An unlikely battleground for abortion rights” was a headline on the front page of the LA Times yesterday, and we could not have done that without all your help over the last ten months. If you haven’t seen the story, you can read it on latimes.com (login required) or on yahoo.com (no subscription needed).

We need to keep the momentum going. To quote Emma Craig, an extremist with Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, “you snooze, you lose.”

With that horrible person’s words in mind, we have two quick asks of you:

1. If you live in California, please contact your reps and ask them to join us in calling for an independent investigation with public disclosure. You can easily do that using ResistBot. We’ve created two petitions, one for Congressional reps and one for state reps.

Text SIGN PGHZOY to 50409 for your Congressional reps and SIGN PHQICF to 50409 for your California state reps. You’re also welcome to contact everyone directly by phone or email or write your own message, but ResistBot is a very convenient and secure alternative!

We’ve tried to make doing this as easy as possible, so we’re using the app ResistBot. ResistBot is a widely-used platform for contacting government officials. We’ve created two letters (or in the app’s language, “petitions”), one for Congressional representatives and one for Gov. Newsom and California legislature reps. Instructions are at the bottom of the email. 

2. Please write the LA Times a Letter to the Editor (form submission here or email letters@latimes.com) voicing your support for reproductive rights, abortion access, and bhforchoice’s calls for an investigation with public disclosure and an ordinance protecting the privacy of individuals seeking abortions in the city. 

We expect the antis to mobilize and send a lot of letters (and possibly harassment) over this article. It’s just as important to voice support when people do the right thing, as it is to show up to a council meeting to call out doing wrongdoing. It doesn’t have to be a lot, it doesn’t have to be eloquent.

We must be louder than they are, because believing in something silently is no longer enough.

We’re going to be persistent about it this week. We’re going to send a couple check-ins, because we know life is busy and distracting, and it’s really easy to intend to do something but need a couple reminders to stop and do it.

We promise, we will not spam you, and we will return to our more … leisurely pace of emails until the next Big Thing. But the front page of the LA Times is a Big Thing, and we need to build off that.

Please take a few minutes to help us make an impact!

Sincerely,

bhforchoice

RESISTBOT INSTRUCTIONS:

1.      Text SIGN PGHZOY to 50409

2.      Select “US Congress” – it should list Senators Padilla & Butler, and your congress person

3.      Follow the prompts to send your email! The bot will ask for your address and email – it needs your address to find your representatives, and your email (since it’s sending an email on your behalf)

4.      Text SIGN PHQICF to 50409 to do it again and email Gavin Newsom & state reps!

5.      Select “Governor and State Legislators” – it should list Gov. Newsom, your California state senator, and your CA assemblymember.

6.      You may be automatically opted in for notifications from ResistBot. We do not have any control over what they send or what additional petitions they push, so please feel free to unsubscribe from those notifications. We are not asking for money or asking you to sign any petitions other than our own, and any requests for money are from ResistBot and would go directly to them and their operating costs, etc.