A brave and brutally honest campaign started by the actress Busy Philipps is asking women to start sharing their stories about abortion, using the hashtag #youknowme.
If you are “1 in 4 women who have had an abortion,” the former star of “Dawson’s Creek” wrote on Twitter, “let’s share it and start to end the shame. Use #youknowme and share the truth.”
Last week during her late-night show “Busy Tonight,” Philipps spoke candidly about her own experience.
“Maybe you’re sitting there thinking ‘I don’t know a woman who would have an abortion.’ Well, you know me I had an abortion when I was 15 years old and I’m telling you this because I’m genuinely really scared for women and girls all over this country,” she said. “I think we should be talking more and sharing our stories more.”
Just two days after the Alabama Senate voted to pass the most restrictive bill on the woman’s right to choose, Philipps decided she needed to take action, and called on other women to do the same. And they did:
“The anti-abortion people in this country are so vocal, and for all of those reasons I think women have remained silent. And I felt like, well, maybe there’s actually value in sharing,” she told The New York Times.
Nearly one in four women in the United States (23.7%) will have an abortion by age 45, according to a 2017 analysis by Guttmacher Institute and published in the American Journal of Public Health.