Nearly four months after the abortion access landscape dramatically changed in the United States, Michelle Colon, founder of the SHERo abortion fund in Mississippi, sat in a friend’s kitchen during of a weekly call with activists from other red states. She wore an “Abortion Freedom Fighter” t-shirt and constantly checked her phone in case someone in crisis called her. “People think that with the closing of the clinics, we also closed our activity,” she says. ” It’s the contrary ; we are trying to survive, because women need our help more than ever.
I come from Poland, a Catholic country whose abortion laws are among the most restrictive in Europe. Inspired by the protests that took place in 2016 to oppose new limits on abortion in my home country, I started covering reproductive health care around the world. Over the past six years, I have photographed and interviewed women who have suffered because of these laws, as well as doctors, lawyers and activists in Poland, El Salvador, the Philippines, Egypt, Germany and Ireland.
I spent the first months of this year in Ukraine, where I documented both the human rights violations against the Ukrainian people and their inspiring challenge. On trips to the southern United States in the months following the reversal of Roe vs. WadeI found the same combination of strength, pain and resistance.
I have traveled primarily to the Southern states and Illinois, where many Southern women now go for abortions. I met abortion rights and anti-abortion activists, social workers and clinics, and women who had abortions or carried pregnancies that were unwanted or put their health at risk. Although these are often difficult stories to tell, I saw incredible determination in the women I spoke with.
Kasia Strek is a photojournalist based in Paris and Warsaw.
