#wetestify

Candice Russell at @glamour

“I’ve always been adamantly pro-choice, and I know and love people who’ve had abortions. That said, I must admit that there’s been a disconnect between that and a sort of prudish societal influence. The first few times that someone I knew told me they’d had an abortion, it felt like a scandalous secret. I believed that they had nothing to be ashamed of, and I wasn’t worried about them regretting it, but I think I was caught in that narrative of abortion being a controversial topic that isn’t polite to discuss. I was stuck in that notion that it’s always a really difficult decision and no one is proud of it, but sometimes it’s the right thing to do. Working on the project and learning more about the National Network of Abortion Funds has definitely changed that. I remember when I was drawing the image with the banner that reads “I had an abortion,” and I wondered if that was one of the images that was going to be used on a T-shirt. In that short moment I worked through my own bias, moving from feeling intimidated at the idea of someone wearing that T-shirt, to thinking it was brave, to thinking that it shouldn’t have to be brave, it should just be. As I continued to work on the project and then see it come to life, I came to understand that abortion is, as We Testify says, as complex and diverse as the people who have abortions.” - Evie Yapelli, tattoo artist of Show Pigeon Tattoos and We Testify image designer