Slogans Talk
An experience that mimics a protest and aims to shift the Pro-Choice messaging towards a more complex and nuanced narrative about abortion. It does so by inviting participants to listening to real stories about abortion.
“I think the winning arguments for our side are complex and nuanced, like the lives of women seeking abortions. It’s harder to turn them into slogans and chants.”
Towards a new abortion politics, Jeannie Ludlow
Abortion is a highly politicized area and activism plays an important role in normalizing and raising awareness about it. However, somewhere along the way, words like “choice” or “life” lost their true meaning, as they became deeply intertwined with politics. In this project, I looked for the roots of Pro-Choice messaging in real abortion stories. As some of my subject matter experts mentioned, in order to create a movement that normalizes abortion, we need to expand the narrative about abortion by valuing women’s voices and encouraging them to share their stories.
Photo by: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Experience
Slogans Talk is an experience that mimics a protest and aims to shift the Pro-Choice messaging towards a more complex and nuanced narrative about abortion. It does so by inviting participants to listening to real stories about abortion. This experience tries to bridge the gap between people’s experiences and ultimately create a more empathetic and humanistic way to talk about abortion. The other objective for this experience is to shed light on the fact that protecting abortion rights is not only women’s responsibility, and to bring a sense of urgency to communities’ responsibility to maintain safe and legal access to abortion care.
participants can pick up the headphones that are connected to signs, sit down, and listen to real stories that I curated from different people who experienced having abortions. Stories include those of mothers who had an abortion that ultimately helped the quality of their life and their children’s lives, trans men who are often left out from this conversation, and women who had illegal back-alley abortions before Roe v. Wade.
After listening to stories, participants are encouraged to proceed to the final stop and take a pledge. People pledge to support abortion rights, fight abortion stigma, and think about actionable plans. After they are done, they drop this pledge into the box in the booth. These pledges will be used to make a bigger sign that will act as a community quilt. I imagined how this sign can exist in different parts of the city, from Borough Park in a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood to Margaret Sanger Planned Parenthood.
Photo By: Nikki Vargas
Photo By: Ayanna P.
Digital Experience
Unfortunately, this experience never became public because of the pandemic. However, it led me to think about digital experiences that could carry the same objective. I came up with a website where users can read a story by clicking on each sign and take the pledge afterward, as well as a social media campaign that shares a story accompanied by a slogan every day.