Purpose
We are Great Plains Action Society, an Indigenous-led non-profit of folks living in the Great Plains region, resisting colonization and re-Indigenizing the land and the world around us. At Great Plains Action Society, our mission is to address the ongoing harm caused by settler-colonialism. One of the deepest harms that that colonization has brought is the disrespect of and violence against bodily autonomy, especially non-white, non-cis-hetero, non-male bodies.
The loss of abortion protections has been devastating for women and afab folks across the US, but many BIPOC people saw it coming. That is because, truthfully, abortion has always been on this teetering foundation. Never truly accessible, especially to BIPOC, rural, immigrant, and low-income peoples. Now with red states passing as many restrictive bans as they can get away with, people need to mobilize more than ever if we want to keep what rights we still have and gain back the rights we’ve lost.
At the foundation of every successful movement is information. “Knowledge is power” isn’t just a cute cliche phrase to be taken lightly. You cannot fight what you do not understand and expect to win. In this zine, we’re covering some brief histories, their impact on our communities, and wins from the past to help people new to the cause get caught up, understand the dynamics that are at play, and maintain hope and care as we navigate what’s to come. Also included in this zine and on our website are myriad resources so you can do your own research and find your way to supporting the cause.
Our fight for reproductive justice is a fight for cultural sovereignty and also a fight for the safety and wellbeing of our communities. Keep learning, keep having hard conversations, keep your friends close, and remember that learning and speaking out ARE resisting.
With Love
The GPAS Team
Written in January 2025
Abortion Access
A Brief History of Abortion
Abortion has not always been a legal issue as it is today. For the first century of colonization, abortion was legal in the English colonies, even though it was frowned upon. Black and Indigenous women were the main providers of reproductive care, followed by some white midwives. Smear campaigns by White, Christian male doctors in the 1860s were specifically targeted at Midwives and black women to be able to capitalize off of this care, control slaves, and control women during the suffragette movement. Lobbying campaigns successfully got abortion banned in every state by 1910. The American Medical Association (AMA) was founded with racist, sexist standards to further these causes, (they have since issued an apology for the group’s previous policies and actions in June, 2008).
In response, women across the country started organizing. Planned Parenthood is famous for their work in reproductive healthcare, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it was founded in the midst of that early organizing in 1916. This comes right after the women’s suffrage movement was coming to a close.
Margaret Sanger, Ethel Byrne, and Fania Mindel opened the first birth control clinic in New York for 9 days before they were shut down under the name Planned Parenthood. Groups like Planned Parenthood, clergies, and individual women organized protests, convenings with doctors, information campaigns, letter writing, propagandizing, lobbying campaigns, and law suits, ramping up intensity as time went on until 13 states repealed their abortion bans in the late 1960s.
Photo: Margaret Sanger, her sister Ethyl Byrne and supporters on the steps of a courthouse in Brooklyn, New York, on January 8, 1917. This photo was taken during the trial accusing Sanger and others for opening a birth control clinic in New York. There is no identification of the photographer, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.
It should be noted that during this time, most of the names and faces you’ll see as prominent figures of the movement, especially early on, are predominantly white and that’s because this took place at the same time as the civil rights movement. Some of those notable women are:
Some Notable Women are:
Emma Goldman, American Anarchist, famous for her work fighting for women's right to vote
The previously mentioned Margaret Sanger, Ethel Byrne, and Fania Mindel
Dr. Helen Rodriguez Trias, a public health expert, women's rights activist, and first Latina director of the American Public Health Association
Norma McCorvey or "Jane Roe", the "Roe" of Roe v Wade and her attorney, Gloria Allred
Professor Denise Oliver Velez, Activist and Community Organizer, Instrumental in engaging the Young Lords Party in the fight for abortion access in Chicago
Mary Calderone, whose work overturned AMA policy that kept physicians from giving info about birth control to patients.
Even with the wins from these women and more, it’s publicly acknowledged by the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center (NAWHERC) in their Indigenous Women’s Reproductive Rights report in 2002 that “the pro-choice movement in the 1970s was primarily led by white feminists and did not address the issue of providing funding for abortion. Therefore, the cost of abortion services remains a major barrier for many women, in particular for low-income, immigrant, minority, and Indigenous women.”
It’s a good report, you should read it. Those circumstances DID NOT change policy wise between 2002 and the overturning of Roe v Wade. These gaps in access left anyone who fit into any of those categories vulnerable to legislative retaliation, such as forced sterilization.
Forced Sterilization
Forced sterilization was an attack on bodily autonomy and part of a huge eugenics effort. While we’re going to focus on the forced sterilization of Indigenous people here, it should be noted that many "undesirable" groups of people were targets of these efforts. PBS has an article about it entitled “Unwanted Sterilization and Eugenics Programs in the United States” from 2016, should you want to read further.
After the US shoved as many Indigenous people as they could onto reservations, reservations became public health nightmares-- with no infrastructure, resources, or support. It was at about this time (1870s to 1900s) that the US government was switching gears from outright killing Native Americans to assimilating us through banning our cultures, language, and ceremonies.
Sterilization was a perfect way to genocide indigenous people without direct physical violence. It also had the added bonus of potentially washing the government’s hands of the responsibility for the public health crises they caused as soon as indigenous people no longer existed. Instrumental in this was the Indian Health Service (IHS).
Above: Saskatchewan, Canada, 2019.
Left: Young Marchers Protest the forced sterilization of Latina women, 1971.
Instances of forced sterilization of indigenous people were not limited to 1970-1976 but this 6 year period is when the most sterilizations took place and is usually what people are talking about when referring to this topic. In 1970, the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act was passed, kicking off the sterilization of somewhere between 25-50% of AFAB indigenous people of childbearing age. Almost all without informed consent. Doctors and physicians would administer sterilizations sometimes unnecessarily alongside other routine procedures or would coerce patients by not telling them what forms they were signing, among other manipulative tactics. A complete violation of bodily autonomy. Time Magazine has an excellent article about it called “A 1970 Law Led to the Mass Sterilization of Native American Women. That History Still Matters”.
I must emphasize again that forced sterilization was NOT limited to 1970-1976 in the United states, nor was it limited to indigenous peoples, or even contained to the US. Indigenous people have been forcibly sterilized by the US government since the 1930s. Black, Latina, and other BIPOC peoples experienced similar targeted efforts, as did disabled people. Canada has been forcibly sterilizing indigenous women since their Sexual Sterilization Act in 1928 and has continued to do so even as recently as 2018, as seen in Harvard International Review’s article “Coerced Sterilization of Indigenous Women in Canada” by Skylar Smith. Smith wrote, “The eugenics movement, based on the objective of advancing a “superior” white, Christian way of life, attempted to limit Indigenous populations threatening their ideals.”
The Hyde Amendment (1976)
The Hyde Amendment was passed in 1976, implemented officially in 1980 after being ruled as constitutional. From Planned Parenthood’s “Historical Abortion Law Timeline: 1850 to Today”– “The Hyde Amendment is a discriminatory and racist policy that prevents federal dollars from being used in government insurance programs like Medicaid for abortion services (except in instances of incest, rape, or life-threatening risk to the pregnant person).” It should be pointed out that these exceptions exist in the current iteration of the Amendment, but as it was passed, the Hyde Amendment was an outright ban with no exceptions. It should also be noted that you have to PROVE the pregnancy qualifies for one of the exceptions, which is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT.
From the same article: “The legislation was created by Rep. Henry Hyde. ‘I would certainly like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion: a rich woman, a middle class woman, or a poor woman,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the [Medicaid] bill.’” Fucked up.
In addition to blocking Medicaid, it also limits care that can be received through government run programs like the Indian Health Service (IHS) and everything else under the Department of Health and Human Services (such as public hospitals and some state run health insurance programs).
Firstly, Medicaid disproportionately serves black, latino, indigenous, and LGBTQIA+ communities, and therefore the Hyde Amendment specifically blocks a majority of these communities from access to abortions even when they were legal. This financial barrier sucked, so local groups started grassroots fundraising to pay for local people to receive reproductive care services. These are called Abortion Funds. This grassroots fundraising popped up in various places around the US. It’s hard to pin where and when the first Abortion Fund was created, but they started gaining a lot of traction back in 1993 when the National Network of Abortion Funds was founded. Today there are hundreds serving Americans across the country.
WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND BOTH USING AND SUPPORTING ABORTION FUNDS LIKE THESE:
Secondly, the IHS has a historically bad reputation around providing abortion care services and other health care (See Forced Sterilizations), which is exacerbated by the Hyde Amendment.
The Indian Health Service is an Agency under the Department of Health and Human Services, it provides all indigenous peoples who are of a federally recognized tribe and their descendants with free health care and advocacy. This already poses problems, as many tribes aren’t federally recognized and it can be difficult to prove descendancy under the Blood Quantum system (not all indigenous people, even descended from recognized tribes, are federally considered indigenous because of this system). That said, it’s still the principal healthcare provider and advocate for many indigenous peoples, especially on reservations.
The 2002 Indigenous Women’s Reproductive Rights report from NAWHERC goes in depth about how 85% of IHS service units that were surveyed were not in compliance with the Hyde Amendment, mostly by not providing abortions at all or by not providing covered abortions during the specific exceptions laid out in the current iteration of the amendment. This could largely be due to the IHS being chronically underfunded, thereby limiting what services they can provide. Even by 2022, there were no abortion clinics on tribal lands. Meaning for people whose only option or only affordable option for healthcare was the IHS, abortions might as well have been outright banned.
After the Hyde Amendment passed, a 2002 study from North Carolina showed that when public funding for abortion disappeared, 37% of the women who said that they would have had an abortion if it were paid for carried their pregnancy to term.
There have been exceptions where the Hyde Amendment was not included in several state budgets, but the Biden Administration was the first to federally omit the Hyde Amendment from their budget planning in 2021. An NPR article describes the amendment as a “rider” to an annual appropriations bill. This means that every year there is a chance to fight to omit this amendment, but most often it gets lumped together with other budget bills that are too important to postpone.
Dobbs vs Jackson on Tribal Lands
Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization is the name of the case that famously overturned Roe vs Wade. The impact has been felt across the country. In the year since Dobbs, sexual assaults nearly doubled, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline (NDVH). Dobbs is actually not the first reversal attempt, there was a failed constitutional amendment in 1982 called the Hatch Amendment that would have federally banned abortion, clearly part of the legislative retaliation against abortion rights passing. With its failure, a more long term strategy seems to have been implemented.
Dobbs was a culminating chess play in that larger strategy, as seen through all 3 of Trump appointed justices voting against abortion rights, and the various trigger laws across 13 red states all banning abortion the day the Dobbs decision came out. Not coincidentally, these states are home to some of the largest Indigenous populations. Even just in Iowa, a week before the Dobbs decision, the Iowa supreme court ruled that the state constitution doesn’t protect abortion rights, a reversal from a 2018 decision.
Despite over half of Iowans polled (57%) showing support for maintaining abortion rights, all of these consecutive decisions— along with a republican ruled state congress, supreme court, and governor— paved the way for Kim Reynold’s 6 week ban passing in 2023 and it’s eventual implementation in 2024. With the Hyde amendment at play, and no abortion clinics on tribal lands, whatever access indigenous people have is dwindling.
In the immediate wake of Dobbs, there was a call from some people online for tribes to start providing services, but there’s more than the Hyde Amendment to worry about on that front. If tribes were to attempt to open abortion clinics, they would need to be privately funded (hyde amendment) and in compliance with local, state and federal regulations of health care– a massive undertaking that requires a ton of infrastructure, money, and time. Additionally, tribal doctors are licensed through the state. If doctors were to provide abortions on tribal lands in red states, where they’re needed the most, they risk losing their medical licensure. Only doctors with completely unrestricted licenses are allowed to work with the IHS.
A 2022 supreme court decision (Castro-Huerta vs. Oklahoma) gave states the jurisdiction to prosecute non-natives who commit crimes against Indigenous peoples. This opens the door for states to prosecute abortion providers. No tribe has yet to announce any plans to establish abortion clinics on tribal lands as of January 2025. Only one tribal leader has ever suggested opening a clinic on tribal lands: Cecilia Fire Thunder, who was Tribal President of the Oglala Sioux in South Dakota in 2006, and she was impeached for that specific remark, likely in no small part due to the fear and distrust many indigenous people still feel towards doctors because of forced sterilizations.
Darren Thompson wrote an excellent piece on the subject, entitled “Abortion Clinics in Indian Country?”. He writes, “Author’s Note: The commentators, influencers, and assertions that tribes can provide a solution to providing abortions is harmful and false. Positioning Indigenous people and lands to be the savior of American rights is the continuation of the same story that has romanticized and misinformed people for centuries.”
We’d like to assert that this has to be a group effort; The weight of providing, fighting for, and protecting abortion rights must be a collective effort across all residents of Turtle Island. It is not solely the responsibility of Black or Indigenous women to save anyone, we must collectively save ourselves AND each other.
Missing and Murdered
MMIR Overview and Stats
MMIR stands for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives, and it refers to the human trafficking, domestic violence, sexual harassment and assault of indigenous peoples that happens at high rates across nations. This is an expansion on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women because as more research is slowly rolling out, it’s been found more and more that these rates of violence against indigenous people are at ludicrous levels, regardless of gender or age.
To quote the Bureau of Indian Affairs website: “For decades, Native American and Alaska Native communities have struggled with high rates of assault, abduction, and murder of tribal members. Community advocates describe the crisis as a legacy of generations of government policies of forced removal, land seizures and violence inflicted on Native peoples.” While this crisis is simultaneously occurring in Canada, Australia, and other countries, our focus in this zine is on the US.
Indigenous people as a demographic are usually left out of important national conversations and studies, yet we suffer some of the highest rates of violence, sexual assault, suicide, and depression in the country. If you are indigenous, this will not be news to you. What might be news is that the already ludicrous rates that you see in most statistics are largely under-reporting and the orgs behind the stats will acknowledge that they are under-reporting due to lack of data.
So why is this happening?
Firstly, violence against indigenous peoples is how this country began. Depending on what history books you’ve read (and more relevantly, which school districts you grew up in) you might recall something about small pox blankets, the killing of buffalo, a series of futile wars between tribes and against white colonizers, or the trail of tears being contributing factors to the near extinction of indigenous people in the US. While the framing itself is problematic– erasing any contemporary reference to indigenous peoples today, current fights for sovereignty, and more; calling us extinct and ignoring the thousands of people living today both on and off rezs; acting like we’re monoliths, all one people, when we were hundreds of tribes with distinct traditions and cultures; speaking on our history like the violence was inevitable– it should be highlighted that the only way textbooks and classrooms talk about indigenous peoples is through the violence that’s been enacted upon us. It’s so normal, it’s almost the expectation.
The Lost Generation
Boarding schools are a huge source of fear, anxiety, and disconnection for indigenous people today. Kim Neal and Abby Kelly explain it pretty well in Neal’s article for Noble and Greenough School, entitled “The Stories of a Lost Generation”. Neal writes, “Residential schools were an extension of forming reservations to “civilize” and “assimilate” Indigenous Americans, Kelly explains: Their dehumanizing tactics erased culture, instilled fear and set off reverberations of intergenerational trauma. Native children taken from their homes were stripped of their birth names, language and customs just as they were their traditional clothing and long hair. Ironically,’ Kelly points out, ‘the cutting of one’s hair in Indigenous cultures often represents mourning; in this case, the forced shearing marks the death of identity.’ As Kelly points out through showing survivors’ video testimonies, these crimes are shockingly recent: one man weeps as he recalls his native language being beaten out of him in the 1970s. Others recount inhumane, unsanitary conditions, malnutrition and psychological and sexual abuse.”
Boarding schools came about because of the Indian Civilization act fund back in 1819 and the Peace Policy of 1869. Many denominations of Christian churches started these schools with government funding and the express intent to culturally genocide the indigenous kids they forcibly removed from their homes. Their motto was “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” According to The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, nearly 83% of school-age indigenous kids were attending boarding school (that’s 60,900+ children) by 1926.
You might have heard mention of mass graves of missing children being found at boarding schools both in the US and Canada. Many of the children who attended these schools never came back, as the conditions were so bad, hundreds died from malnutrition, illnesses, the cold, and abuse. In recent years there has been a huge calling across tribes for the bodies of these children to be brought home and laid to rest on their lands by their families. Those that did survive and graduate, would return to their families as "utter strangers".
Above: Students inside a classroom at a Native American boarding school, 1900.
Below: Hundreds of students take a class picture at a Native American Boarding School. Taken from ACLU NorCal site. Date unknown.
The crisis of Indigenous peoples going missing, being murdered, experiencing violence both in our homes and out in the world is not new. Instead, what the MMIR movement is doing is activating and organizing people, using new tools (aka social media and tech) to finally meaningfully change what’s already happening. Bringing all of these missing person’s cases, boarding school victims, assault cases, murders and other crimes to light so we can’t be ignored any more. But even with new eyes on the cause and a wonderful amount of connection that’s being fostered, between indigenous communities out of solidarity and relatives of victims out of support, more road blocks have sprung up.
Jurisdiction
Legislatively, the subject of who even gets to investigate these crimes gets messy. The Supreme Court decided that Indian tribes have no inherent criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians back in 1978. That supreme court decision (Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe) covered a very narrow part of criminal law enforcement on tribal lands and implied, BUT DID NOT SPECIFY, that wherever tribes didn’t have jurisdiction, the federal government (Read: FBI) does.
Since 1978, some states have taken over some jurisdiction; as in Minnesota where, in 1998, the state declared criminal jurisdiction over any state crime committed by a non-Indian against a non-Indian on American Indian lands and, with certain exceptions, any state crime committed by or against an American Indian on American Indian land, EXCEPT on the Red Lake or Bois Forte Reservations. In 2022, as previously mentioned (pg. XX), Castro-Huerta vs Oklahoma gave the state jurisdiction over non-natives who commit crimes against Native American peoples on Tribal Lands. That means tribes CAN NOT prosecute non-natives who commit acts of violence against their own people in any state. Native American Rights Fund (NARF) is actively tracking jurisdiction laws on their website with a breakdown of each state.
Castro-Huerta vs Oklahoma is an attack on tribal sovereignty and a detriment on indigenous tribes ability to bring justice for victims of domestic abuse, assault, abduction, human trafficking and more. This is a direct roadblock, by law enforcement, in indigenous people’s ability to fight the MMIR crisis. Not to mention how much of this violence is directly caused by police.
Indigenous people are “fatally shot” by police more than any other race of people. This was found in a study by the CDC published in 2023 looking at data in 2020, entitled “Surveillance for Violent Deaths — National Violent Death Reporting System, 48 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, 2020”.
Indigenous people are 5x as likely to be fatally shot as white people and almost 3x as likely to be fatally shot as black people. Police brutality has been such an explosive conversation in the US since George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Supreme court decisions like Castro-Huerta vs Oklahoma make instances of police brutality against indigenous peoples even more easy to sweep under the rug. It’s grim how much was spent, at the time of writing, on finding the assassin behind the killing of United Healthcare’s CEO versus how much gets spent on any number of these cases of violence against women combined.
Disenfranchisement
Secondly, all the same reasons people in general face all these travesties– people going missing, getting kidnapped and human trafficked, domestically abused, or being murdered especially as a result of a hate crime or by police– are all true for indigenous people. The difference is the vastly higher rate of disenfranchisement.
I’ve covered a lot of history in this zine and knowing about boarding schools, forced sterilization, how reservations started, and all the history that I can’t cover in a single zine, it’s easy to see why indigenous people experience so much depression and trauma and disenfranchisement just by being indigenous. Forget about generational wealth, the generational inheritance for most indigenous people is dealing with, and trying to heal from, all of this trauma while the American capitalistic hellscape tries to drain every last penny from the working class and the American education system consistently rewrites our history out of existence.
The national Indigenous woman’s resource center published a report entitled “Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota” by Melissa Farley, Nicole Matthews, Sarah Deer, Guadalupe Lopez, Christine Stark, Eileen Hudon in 2024. In it, they report on research conducted by the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition and Prostitution Research & Education, where 105 indigenous women in prostitution were interviewed. Among their many findings, they found 98% of the women interviewed either were currently or had previously been homeless. 92% had been raped. From the report summary: “80% had used outpatient substance abuse services. Many felt that they would have been helped even more by inpatient treatment. 77% had used homeless shelters. 65% had used domestic violence services. 33% had used sexual assault services.” Additionally, “Their most frequently stated needs were for individual counseling (75%) and peer support (73%), reflecting a need for their unique experiences as Native women in prostitution to be heard and seen by people who care about them. Two thirds needed housing and vocational counseling.”
The statistics in general for people who go missing or are human trafficked etc jump each time you add some factor of vulnerability; ei: being homeless, being 2slgbtqia+ (especially in places where it’s not safe to be), being in poverty, not having access to healthcare especially after major illness or injury, having an addiction or other mental illness. The best way to combat these contributing factors is with better social safety nets– if you support EVERYONE in homelessness or experiencing substance abuse, even the most disenfranchised will be uplifted. All people deserve shelter, fresh food, clean drinking water, access to healthcare and that includes for addiction and mental health. Stigma around 2slgbtqia+ folks, mental illness, substance abuse, and homelessness actually contributes to the systemic problem by isolating the people who are affected, making it that much harder to seek help. Now look at the rate of indigenous peoples who experience any of those vulnerabilities and see how they sky rocket. Combatting any of these individual crises requires monumental time, money, compassion, and work.
What is the Movement Behind MMIR?
MMIR work has a few main pillars: Education, advocacy, mutual aid, and fundraising. In the Purpose of this zine, I emphasize the adage “Knowledge is power”. Educating people on the history that brought us this crisis and the current and ongoing cases is the very first step. That’s the whole intent behind the rallies, speeches, research, infographics and literature. Legislators also have to be educated in their role in remedying the crisis. In that way, May 5th being Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day is no small win, bringing MMIR further into mainstream and legislative conversations. During the Biden administration Colorado and Minnesota have created offices dedicated to MMIR exclusively. Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, created a Missing and Murdered Unit under the Office of Justice Services. Legislation supporting justice for victims and their families is HUGE, but it’s only a piece in the overall strategy that needs to be seen through.
Advocacy and education go hand in hand, once legislators know about the crisis and their role in it, our work moves to pushing for legislation that keeps us safe. Advocacy includes writing legislation to form task forces and safe space programs, speaking on that legislation both at outreach events like rallies and powwows and to legislators in various levels of government, representing victims in court, grant work for domestic violence prevention programs and more. Systemically, nothing changes without this advocacy.
Mutual aid is about collective/community based support. The grief of losing a loved one is already devastating, even worse is not knowing what happened, where they are, or if they’re even still alive. Mutual aid in this circumstance is about solidarity and supporting the relatives of the victims in an effort to help them heal. Many orgs like us help plan memorials and funerals for victims or offer grief support. Mutual aid can also look like holding space for people at risk. Safe third spaces for indigenous men, women, 2slgbtqia+ folks, and teens are vital for building community and keeping vulnerable people out of dangerous situations. This can be boardgame clubs, book clubs, sewing circles, community dinners, etc. Mutual aid is also where direct action comes in, helping in search parties, volunteering with advocacy events, volunteering services like cooking, and more.
And of course, very little of this is possible without funding behind it. When organizations like Great Plains Action Society (that’s us!) fundraise for MMIR, those donations pay for things like funeral costs, legal fees, parts of MMIR events, and funding programs for domestic violence prevention.
Check Out These Local MMIR Organizations and Events:
The Intersection
Accessibility
So what’s this about intersectionality?
In Disenfranchisment, I touched on some contributing factors to the MMIR crisis, especially homelessness and substance abuse, and how those factors also similarly raise the likelihood for other groups of people. For those unfamiliar, that’s actually just what intersectionality is. Even as different, separate groups of people, when we’re faced with similar systemic issues, they’re usually for similar reasons and should be dealt with collectively and in solidarity. In the exact same vein, when two different systemic issues are happening to the same group of people, those problems are not unrelated. Those same vulnerable groups I described also suffer the least access to abortion and other reproductive healthcare.
in-ter-sec-tion-al-i-ty
noun
The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.
“through an awareness of intersectionality, we can better acknowledge and ground the differences among us.”
Our executive director wrote an op-ed back in 2019 that’s still incredibly relevant almost 6 years later, entitled “What I want you to know about these abortion bans, as an indigenous woman” on Bustle. In it she describes how the other crises indigenous people face increase the need for abortions while access to reproductive health resources has always been scarce. Her warnings, that white christian nationalists are trying to take us back to colonizing ideals, are playing out with domestic violence related deaths literally doubling since the Dobbs decision.
That statistic comes from the National Domestic Violence Hotline (NDVH). With the loss of reproductive choice, many victims of domestic abuse or human trafficking face an additional roadblock to escaping. It’s really hard to leave someone if you’re pregnant with their child, can’t work, and are physically and financially dependent on them. It’s even harder when you lose the ability to choose an abortion and your own freedom. At the same time, violence against pregnant women has jumped in tandem with violence against women in general.
This is why access is so specifically important.
Access is important so the most vulnerable people, with all their systemically built in roadblocks, still have a chance at escaping, healing, and fulfilling lives worth living. Attacks on accessibility of healthcare have been incremental so that extreme restrictions don’t feel extreme, and the bombardment of attacking trans rights, abortion rights, gay rights, and DEI all at the same time is meant to confuse and divide our efforts as movements so fascist rule can divide and conquer us. Treating MMIR and Abortion access as different separate fights will only serve to make us– indigenous people, domestic violence victims, black people, latino people, poor and working class people, homeless people, asian people, immigrants, white women, LGBTQIA+ people, and more– more easily conquerable.
You cannot hope to solve the MMIR crisis without access to reproductive health care. You cannot end MMIR without ending homelessness. You cannot end homelessness without access to all healthcare. Healthcare will never be truly accessible until abortions are accessible. Healthcare will also never be truly accessible until gender affirming care (which is mostly used by cisgendered people by the way) is normalized and accessible. These systemic issues are exactly that: systemic, and working together to keep BIPOC and immigrant and poor and working class and LGBTQIA+ people oppressed.
The Manosphere and Counteraction
One of the reasons behind the rise of public violence towards women in the immediate wake of Dobbs is the cultural reaction from “alpha males” and the “manosphere”.
If for some incredibly lucky reason you don’t know what those words mean, "alpha male" describes toxically masculine men that command fear from women and their peers in place of respect. Being an alpha male is about control, dominance, power, and hierarchy– veiled as being a leader and a provider. They use the nuclear family structure and their adherence to 1950s status quo to attract lonely men and boost their egos to further hyper patriarchal ideals. The term “manosphere” describes the cyber spaces where alpha male ideology is really prevalent. It’s called the manosphere as these spaces center toxic masculinity, portraying their ideals as being the only way to be “true men”. It’s an incredibly narcissistic view, putting masculinity– defined by how well you perform masculine “traditional” gender roles– as the most important part of the individual and the man as important above all others, thus degrading or erasing empathy.
These spaces are very comfortable for men who hurt women, and a lot of the ideals spouted in manosphere cyber spaces really normalize and even go as far as to encourage rape culture, domestic violence, and abusiveness in relationships. The worst parts of the manosphere have been fostered in corners of the internet for decades, growing more in popularity and normalcy as time goes on and with the rise of “red pill” content and podcasts. Policy decisions like abortion bans tell misogynistic men and alpha males that their want to hurt and degrade women is acceptable in everyday society and so are their actions.
Unfortunately, the manosphere is really good at attracting young men, especially teenage and pre-teen boys. The front facing tik toks, tweets, and reels do an excellent job of attention grabbing and sparking engagement. In the dms, comments, and servers of manosphere, alpha male influencers, abusive men are fostering solidarity and camaraderie with other abusive men. Young men and teenagers see this and start idolizing the solidarity the influencers are forging, and buy-in to the influencers’ ideals.
This can be seen with tik tokers like Andrew Tate or Jack Dorsey, who then see the teenagers in their audience and make them feel seen, special and cool for following them and make people who oppose them look lame. These alpha male influencers show off as being men accepting other men as they are and encourage personal growth. The catch is the personal growth these spaces encourage is more self centricity and growing “strength” through violence and control. Obviously, this is really dangerous for anyone who isn’t a man, but it's actually also really dangerous for men and boys. Fostering this really gross isolation and self victimization online can get externalized in how these men treat the people around them in person. If these men and boys ever find accountability, it’s usually after they’ve already hurt everyone around them and have no genuine support left. We absolutely need an alternative to the way that this is actively playing out.
In the same way we desperately need more safe spaces for women, BIPOC folks, LGBTQIA+ folks, and other marginalized communities, we also actually need safe spaces for men and boys. Where safe spaces for the former group are there for people to feel safe with people who are like themselves, safe spaces for men and boys need to have the same thing with the added focus on empathy for others.
This isn’t limited to clubs and safe spaces hosted by organizations by the way. The most effective and meaningful way these connections are maintained is not through the safe spaces organizations host, though they’re an excellent way to start connections. People listen to people they trust. Men listen to other men. Talk to your friends and brothers and cousins and that really close coworker friend that you hang out with after work. Have these deep conversations about this zine, ask them how some of the laws you’re seeing make them feel, ask them what they know, ask them to listen to other non-white/non-cis/non-male perspectives, unlearn misogyny together. It should absolutely not be the responsibility of BIPOC folks and women to teach white folks and men about the world white cis men have created for us, but being vulnerable and sharing your fears and things you’ve learned is an act of love, and what a lot of vulnerable men and boys are looking for is love and solidarity. It just can’t come with enabling violence or abuse.
Do not put yourself in harm's way and try to have these hard, vulnerable conversations with people who have proven to you that you can’t trust them or they don’t trust you. Fostering the kind of community solidarity that we’re trying to build for our future– where everyone feels safe, where queer people can exist freely, where reproductive healthcare is freely accessible, where MMIR is no longer a crisis, where there is joy and rest and solidarity and kindness– is based wholeheartedly on trust. This goes beyond believing that the other person won’t physically hurt you on purpose, trusting them needs to mean that you both know that you will listen to each other with empathy and compassion and that they can take criticism from you without retaliating.
So What Do We Do?
We of course understand that an individual cannot combat all of this at once, and we are in no way asking you to do ALL of the actions we’re about to list. These movements do not thrive on perfection, but on progress. Incremental change that we instill in ourselves and our relatives and friends. We also cannot do this work if we are exhausted. First and foremost, before doing anything else we’re about to suggest, rest and recover. You are so much more powerful when you have the energy to fight.
That said, there’s a ton that you can do to help with either abortion access or MMIR work (which by the way also doubles as resisting the fascist christo-nationalism to come in the next 4 years).
Read
If you do nothing else, educate yourself. Reading and learning are resistance, especially when the fascist state is actively trying to rewrite history, take away public information to commodify it, and make you completely dependent on the capitalist system for basic needs. Learn how to sew, learn how to make soap, learn about native wildlife, learn about the people whose land you occupy, learn about black history, learn about who’s writing that history. Never take anything you read at face value, because everything, EVERYTHING, has bias. Bias is not bad, unless you ignore it. Understanding bias gives context to the information the author is trying to give you. Tab the books you read with sticky notes at spots that make you ask questions. Look up your questions, don’t just wonder. We have super computers in our pockets. Use them.
If you thought the topics we covered here were interesting, here are some other topics to research:
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Violence Against Women Act and its impact on LGBTQIA+ communities, Indigenous protections, and immigrant peoples.
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Operation Lady Justice, President Trump’s attempt to address the MMIR Crisis
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Audre Lorde, her books, and her writing about self care
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Ismatu Gwendolyn and her essays
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The Anarchist Library, especially “How to Start a Fire: An Invitation”
Reading List!
These are by no means perfect works, but they’re excellent places to start:
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Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis
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Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
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Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba
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Mutual Aid by Dean Spade
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Fascism, A Warning by Madeline Albright
Share What You Learn
I firmly believe that sharing information is an act of love. Boost calls to action you support and calls for help as more people will be posting funds and gofundme’s in the wake of recent natural disasters. Sharing these posts helps them reach people who CAN donate even if you can’t. Have every hard conversation with your friends, your family, your relatives that you can SAFELY. Our movements must be founded on trust but that does not mean trust blindly. Educate your friends, figure out who in your circle is not safe, and keep your circle tight. On the flip side is also listening– to other people who are also doing that learning and more importantly listening to BIPOC folks who are already doing this work. Think critically about everything you hear, because if anything, the things people say have even more bias.
Find Organizations Who Are Working On Your Issues
We’re obviously highlighting MMIR and Abortion access related orgs in this zine, but as stated in accessibility, these systemic issues are part of a system, and you cannot JUST solve one problem without addressing the myriad others. That’s not to say that you, the individual, need to be doing everything, but instead find where you’re needed because there are many roles that need to be fulfilled. Frameworks already exist, organizations already exist for most issues. Find them. Support them. Donate your time, learn from them, and if you find holes where there is need and no one is filling it? Advocate with your org to fill the holes you can. As Bigweld says in the movie Robots, “See a need, fill a need!”
Orgs Local to Iowa & Nebraska
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Great Plains Action Society (that’s us)
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Iowa Abortion Access Fund
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Project Beacon
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Justice Empowerment Network
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Midwest Access Coalition
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Annual March to Honor Lost Children
National Organizations
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National Abortion Federation
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Indigenous Women Rising
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Center for Indigenous Midwifery
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Uniting Three Fires Against Violence
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National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center
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First State Abortion Fund
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IW Rising Rain Fund
Donate
As previously stated, none of this work happens without funding behind it. Once you’ve found an organization that is doing the work you believe in, donate whatever you can. Organizations like us are touched and feel loved, seen, and supported, even from the smallest donations. Literally every dollar helps. If you cannot give your time, or your energy, this is the next best way to support. Not all donations have to be monetary. Much of MMIR work is focused on helping the homeless populations, and MMIR orgs will have want/need lists for the homeless communities they serve.
Build Your Community
Check on your neighbors! Call your family! Spend time connecting with people! Activate your friends! Collective action does nothing if there is no collective. We do this work for the betterment of our communities. We also are able to do this work because we are so held by our communities. Let your friends be your driving force, let your community support and cherish you, and give back all that you can in return. Collective action can be community gardens, tool libraries, protest safety education, community fridges, or period product banks. Building your community can be sign making parties, attending protests in groups, carrying Narcan, participating in food drives, running errands with your BIPOC friends to make them feel safe. It can be recording arrests when it’s safe. It can be holding safe spaces in your home for your friends, starting reading groups, talking to your cis-male relatives and keeping them informed and accountable.
Whatever you do, don’t stand still. You are meant to feel overwhelmed right now to keep you docile and easy to control. We have survived worse, we’ll continue to fight for better. I hope this zine helps you find the will to fight and know you’re not fighting alone.
Reading List & Resources
Our Favorite Reproductive Justice Zines:
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Why is the government like this: A Zine About Fighting for Abortion Access and Reproductive Justice in the Age of COVID19 (this one is also available in spanish)
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Abortion is a form of Birth Control! And why having one isn’t that big of a deal
We also found this reading list for other zines. Check them out!
Every Article and Report I Read to Make This Zine
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Abortion in Early America (1997)
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Scarlet Letters: Getting the History of Abortion and Contraception Right (2013)
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Where #MeToo meets #MMIW (2018)
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What’s Missing from #MeToo and #TimesUp: One Indigenous Woman’s Perspective (2019)
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Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade, Indian Country Responds (2022)
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Emma Goldman Clinic (UI Archive)
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White Christian Colonizer (2022)
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What I Want You To Know About These Abortion Bans, As An Indigenous Woman (2019)
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The Hatch Amendment Calling on Congress and Individual States (1982)
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Planned Parenthood & Birth Control History: Collections (1966-1974)
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A 1970 Law Led to the Mass Sterilization of Native American Women. That History Still Matters. (2019)
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Domestic Violence Calls about ‘Reproductive Coercion’ doubled after the overturn of Roe (2023)
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1968: The Young Lords Organization (Library of Congress)
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Abortion Funding Ban Has Evolved Over The Years (2009)
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Unwanted Sterilizations and Eugenics Programs in the United States (2016)
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1976: Government admits unauthorized sterilization of Indian Women (2011)
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The Lost Generation: American Indian Women and Sterilization Abuse (2004)
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Dr. Helen Rodriguez Trias (National Park Service)
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Racial and Ethnic Disparities Continue in Pregnancy-Related Deaths (2019)
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Indigenous people unite to navigate abortion access after Roe (2023)
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Solicitor Says U.S. Has Criminal Jurisdiction On Reservations Where Tribes Do Not (1978)
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Biden's Budget Proposal Reverses A Decades-Long Ban On Abortion Funding (2021)
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'Reproduction on the Reservation': The history of forced sterilization of Native American women (2019)
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Native people killed by police 3-5 times more than others (2024)
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The U.S. stole generations of Indigenous children to open the West (2019)
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Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota (2024)