abortion, Art, Author, Comics, Feminism, gender, General, Health, Politics, Transcribed, United States, zine

Bodily Autonomy and Health Education In An Easy To Swallow Package (Abortion Pill Zine)

Abortion Pill Zine Cover featuring flowers and houses
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This week, we’re sharing an interview Ian conducted with cartoonists Isabella Rotman, Sage Coffey, and Marnie Galloway on the subject of the Abortion Pill Zine: A Community Guide to Misoprostol and Mifepristone out now from Silver Sprocket (and freely readable on their website). They discuss the process by which this resource was assembled, the benefits of local, focused abortion organizing, the timeliness and timelessness of the fight for safe abortion care, and the power of comics to disseminate valuable and complex information.

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BAD News for February 2025

The A-Radio Network of anarchist and antiauthoritarian radios and podcasts just released the latest in their monthly series, B(A)D News: Angry Voices From Around The World for February 2025, episode 88. This one features Parias from Athens sharing an interview about resisting wind farms and green developmentalism in the Greek mountains as well as Črna luknja from Ljubljana speaking with antifascists from Budapest and Sofia about resisting Europes largest annual neo-nazi rally, the LukovMarch.

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Transcription

TFSR: I’m here with Isabella Rotman, Sage Coffey, and Marnie Galloway. Thanks very much for taking the time to speak with us today. I was wondering if you could give listeners some background on yourselves and maybe speak to your backgrounds in comics, illustration, and organizing.

Isabella: Sure! I’m Isabella. I’m a cartoonist and illustrator. I’ve done a couple of sexual health comics, Quick and Easy Guide to Consent and Wait, What?: A Comic Book Guide to Relationships, Bodies, and Growing Up. I’ve been working at the intersection of comics and Sex Ed for a while.

Sage: My name is Sage Coffey. I use they/them pronouns. I’ve done a lot of autobio comics for The Washington Post and some humor comics for The New Yorker. I’ve also done quite a bit of autobio work related to abortion, specifically working with We Testify to help abortion storytellers illustrate their stories, as well as Comics for Choice, contributing my own abortion story. I’ve done a bunch of stuff. Oh, I’m also a previous organizer of the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo.

TFSR: Big fan of that. Thank you.

Marnie: And I’m Marnie Galloway. Pronouns she/her. I’ve been making comics for about 15 years, mostly in literary fiction, the poetic realm, and more autobio and diary. Recently, I’m faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and before I started the creative phase of my life as a working artist, I thought that my work for my life was going to be as a community organizer. I worked for a bit at the New York City AIDS Housing Network, which does union-style organizing for housing access rights. And I’ve taken a lot of the work that I learned in that phase of my life into my daily life, if not in my artwork. In life, nothing is left behind; it’s all carried with us, and so that’s also part of my DNA.

TFSR: Awesome, thank you so much. So, we’re here today to discuss your recently published Abortion Pill Zine, available for purchase and for free reading now at silversprocket.net. I know the answer is probably obvious, but I’m hoping y’all can put a finer point on it: What was the impetus for making this zine?

Isabella: We basically decided to do it the day that Roe v Wade was overturned. I remember that day was really tough for a lot of people, and it was really tough for me, and I just remember racking my brain like, “What can I do?”. I felt very, very powerless. I’m a big believer in doing your activism along the lines of your personal strengths. What do you have to give? What is the best way for you to make a change? So, I was like, “Well, I make Sex Ed comics; I can make a comic about this.” And I asked Marnie and Sage if they would be interested. I don’t know if you guys want to talk about how you felt at that time, or why you wanted to make it.

Sage: Yeah, it was definitely, at least for me… I was just dumbfounded. I couldn’t really process what was happening. And I feel like making the zine and getting it started was a way to take back control – and a way to help other people, obviously.

When I had my abortion in 2016, I was very ignorant of abortion law, and I feel like I didn’t really get involved until it affected me. I think that’s a regret of mine, because it shouldn’t have to affect you for you to care. It’s definitely something that not only helped me process parts of my abortion – as we talked about financial barriers and such, and emotional barriers in the zine – but it’s something that I think having as a wider resource is really important.

Marnie: Sage, I think you’re being too hard on yourself by saying that; getting down on yourself for not feeling curious and active until it personally affected you. I think that’s deeply human, and that’s something that we all deal with and navigate in our lives as politically minded and empathetic people.

Isabella: I was also going to chastise you for being too hard on yourself. There’s quite a lot to care about. There’s simply too much for one person to put time into every single thing that must be cared about.

Sage: Y’all are too kind. Y’all are too great. This is a running theme, you will see.

Marnie: So, an old organizer and mentor of mine, said that to avoid burnout you gotta choose a focus, hyper-focus, and dedicate as much as you can to it. Because otherwise it’s so easy to get distracted by all of the places that you could put energy, and you’d only have a finite amount of energy. And for me, since I was a teenager, gender liberation and reproductive justice, all of those have been where I’ve been paying attention. And even if it wasn’t where my creative professional expression went, it’s where I’ve always been noticing and paying attention.

I’m from Texas, originally. I grew up in the South, so I follow all of the restrictions that have been happening to reproductive access, abortion access specifically, for the last 15 years. That day of Dobbs was a punch in the gut, but it was a punch in the gut that I saw winding up for a really long time. So, when Izzy texted – we’re friends, so we were grieving together – and said, “I think that this is something that I want to do.” I said, “If there’s any room for collaborators, please loop me in.” And it started there.

TFSR: Have you all collaborated in the past?

Sage: I don’t think so, not on a professional level.

Isabella: We’re friends.

Sage: Yeah, we’re all friends. Izzy used to host a comics night that I would go to regularly, and then Marnie was also a previous organizer of CAKE. So, we’re all very tertiary. We’re not tertiary because we’re friends, but we’re all, y’know…

Marnie: The comics world is a small world, so you get to know each other pretty quickly. Especially people who vibe with each other, have been making comics for about the same amount of time, and start off early in the ranks and grow together. So, we’ve known each other for a while.

Isabella: I don’t usually collaborate, but I thought it was important that this zine come from multiple viewpoints; I think we all bring something different to it. That’s really important.

TFSR: Well, with that in mind, this is a very big subject. Can you talk a little bit about how you put it together? And who you spoke with to get the information and organize everything?

Isabella: It was a lot of research. For the basis of it, I put together a doc of all the information that I wanted in it, from a variety of resources. Planned Parenthood, Scarleteen, and Plan C; there are really great resources online. All of the information in this book is available elsewhere; we weren’t running studies or anything like that. We’re just trying to put the same publicly available information in a format that we think might reach some people it’s not already reaching. After that, I sent the doc to Sage and Marnie. I can’t remember their reaction to it.

Marnie: I was just delighted. I thought, “Okay, we’ll dig into research.” And, you sent over basically the completed script, with all the research, and annotated. I was like, “Oh, well, let’s just go.”

Sage: I was very, very impressed by how organized it was. I feel that usually when I lay out stuff, it’s like, “Here’s a little here, here’s a little there, here’s a little there.” Marnie was like, “Okay, here’s the section on what Miso[prostol] does. Here are the resources.” It was very well organized.

Isabella: Thank you. But that doc was kind of dry; that was just information. We wanted to make it a little more entertaining to read, or else it might as well just be a medical pamphlet. We each took different sections and wrote them into an actual script. It was in voice, and describing what images we were going to draw. We each did our different sections with the exception of the intro, which we did collaboratively, and the closing page.

TFSR: On the subject of the format – and I hope this doesn’t pull away from the topic too much – it flows together very well, but I feel like you could very easily chop it up for infographic social media posts. Was that by design, or did that just emerge organically?

Isabella: It was on my mind. Especially the pages about how to actually take the medications. I thought, “Okay, I’d like this to be something that a medical clinic could photocopy and give to people to take home.”

TFSR: So, in general, what appeals to you about the comic in zine format? When it comes to transmitting this information, what do you think makes the format uniquely useful?

Isabella: I think we could all talk for hours about that.

Sage: [laughs] Yeah, this could be the whole hour. I think the main one is accessibility. There have been studies that show visual information, rather than written information, can be really helpful in taking in that information. How many times did I say “information” there? But yeah, visual accessibility and legibility were the main things.

Marnie: Adding to that: approachability. There’s something like Mifepristone, Misoprostol; those are long drug names. The idea of abortion can be intimidating, and having the information warm, soft, friendly, and easy to digest is something that I thought a lot about, and how I was approaching drawing my pages.

Sage: Also, just the visual of what the pills look like. Because when you receive a prescription, even if it’s multiple prescriptions, they can be written out. But for someone who maybe doesn’t read the label, or has a hard time reading the label, or maybe English is their second language… it’s really, really helpful to have that visual of, “Here’s what Mife[pristone] is, here’s how you take it, here’s where you put it”.

Marnie: And the format itself: I have the zine here, and it’s pretty wee; it’s small. It’s got a lot of information packed into its pages, but it could very easily slip into a coat pocket. It’s not burdensome; it’s easy to pack, carry, share, and distribute. I think that’s one of the things that I was really excited about. Also, when Izzy came up with the pitch for this idea of, “Yes, it’s all publicly available information, yes, we’re trying to make it more visually accessible”, but also, strategically accessible. I have a friend who bought 20 of the zines and distributed them to little free libraries. It’s just something that can be easily shared.

Isabella: There’s so much, and I’m gonna overlap a lot of things you guys have said. Marnie, you were talking about the accessibility of it. At a gut level, I think that comics are innately non-pretentious. You can make a pretentious comic, but you have to try. Just the fact that it’s comics makes you feel like you’re not being lectured at or talked down to. Which is such a great place to start, because usually that’s one of the biggest barriers to people listening to you about anything.

Also, Sage was talking about absorbing information visually. I’ve also seen studies about how information is absorbed better when it’s presented both as written word and text, which I think is really great, and such a boon to comics. And yeah, with what Marnie was saying about the format: the fact that it’s physical, and I hate to be this dystopian about it, means that it’s not in your search history. And that feels like something I hope doesn’t become important, but I’m glad that this exists in case it does.

Sage: It’s about the width of a pea coat pocket, too.

Isabella: [laughs] Yeah, it’s really quite wee.

TFSR: One factor that is emphasized throughout the zine is the timeliness of the information. Some of the information is subject to change, but I wonder if you could maybe speak to what aspects of the information are static. And was ease of updating eventually, or re-versioning it, a consideration when you were putting it together?

Isabella: For me, this was the hardest part [laughs]. I don’t know if you guys agree, but the fact that I knew we were writing about something, specifically the legal barriers that were going to change, was really hard. I think that we leaned a lot on online resources, and we would trust those resources to stay up. So, we would instruct the reader to go to the online resources and trust that those resources are up-to-date. But it was really challenging. Personally, I think it’s pretty unlikely that the actual way the pills work will change.

Sage: Yeah, that’s been the same since we were around.

Isabella: So that information is pretty static. Even if there are more barriers to getting pills, I think that information stays good. Another thing we put in there focused on how to have an abortion with Misoprostol alone. So, the recommended regimen is a combination of Mifepristone and Misoprostol, but abortion is actually still very safe and effective just with Misoprostol. Most of the efforts to prevent medical abortion have revolved around Mifepristone because abortion is its primary use. Whereas Misoprostol has other medical uses outside of abortion, so it’s going to be much harder for them to prevent access to it. By putting in how to do a medical abortion with Misoprostol alone, it was us saying, “Okay, this might be what happens, and it’s still safe and effective.”

Sage: Yeah, I think as far as evergreen information goes, emotional support and emotional barriers are also important. I don’t think any of that will change anytime soon. Even if a federal abortion ban goes through, you’re still going to need that support network, and we have a preparedness checklist. I feel like that will be evergreen.

TFSR: Just to maybe tie it to another piece of it, and y’all can comment if you like. But I was very struck; it occurred to me that you really emphasized that abortion has been around for time immemorial, and it will continue to be, regardless of the legality. Were you at all concerned with the legality of sharing this information? And I wonder what steps you took to ensure your own safety, and the safety of readers, in this regard. You may have spoken to this a little bit before. Is there anything you want to add to it?

‘Marnie: Izzy should answer this, maybe. We had a legal team look over everything to make sure that all of the information we shared was, of course, legally accurate. We had people who were medical experts look over it to make sure it was medically accurate. But as far as the legal concerns… personally, before we got started on this, I had been paying very close attention to the 30-year plan of not just a federal abortion ban, but all sorts of reproductive rights limitations. I had a conversation with my husband about whether I should use a pen name or not. Like, “is this something that I need to be aware of?”. I have three small children, and I’ve done other autobio work that could make it pretty easy to find who and where I am. This is something that I didn’t take lightly, but I thought, “No, I want to.” I’m very proud of having done this work, and with the broader legal advice that we got, which I think Izzy can speak to better, I felt good moving forward.

Isabella: Yeah, we did have someone look it over. Not someone who is actually legally representing us, but just a lawyer who was willing to look it over and is really well-versed on this topic. The consensus was generally that nothing we’re doing is a problem. We’re not giving medical advice; we’re sharing information. But that can change, and the current trend is towards that change. So, with the laws in Texas –and I’m forgetting other states—you can be sued for aiding and abetting. That’s a concern; that’s a thing that could happen. We have not done anything illegal, but we could face legal repercussions, so that’s a risk we all choose to take. We all chose to not use a pen name; that’s a meeting that we had, and hopefully there are no repercussions from that. We are fortunate to all live in states that have access to abortion and seem very firm on maintaining it. So, hopefully that’s another level of protection for us too.

TFSR: Am I correct that you are all geographically dispersed? If that’s the case, could you each speak to the current state of access to Miso[prostol] and Mife[pristone] in your respective regions?

Isabella: We all met in Chicago, but I live in Maine now. I think there’s actually excellent access to abortion care in Maine, including medical abortion. It’s a good state, and Chicago is now a beacon in the Midwest.

Sage: Yeah, we’re surrounded on all sides by restricted abortion states. But in Illinois, no abortion restriction, and full access to both pills.

Marnie: So, I’m Chicago and have been here my whole adulthood, but all of my family is in Texas. I grew up across the South, so I pay very close attention to what’s happening there in Texas. Texas and Florida are competing for who is going to be the first to do the most restrictive legal – I’m trying not to curse [laughs] – restrictions.

So, as Izzy mentioned before, you can be prosecuted for aiding and abetting in Texas, even for mailing Mife or Miso to somebody in Texas. I think that it’s a New York doctor who’s currently being protected by shield laws for having sent abortion pills to a patient in Texas, and they’re trying to extradite and prosecute her. So, I put my roots down in Chicago for a reason. This is where I want to be, but my bones are in Texas, so I’m very concerned.

TFSR: Am I correct that the organizers with whom you associate, you’re seeing them do their best to work in solidarity with those places where the access is limited?

Marnie: I think nationally, of course, everybody who’s working on this beat is trying to maintain access and safe access for people needing abortions. Everybody’s working in solidarity. I’m not involved in any of those other organizations, but information is certainly shared broadly.

Sage: I think it’s important to note there are circles of people who help each other. It’s not even necessarily like dedicated organizations. It’s more abortion caregivers, people who have had abortions, storytellers, lawyers, providers; there’s a lot of solidarity in the whole network, regardless of geolocation.

TFSR: That brings to mind my next question. To what extent are the organizations who have typically been associated with abortion and reproductive care, Planned Parenthood for instance, taking up this fight in a way that you find meaningful and appropriate? Do you feel like they’re not doing enough? I feel like the general nonprofit approach is one that is lacking, and hinges on the approval of the funders; essentially the state.

Sage: Since the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for abortion, it’s particularly hard for organizations to get funding to provide care. I have my own qualms with Planned Parenthood specifically, but that doesn’t negate the fact that they do have tons of locations that provide care.

Isabella: And so many kinds of care.

Sage: Yeah, they provide HRT. A lot of people don’t know that they can provide HRT for trans and non-binary individuals.

Isabella: Also, normal gynecology, just stuff, and contraception.

Marnie: I understand wanting to hold every institution to the highest possible standard, and I think that it’s absolutely necessary and crucial to call out places where people are falling short of that standard. But I also think it’s unreasonable to expect every single organization to live up to that standard for all the various reasons. There’s the Hyde Amendment, and nonprofit access, and all of these for Planned Parenthood. It’s a huge beast of an organization that offers so many kinds of not just individual medical support, but advocacy work. It’s a big organization and, therefore, not very nimble. That’s just the nature of an institution being so big. They have a lot of weight to carry and, therefore, a lot of responsibility to shoulder, but they’re not as nimble as organizations that are hyper-focused on expanding legal access to abortion care and reproductive rights.

I think that calling out Planned Parenthood for its shortcomings is absolutely appropriate; without ignoring the truly vital, and especially affordable, care that they provide. There’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot in my personal life and activist work: Where is it most crucial to focus? I think that focusing on those organizations that can be nimble, at the front, and push a more radical agenda is where I want to put my energy, rather than on these big behemoths that have to move slower.

Sage: And working at a state level, finding your local funds and supporting them and their efforts; finding abortion storytelling nonprofits like We Testify. Working with those much smaller and more locally focused organizations is one of the pillars of community building. It’s one of the pillars of just making sure you’re all looking out for each other.

TFSR: To put maybe a final point on it, as institutional organizations retreat in order to maintain themselves, those smaller, more focused organizations or affinity groups can meet those needs more directly and more quickly.

 

Sage: To the best of their ability. I think it’s very hard, and it’s important to recognize that there is no perfect activist; there is no perfect organization. Finding an organization, surprisingly, is easier now. There are actually databases, the National Network of Abortion Funds being one of them, to find the places that need our help and attention. Ones that can, potentially, depending on the legality and such, provide that care.

Marnie: Just briefly piggybacking, you can find organizations that are working nationally on those networks that Sage was talking about. You can find a place in Mississippi that is the only one still providing care, or the one place in Alabama that is working hard at the forefront of that state’s work to nudge forward legal access in that state. So, you can hone and find ways to support, even if it’s just financially. You have to work locally as best as you can, but also in solidarity nationally. And because my places of solidarity are in Texas, and here in Chicago, that’s where I focus my attention.

TFSR: Sure. To maybe get back to the zine itself, one thing that I really appreciated was the representation of different bodies and different expressions of gender. Can you explain why that’s so important?

Sage: Thank you! I feel like we opened up talking about just having our own personal experience with abortion; it is not restricted to gender. There are trans men who have abortions, there are non-binary people who have abortions, people who are differently-bodied who have abortions, people with different religions who have abortions. It was important to represent everyone in that sense because all those groups can have abortions.

Isabella: Also, a lot of my focus was on non-binary people and trans men, because a lot of abortion resources ignore them.

Sage: Yeah, a lot of pamphlets and stuff don’t use inclusive language, even where I got my abortion, which is Chicago Women’s Health Center. “Women” is right there, and I’m wandering in as a trans, non-binary guy. That’s another thing, because restricting abortion care language to just women can be very, very distressing for somebody who’s already going through such a distressing time.

Isabella: It’s just the last thing they need.

Sage: Right! It’s truly like kicking you while you’re down.

Isabella: Yeah, it’s like you’re having a really bad day, and then someone just insults you.

Sage: [gruff voice] “Hey! Did you know you’re a woman if you have a uterus?” [laughs]

TFSR: Would you say that is by design? That kind of restrictive language.

Isabella: I think in most cases, no. But in some cases, maybe.

Sage: I think institutionalized transphobia is very real. On personal levels, from providers, it either may come from ignorance, or it may just come from that they’ve never had a trans patient, and these are the habits that they fall into language-wise. I do think there should be broader LGBTQI+ education to ensure that we’re welcome in these types of spaces. But, it’s hard to separate that lack of inclusive language with intent on an institutionalized level.

Marnie: At this point, it’s 2025. We know we need to be including people, not doing that is intentionally dehumanizing.

Isabella: It’s also easy to do.

Sage: Yeah, right. It’s incredibly easy.

Marnie: The point of restricting reproductive access is about dehumanizing people and limiting their access to full humanity. I think that our goal for this zine is information sharing. It’s colorful; a more joyful way of talking about something that can be very burdensome. But it’s also saying, “Hey, we see you, whole person. Whoever you are, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, body type, or religion. You are a whole person experiencing this extremely human need”. For all of us, it was never a question to do anything other than be intentional and focused on being inclusive.

Sage: I also think abortion storytelling, in general, is so dominated by cis white women that it just made sense to have more people from all different backgrounds.

TFSR: Who are the enemies of access to safe abortion care?

Sage: [laughs] So, here’s my list…

TFSR: And by extension, what are they doing? And who isn’t doing enough to help? Maybe that’s a bad way to phrase that question, and we can cut it if you don’t like what you all come up with, but I’m interested to hear how you would phrase it.

Marnie: This is such a huge question.

Sage: Yeah, I think that’s a very large question. We can go directly right now to Elon Musk being a pro-natalist white supremacist.

Marnie: I can name one guy who is leading the charge right now [laughs].

TFSR: All right, I feel like the existence of this zine addresses shortcomings in the transmission of information from institutions that would once have been charged with dispersing it. Is taking up the task of getting this information out empowering for you, or does it make you feel resentful that it falls to you?

Marnie: Hmm. I once would have thought about feeling resentful. For myself, I think of this as one point in what should be a constellation. There are a lot of different ways of accessing information, hopefully. And by adding one more, hopefully, we’ve made it easier for even just one person to understand what safe medical abortion can look like.

Isabella: It also didn’t occur to me that someone else should have done it. I imagine if I went to the clinic for my Mifepristone and Misoprostol, and no one gave me a pamphlet about how to take it, I might feel that way. But, I was honored to be able to be part of making this, and grateful for something to do that felt powerful.

Sage: I never once thought through the lens of resentment; I think that’s a very powerful word. I saw it more as a community service, and almost a service to my past self, for information that should be widely accessible, regardless of whether you need an abortion, or whether or not you need that information. Izzy, you just mentioned if you had been given a pamphlet when getting the pills—I think about the shame that prevented me from going to friends, and talking about my abortion or asking for support. It was a really big thing. I went through my abortion completely alone; I was living by myself.

Isabella: I remember when you told me. Like, you should have called.

Sage: [laughs] Yeah, at the time, I didn’t know. Shame and stigma are very strong against abortion. One of the big things for this zine, at least for me, is destigmatizing it. There are politicians who won’t even say “abortion.” Biden didn’t say the word “abortion” until way, way late into his presidency. There’s a lot of power to be had in making this zine, I think.

Marnie: I think it’s something Izzy said early on in our conversation – it felt really powerful, special, and great to use this niche skillset that I have of cartoons for something that felt like a positive good in the world, that is going to be useful and informative for people I will never meet. That felt really important at a time when, otherwise, it’s easy to feel powerless.

TFSR: Coming back around to the assertion of nimble local organizations, maybe only speaking for myself as a cis male. I always associated Planned Parenthood with the be-all and end-all; I guess I always just counted on its being there. Do you think it’s important to reclaim the responsibility of taking care of these communities from institutions like that? Not to say, “Let’s bust them up,” or anything like that, but to make this care seem more attainable or doable to people who might not know otherwise. Does that make sense?

Isabella: I have a thought about this, and it’s taking us back pretty far. What we’re probably all remembering: Abortion is healthcare. The surgical procedure someone has when they have an abortion is the same as what they would have for a miscarriage, which is taken care of in a hospital. A medical abortion involves the same medication you would take if you had a miscarriage early in your pregnancy. It’s the same exact thing. And yet, if it’s not treatment for a miscarriage, it’s been pushed out of hospitals—where all other healthcare is happening—into clinics.

I think this is because of stigma; hospitals aren’t trying to be associated with the stigma of abortion. So, it’s pushed to these clinics that are specifically for that, and provide a lot of other healthcare as well, but they’re not really known for that. They’re known for being abortion clinics, and I think that’s the beginning of all of this. Why isn’t abortion happening in the same healthcare settings that most healthcare is happening?

In a perfect world, I would like to see abortions just happening as part of healthcare in hospitals. But I’m not living in a time where I can be like, “Here’s what would be really, really great if this bad thing never happened decades ago.” I’m in a time where I’m hanging with my claws and nails to the rights we currently have, and trying not to lose any more.

Sage: Also, on the activist end, if someone wants to get more involved in their community, I think Planned Parenthood is like, “Baby’s Intro to Abortion Rights”. Going from there, getting to know the employees, familiarizing yourself with their literature, and taking that back to your community—if it’s a care desert—it’s “Baby’s First Activism Step”. I see it much more like that.

Isabella: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think any of us have worked in any of these clinics, so we aren’t exactly experts on it.

Sage: That’s very true.

Marnie: We claim no medical expertise.

Sage: Not at all. We’re not doctors. We are cartoonists.

Isabella: … interested in repackaging information into something appealing.

TFSR: Can you point to sources of optimism? Either in the context of this zine or…?

Sage: I can! I know I’ve mentioned them several times: We Testify Abortion Storytelling. A nonprofit fronted by Renee Bracey Sherman, who recently put out a book about liberating abortion from white supremacy. Fantastic book, I can’t recommend it enough. There’s also SASS, which is “Self-Managed Abortion, Safe and Supported”. They have abortion safety apps that put privacy first.

Isabella: They do a great training about self-managed medical abortions that I took as part of researching this book.

Sage: And Oky [“oo-kee”], which is a privacy-first period tracker. A lot of period trackers, if you don’t check where your data is going, can be used against you in persecution. To be like, “Oh, you had an abortion! We know because we see on your period tracker that you didn’t have your period!” Which is ridiculous.

Isabella: There are so many reasons someone wouldn’t have a period.

Sage: Exactly, but just in case, Oky is there. They have resources on the if, when, and how of Internet safety and abortion legality. They’re connected to the Abortion Legal Defense Fund. Plan C has very extensive resources on abortion pills, abortion care, financial assistance, and stuff like that. Hey Jane [reproductive health resource group], same situation.

TFSR: Awesome.

Isabella: I think abortion funds are amazing work, and they’re all over the place. You can check the National Network of Abortion Funds to find one in your region.

Marnie: You’re asking for places of hope and optimism. I also take hope and optimism from being deeply informed, which is not always a place to find good news. I read the journalist Jessica Valenti, who has a Substack called Abortion Every Day. Where, every single day since when Dobbs overturned Roe, she puts out a missive about what is happening right now in American abortion news, and it’s dark. The facts of what’s happened since then are dark. But, I really like knowing so that I can be focused and energized for where I’m going to put my energy.

Isabella: That’s helpful. I find hope in the people I know; I find hope in the two of you. I find hope in a friend of mine who volunteers as an abortion doula every two weeks at our local clinic. This is where I find hope. I wish I could say, “This particular law is going into effect, and it’s going to be great,” but I don’t have any of those. I have my pals.

Sage: Abortion starts and ends with community, truly. It’s going to happen whether or not it’s legal. And I think that’s something lawmakers need to get through their heads.

Isabella: Yeah, you can’t stop abortions from happening. You can just make them increasingly dangerous.

Marnie: I’m just going to say this because I didn’t get a chance to this whole time: It not only makes it unsafe for people who are having abortions; but since [Roe v Wade] was overturned, infant mortality has spiked, maternal and parental deaths have spiked. I wrote this down—maternal or gestating parent deaths have spiked 56% in Texas since Dobbs, compared to 11% nationwide. Birth is already really intense, and a highly risky medical situation to find oneself in, and this has made it so much more dangerous.

But to your point, Izzy, finding hope, love, and care in the people in your life who are doing the work is also motivating, encouraging, and heartening.

TFSR: Can you point to any stories on how this zine has been received?

Sage: I think Graphic Medicine wrote a very, very kind review, if I remember right. Graphic Medicine is an organization that talks about comics related to mental health, medicine, stuff like that.

Isabella: I know we’re well on our way to selling out our first print run, so that’s exciting.

TFSR: Awesome! In closing, I want to acknowledge that you each have respective careers and concerns as artists. I wondered if you might speak to what you have done or are doing outside of this project. I also wondered if you could say something about what you feel your roles and responsibilities as artists in relation to organizing. Another big question.

Marnie: I’ll go first, I guess. The majority of my body of work has been longer-form and short-form of fiction and poetics, but I’ve been doing a lot more autobio and memoir; I’m working on a longer memoir about parenting. Like I said before, I have three small children, and I’m really excited to be working on that. Maybe you’ll read it in five years, because it takes forever.

I’m also a non-tenure track, part-time faculty member at the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s never felt like a more crucial time to be an educator; I’m grateful to be in the classroom every week with this cohort of students. To be present and answer questions about what it is to be in higher education, an artist, and a human right now; to be able to point and gather resources like that. Being a mentor has always felt really important to me as both an activist and an artist. And I have the opportunity to do that every week, which feels grounding as a person, and like a real gift to be able to do.

I’m still thinking about how my work, which is extraordinarily slow, can respond to the world, which is extraordinarily fast. I still don’t have an answer yet, but I’m thinking rigorously about it [laughs].

Sage: I said earlier that I really want more LGBTQI+ education out there. I’ve been contributing to biographical and autobiographical comics anthologies focused on stories of all ages. Recently, I worked with Marley Washington, the inventor of the GC2B binder—which was actually my first chest binder—to tell his transition story and how he got into inventing and running a small business. That story is in the book Becoming Who We Are, which is GLAAD-nominated this year, which is cool.

I’m working somewhat on game stuff, some writing stuff—I’m all over the place in what I like to do. I don’t want every day to look the same creatively. I currently have an NDA I can’t break, unfortunately, but I’m thinking a lot about what community and a potential future look like in my next work, which will probably also be out in about five years [laughs].

Isabella: Yeah, it’s very hard to respond in a timely manner with longer works. Comics take a long time, and there’s a lot of artists who can create a four-panel Instagram comic in a day and throw up, which is fantastic. I think we’ve all had practices in the past akin to that at some point. But our deeper, longer work, it’s like, “Oh I’m glad that I responded to this big, huge thing that happened in culture and history…” a year-and-a-half after it happened, at best. I mean, the Abortion Pill Zine came out a year after Dobbs, and we even had conversations about it. Do we crank this out as fast as we can, or do we want to make this as good as it can be, even if it takes longer? And we decided to make it as good as it can be. People need it just as much, if not more, than when we first came up with the idea. That was a tangent.

My work includes a lot of Sex Ed comics. I did The Quick & Easy Guide to Consent, and Wait, What?, which is for puberty-age people. This might be controversial, but I don’t think artists have a responsibility to respond to all the world’s problems. I think it’s okay if you just make art because it makes you feel good—that’s wonderful, actually. But I personally want to respond sometimes, and I think Marnie, Sage, and most artists I know, feel the same way. About half of my published work is like, “Oh, this is a Sex Ed comic”— this is something that I think might do some good things for the world, especially for young people. The other half is me talking about my feelings in little poems; trying to process different aspects of my life.

I’m currently working on a deck of cards that hasn’t been announced yet, but should come out soon. I’m also teaching at the college level—I just started at the Maine College of Art & Design, which I love. I teach pottery twice a week, which is the epitome of, “just make something nice, simply because you enjoy it—because you want to drink coffee out of it later”. The coolest thing I’m working on right now is organizing a new Indie comics fest in Portland, Maine, called Camp Comic Arts Maine Portland, happening on April 5th. So, very soon!

TFSR: Awesome. Thank you all for walking me through this. I’m not as well-versed as I’d like to be, but you were very patient, and I really appreciate it.

Isabella: Yeah, thank you for having us. You did great.

TFSR: Thank you. And thank you for taking the time.