On International Safe Abortion Day, “we learned how to love ourselves”
On 28 September, safe2choose decided to join a smaller discussion group in Mathare, an informal settlement of Nairobi, Kenya, to understand the daily struggles faced by local women. The event was held in a simple school hall that was decorated with posters and signs displaying slogans such as “Stop rollbacks on our SRHR, funding saves lives“, that carried the #IResistWePersist hashtag, promoted by the Women’s Global Campaign for Reproductive Rights. It was an opportunity to witness first hand the incredible achievements of a local NGO, Fortress of Hope Africa, which has also joined safe2choose’s call to action to say why safe abortion must be available to all women worldwide.
FOHA is a well-established grassroots community project in the area that empowers young women about their sexual rights to make safe choices. They train groups of young women to be able to disseminate reproductive health information back within their community and be able to reach places that have no access to other kind of information. To guide the discussions, safe2choose.org, Howtouseabortionpill.org and Young Women Leadership Institute were invited to give presentations on safe abortion procedures and women’s rights. the audience, who were mostly eager to learn more about how to have a safe medical abortion, reasserting the need to provide more information on this subject. Before the event came to an end, the attendees also had a chance to speak. Everyone felt supported and felt like they belonged. A young mother perfectly summed it up: “Today, we learned how to love ourselves”.