Abortion advocates have chanted that abortion bans kill, in truth longer than this, but faithfully so since the fall of Roe. The preventable deaths and subsequent murders of Candi Miller and Amber Thurman will resound across this movement for a lifetime, evoking reminders of anti-Blackness and gender based violence as a global ethic, and that murders from obstetric negligence and violence, medical bias, and draconian abortion bans are and have always been a public threat to our livelihood.  

While these murders are attached to headlines marking them as the first murders attached to the abortion bans, in actuality, these are only some of millions of Black women we have lost to a system designed to allow a select few to live and to systemically usher others into death. 

These murders remind us of a broken system where cops and the fear they emit (of criminalization, of death and loss) rule over our healthcare and our community care, where even in “legal” states we remember how coveted access can be, but even moreso, how coveted safety can be. Reproductive Justice is both everywhere we are and get to live and breathe and dream, and yet feels nowhere near – maybe for now gone to live with Amber Thurman and Candi Miller.

We feel it all as we typically do. We are holding the lynching of Javion Mcgee next to the senseless murders of these women and resisting feelings of an inescapable reality, we resist fear. We say their names where power lives, where Justice lives, where safety lives, and where joy lives. Where power lives and where justice and safety and joy lives are the places we fought for and will fight for endlessly.

If you too, seek to transmute your broken heart into a semblance of action, consider joining some of the channels for mobilization led by organizations local to you.  If you are near Georgia, we encourage all to be tuning into local and state efforts especially through our partners at Sistersong, @SisterSong_WOC , on Sep 28th at 2 PM at the GA Capitol: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/trust-black-women-rally-justice-for-amber-thurman-candi-miller-tickets-1022674134867?utm_experiment=test_share_listing&aff=ebdsshios. 

If you have an abortion fund in your area, please consider donating to your local abortion fund to keep their line open. Finally, knowing your state’s legislation and keeping up with it is purposefully difficult. Please continue to navigate it in community, with organizations, advocates, and friends and family that you can trust. 

We will be mourning more than Amber Thurman and Candi Miller if legislation doesn’t give way, but we rest in knowing that this pressure will build and yield a change worth seeing through. We pull at our end of the rope, but we do it next to you, every day, in fervent solidarity. 

Carolina Abortion Fund