so profoundly what it is to be a feminist.