 Good evening. I think we are live. Could we be live? I think we are. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and also all those who identify in between and be on the spectrum. My name is Carolina Maciel de Franca and I'm your host for tonight's School of Resistance, a live stream format that invites experts on change to discuss valuable formats and alternatives for the future and to create a blueprint for a politics of resistance, which we all need. Our topic tonight for the 11th episode of School of Resistance is reproduction, family and the body. And we will be discussing contemporary feminist futures with my guests Alexandra Sidoruk from Lowes, Poland, University of Lowes, Poland and international relations students and also a board member and all, I'm not sure, founder of human rights organization Girls for Girls and also from Philadelphia, Sophie Lowes, whose first book is entitled Full Surrogacy Now, Feminism Against Family and Explores and, might I say, defies the notions of nuclear family and motherhood. So before we dive in, I would like to thank our partners at the National Theatre in Ghent, the IIPM International Institute of Political Murder, Akademie der Kunst, Kulturstiftung des Bundes and HowlRound Theatre Commons for inviting us here tonight also to make it possible to discuss these topics and to allow all of those who joined us tonight to learn. Oh, for those who are watching, engaging is possible. We have three channels on which you can send questions and remarks. Please use our email schoolofresistanceartntgent.be or the chat on Facebook Live or Twitter by hashtag schoolofresistance to get in touch with me or wonderful experts here tonight. Lastly, to my guests, wonderful and thank you for joining me tonight and sharing your knowledge. I would like to start by asking you both how you would like to be addressed. Are there any pronouns that you would like to be used when I refer to you tonight in specific? Thank you, Carolina. She, her is fine for me. All right. Okay. So we are three hers here tonight. Alexandra, I would like to start with you, since the situation in your country has been deteriorating, especially since 2016, culminating in the almost complete ban on the right to abortion that was passed last two months ago, end of October. Would you care to sketch the Polish situation regarding female rights and introducing your organization, Girls for Girls and what you do to prevent this from deteriorating? Thank you so much for having me. This is a great opportunity and thank you, Sophie, for being here. I am very happy that I have this opportunity. So in Poland, the situation is very difficult to understand that we have to kind of get back to go back to what happened when do the one presidential elections and then where next elections were won by peace, our ruling party. And since then, a lot of bad things started to happen really now on every field you can imagine. The rule of law is not respected and this was, we know that they have their plans and what they did to law and constitution and courts important was just a step to have a bigger plan and to push some ideas that they have and this is what is happening right now. So on 22nd of October, our constitutional, so-called constitutional tribunal, because it is not legally selected tribunal, so it is so-called tribunal, they decided that abortions due to any kind of malformations of the fetus that are, you know, can end in this fetus actually not being able to live or women who are pregnant may end up in a very bad and dangerous situation for her health and her life. They decided that abortion due to those causes is unconstitutional, that it should not be legal. And the worst thing is that this is like 98% of all of the abortions in Poland. Sorry, how many are there? Do you have a number? I don't actually have a statistics. It's like around, I think, 1000-ish, a little bit more than 1000, so like 98% of them in Poland were due to those malformations, right? So we have the very restrictive, we still have very restrictive abortion law here in Poland and it all started with this so-called compromise. It's basically a deal between politicians and church. And it means that women can have an abortion in free cases when there's this defect of the fetus, when it's dangerous for women's life or when it's because of the rape. And the rest, 2% of the abortions were because of the rape. So right now we don't really know what is happening because this sentence, this ruling, should be published by like, it was supposed to be a month ago, but it still didn't happen, which is basically illegal, but we are kind of used to them not respecting the law and constitution. So we've been protesting since then, like when we first heard what is happening and when, you know, the Chief Justice Julia Pszczuemska announced the ruling, people started to protest and we've been protesting ever since. First it was like day after day, every day, no matter the weather, no matter if people are tired, they were still protesting. And right now we are kind of waiting for what is going to happen next because the law isn't published, they have to find some kind of solution. And I think the worst thing about this is that we are still in the same place that we were when this compromise was created, right? So we have church and we have politicians who are, you know, having some kind of political games between them. We have president who is offering us some kind of plan a deal once again. We have a ruling party, so some of them wants to get back to the compromise and some of them wants the further ban. So they don't know what's happening actually. They didn't expect this to be, to speak, you know, those protests being, I think these are the largest protests since the fall of communism. So it's not, you know, a joke to people, they are very mad and they are motivated to keep on protesting. And as it hasn't entered into force, we can't really do much other than protesting because they have all the tools. They have court. They have ability to, you know, pass the bill because even if we have a position in parliament, they don't have a majority, right? So whatever peace will propose may come into force, but not what our position has to offer. So, and yeah, what also is to have this kind of view on politics, it's important to remember that we have also one of worst access to contraceptives in Poland. It's very hard to get a pills, for example. And abortion is a topic that have been very close to me as I believe that I'm a woman who can decide on my body. And as we, my organization, Garstfogals Łódź sees it as a human right, fundamental human right. And we see abortion as a healthcare, as a medical treatment, for example, right? So we are actually right now, in our opinion, fighting for a human rights in Poland. And this was very important for me. As you said, in 2016, we started protesting because they were trying to pass the bill with further abortion ban, but that didn't happen. They got scared of what was happening. And yeah, now they are trying to use the pandemic, which is very dangerous for them as they didn't expect what would grow out of it. And they are kind of losing the control over all of this. So yeah, it's kind of sad to think that I started my activism because of a situation, a woman's situation in Poland in 2016. And now that I am actually thinking more about, you know, political activity and, you know, becoming more professional than just protesting, I'm still here, you know, because of the woman's rights fight. So this is not going to change any soon, let's be honest. But the good thing, I think, is that we have a new movement here in Poland, right? We have people who would normally protest, or we have people who weren't even interested in politics, right? Maybe in feminism. Sorry. Yes. Exactly. We have people who are actually seeing also what the church has done over the years, right? Yeah. Yeah, Alexandra. Sorry, you were about to finish. I was just struck by how, as we've been discussing the situation on the woman's body, all we have been discussing until now has been church and politics. So you rightly asserted that the control over female bodies is so much manipulated by goals determined not by health issues, as you said before, but issues that are led by economic ideologies and political ideologies or villages. And as you mentioned, Poland was already before this one of the most restrictive countries on policies, on contraceptive supplies and family planning. Also, I read that you were one of the few countries that required prescription when you need emergency contraception. So you have to go to a doctor who then can deny it to you on the basis of personal beliefs, so your doctor can deny it to help you. And that's not even speaking of women living in remote areas or afraid to go to doctors. So it seems to me that the problem that you are facing and that your organization might have as a challenge is that even as this doesn't pass this bill, because the EU is very much looking to what's Poland, if you pass this bill, we're going to be going to. So the European Union are very, very much watching the Polish government. Maybe that's why. But that doesn't solve the problem that you have as a country when these restrictions are implemented, that the fear and the atmosphere of illegality and clandestinity that drips and slips into the society, maybe making it more difficult for women to get the kind of help that the health aid that they need. Yeah, most definitely. Even if this is not going to be published, this law, because this isn't even a bill, it's constitutional tribunal, which will be much harder to fix in the future when we will have a different government. Even if they will not publish it, we are in a very dangerous situation where ideology and religion are being more important than health. There is no even place for discussion when the constitutional tribunal announced their judgment, their sentence. Then our president few days later said that he would like to talk about this, but he was supposed to talk about this way, way, way before when there was even a possibility for this kind of judgment be passed and announced. Even if there was a discussion, which there's not, they don't want to discuss with us, and when they are actually talking kind of abortion, they are talking from this ideology, right? They're thinking that we are going to kill children and this is very dangerous situation because they don't want to have any facts and like arguments that we can provide them because we are not here to fight with them. We are here to improve women's situations. This is kind of significant also as I said a few days earlier when I was on a different panel. We are kind of in this right now. This is the end of those 16 days activism against gender-based violence, right? Today is the human rights day. And I think what is actually happening here in Poland right now is the best example of gender-based violence when we have government who doesn't want to give us an access to a fundamental rights to our health and to, you know, they are blind to see what we are dealing with, right? So they say to us that we have to give a birth, but when, for example, a woman is giving birth to a children with this ability, they are not giving any health, any health. Yes. And also as I go on to Sophie, which is exactly the moment of ideology critique that I think she would share with you and not even when we talk about disabled children, but having perfectly healthy children has also an immense impact on the female body. I will come back to the numbers and the Polish situation. We will be meandering throughout. I would like to allow Sophie to join us in what Alexandra was saying in that when I read that you said that these situations, situations like these, like in Poland, like in your country, like in my country of origin, Brazil, these situations are not social. They are social, not natural. They are constructs, right? Things that have political and economic reasons. So we made them this way so we can make them this way. Sophie, that's how you see it. Yeah. Thank you, Carolina and Cassia and Elina and Howlround and Alexandra. It's really exciting and an honour for me to be in conversation with a comrade on the front lines of a historic abortion struggle. As I see it, I mean, as I was coming into this conversation this morning on such an important day, I hope that by the time we finish this conversation Argentina will also have legalised abortion. And I'm personally, I'm sure we're all feeling this way in awe of Argentinian feminism today and really crossing my fingers that their victory comes about as we speak. I was thinking that really my role here as I imagine the reason why I have been invited to talk with Alexandra is less as someone with useful political strategy to inform activism because unfortunately right now I'm less of an activist than I used to be and I'm more of a writer and a thinker. But the ideas in my writing on care and social reproduction and the ideas in my book Full Surrogacy Now have perhaps some tools that can be useful to think about for those doing concrete abortion struggle. But mainly I think I have much more to learn from Alexandra in this conversation. I suppose one thing if you don't mind me lingering a little on the Polish situation, it's really intriguing to me whether there is any strategic or tactical potential to rejecting this framing. I noticed that we talked about a thousand-ish abortions in Poland a year and that is the Polish Ministry of Health's official data. Of course the number of abortions really taking place has been estimated by, for example, the Federation for Women and Family Planning which is a Polish feminist NGO possibly as high as 200,000 a year. So the difference between 1,000 and 200,000 and I guess my question for Alexandra very sort of humbly because I'm very aware that the U.S. context is not equivalent to the Polish context right but one of the conversation in which I have some involvement in my milieu has to do with a rejection of the tactic that became dominant in the 90s among liberals and feminists in America where slogans such as safe, legal and rare were taken up. And today in the 21st century we have a real pulling apart of feminists interested as I am in something a little more like you know free on demand and not just without apology but with congratulations you know a really not just unapologetic but false-rotedly you know pro-abortion stance versus the establishment kind of pro-choice movement represented by the leadership of Planned Parenthood who for their part you know oppose things like clinic defences and sort of vocal on the street kind of contestations of the far right and the lawmakers and the people who I would call proponents of forced gestation right because the framework that I propose in my book which is not a framework I invented but nevertheless has kind of come back into consciousness partly as a result of conversations around false arrogance now is that you know gestation can be thought of as labor needs to be thought of as work and a form of work from which we have if you like a human right to withdraw right it is imperative that for absolutely any reason a person have the the right which means you know a right only means something if there is free access and infrastructure and support and a lack of stigma right in that full sense of the word right to to not do forced unconsensual labor and you know I am really a theorist when I when I explore these things in the book rather than someone who is you know tactically testing these things in policy but I have noticed that some groups such as the group NYC for abortion rights has actually taken up this this framing and is regularly putting out materials campaign documents that affirm that gestating is is work which is I think a way through in some context perhaps not Poland who knows I would love to hear from Alexandra about this where you can avoid these deadlocks and gridlocks around whether it is you know killing on the one hand or health care on the other because I suppose for me that the issue is not to simply to to to take away humanitarian and sentimental focus from the figure of the fetus to put it simply on this other individual the mother but rather to think about the the labor the relationality and that that perhaps gives us you know some kind of way out of this gridlock because when you think about it as as forced work some of those you know really tired frozen sorts of standoffs between innocent unborn and you know selfish woman or whatever can perhaps be be put to one side so yes I'm just I'm just interested in in Alexandra if that's okay in you know how how do we defend you know 200 000 abortions a year not just 1000 legal ones you know yes I'm gonna go back to the numbers in a minute because 200 000 is indeed the number that the EU the European Union is using aside from the 30 000 abortions that happen abroad for those who can afford it so the numbers are larger than than officially transmitted but Sophie I'm going to just summarize some of the things that you've said and I saw also read in an article by Marie Solis where you say that all gestational work is work because of the immense physical and emotional labor it requires for those who do it so that's I think one thing is sensibilizing people to the the labor and that the heaviness of having a child which is so often pre or understated by society and secondly I've seen you say that pregnancy is extreme sport which I also like as a comparison because that would be a top supporter next to my professional activities and I feel more of the as a mother which I will please sit here I will feel that covers more of the the responsibilities and the load that we carry but when we do when we combine the things and then going back to Alexandra is the perfect I think bridge to talk about when this heaviness this immense physical and emotional labor is imposed upon a female body whether in terms of lack of education or information preventing us from unwanted pregnancies or to preventing pregnancies that are unwanted from being terminated and and thus putting us in the position where gestation happens more often not always as a choice what what how how can we explicitly link this politics and and religion what is the benefit of putting women in this position to both of you maybe first Alexandra okay so I actually read what you just said Sophie and I think this is very interesting and what you have to say is very very interesting from right and I agree that pregnancy means so much more than just you know having a chat right there's so much like you said physical and emotional labor and what people don't realize what actually means to be pregnant I don't know what it means to be pregnant but I read about those stuff I read about statements of women who didn't go through a pregnancy or didn't carry a pregnancy in a very well way and it was very hard for them many of them also regretted this right so I think this vision let me call this a vision or theory is in my opinion very interesting in would probably and if implemented could save a lot of lives because we wouldn't have a woman who are you know pregnant and they for example have to get an abortion in very unsanitary in a healthy way because there are not many women in Poland who will know that there is for example a abortion dream team or woman help doc org where they can get an access to healthy safe abortion so they will do it in very unhealthy way so if implemented theory that you have Sophie it could potentially in my opinion save some lives and also bring what you said Carolina education and there is a lack of education in Poland we don't get a lot of from school we even have a conversation so right now in Poland when government and church is saying that sexual sexual education shouldn't be in in schools right so same in Brazil they say that it forces or it puts ideas in children's heads so that they start sex earlier but I think it's for teaching this sexual education they are kind of more likely to molest molest those children and to rape them so this is very going on in Poland apparently so yeah I think that it would help to bring awareness to spread education and to make people learn about pregnancy and what it means to be pregnant and what it means to be pregnant unwillingly and not wanting to have children you know it would also for example kind of stop the stigma that we have on women who are for example a child free by choice here in Poland saying your child free by choice is like you know you're some kind of witch probably so it's nice vision that in my opinion in for me it's attractive this vision that you that you said about this being a work and all this labor kind of values but yeah in in kind of political strategy and if we want to be effective here in Poland it would it wouldn't be able to you know even propose it and to have as I said a discussion even on it right so as for me it sounds very attractive and and something that I would be very interested in exploring and implementing but it's not something that I know would be even accepted in in in a discussion right because we're just on our way to even inform people that there can be you know for example in open relationships or they can be you know not heterosexuals so this is just the beginning for Poland to actually talk about some stuff right so as it seems very interesting and I wish we could even have this conversation here in Poland yes there it's oh sorry yeah I just wanted to say that that it's it would be very hard for us to happen here in Poland yeah and that's yes I'm following up on on my my own country of birth this is Brazil and it's in the same very same position as you're in Poland and I'm struck by how the quality of lives of women are so defined by geopolitics I I would like to ask Sophie another question because I don't think you fully explained the concept of your book in full full surrogacy where you own not only talk about just just traditional work but also of education child education and care and you expand the idea actually define define the nuclear family the concept of the nuclear family the ideal family being consisted of a man a woman and maybe two children so you define that idea and you strive for larger systems of care where we mother each other would you like to maybe elaborate on that and maybe how you can use this idea to tackle the idea of the nuclear family that is sure yes it's there are sort of several moves that take a little bit of unpacking in turn because I suppose many of the steps in my framing are counterintuitive unfortunately in the present left even though in the 60s and 70s there was actually a much greater awareness of and much more familiarity around slogans and and horizons that now seem kind of crazy or unheard of you know there was a forgetting like a mass forgetting that has taken place in the 80s but in the 60s and 70s you know people were kind of quite familiar with ideas like abolish the family you know it was actually one of these kind of almost orthodox marxist kinds of ideas as well as you know a familiar theme of gay liberation and and and revolutionary women's liberation so there is a certain way in which I'm actually you know going back to to something paradoxically a bit more traditional within this tradition of of on the ground utopianism utopianism not as a kind of dreaming of a post political island where everything is fine but as a as a really kind of radical at the root practice of concrete engagement with reality that that that strives for a really liveable world so I'm looking at just stating in a kind of almost childlike way I think sometimes is a good way to explain it like rather than accepting from the get-go that this topic is naturally linked you know like this to other edifices like gender and motherhood and so on I am almost putting blinkers on and inquiring what kind of work is this and it's actually quite astonishing you know you mentioned extreme sport you know I want to be clear I am not afraid of gestating or anti-pregnancy on the contrary it's kind of amazing to me that we don't learn more about the you know co-productive kind of two-way extraordinary grizzly exciting thrilling dangerous kind of nature of this of this labor and I do think it's important to you know get through our heads that 300 000 people a year die doing pregnancy and if there was any other kind of you know job that had that kind of death count I think we would be trying to really revolutionize that that industry right but pregnancy because it's so naturalized and not particularly framed as something we could change in its fundamentals even though again I just want to say in parentheses you know for over a hundred years we have had thinkers ranging from fascists to utopian feminists queer communists and so on all across the spectrum dreaming about how we might do pregnancy in a completely different way right like maybe involving aspects of sharing out of the body technologies kind of you know this has been part of our cultural imaginary for a hundred years the idea of of helping the human body not bear that creative burden on its own right but at the same time as we have those scientific fictions we also just don't seem to want to do anything pragmatic to problematize pregnancy in the in the now as it really exists you know so so somehow it is fine for people to get injured and to die doing this really you know cool you know for many people easy that's paradoxically also the case right some people don't find it very difficult to do pregnancy but you know humans are diverse we just I just would like a world in which people are empowered to have pleasurable and non-lethal experiences of gestating on the basis that you know that's all let's all you know have fun and extreme sports are certainly something that I want infrastructures in place for to you know to for people to do freely so that's kind of the first position because sometimes I'm misunderstood as being you know somehow phobic of of the maternal you know and nothing could be you know further from the truth because you know so what I mean by abolition this is the next step is kind of the classic um hegellian kind of sense of the term that means you you take what is already um against all odds present in the now so the people who were never meant to survive in Audre Lorde's phrase the you know the people who have been dispossessed and marginalized in the existing um capsules regime of reproduction they have the skills to mother one another and to mother themselves collectively and that and the so that those skills in a sense that that movement of real families against the family is already here and so abolition would mean taking that kernel of liberatory mothering and and universalizing it so that people's reception of care and mothering and all the necessities of life is not dependent on some kind of genetic lottery and not structured according to a tiny sort of scarcity producing unit which by the way is also kind of ecologically bananas you know living in atomized um nuclear households is is is kind of um you know just on on the level of let's say resources you know completely um you know irrational in a moment yeah um and with covid we have of course discovered um that you know the the the the ideology of family is sort of fictional right there have been so many you know uh columns and opinions published by upper middle class people kind of saying gosh you know without without my nanny and without my mommy and without all the people who helped me kind of make my autonomous you know nuclear household function it really is quite hard and quite a lot of work you know which really makes you think whether that edifice the family is so you know self-sustaining and and of course people can recognize that and yet they don't they don't follow through and dare to imagine a more thoroughgoing you know transformation sorry I had a question about that Sophie because maybe two short answers because I you and me together we have this ability of making time pass really quickly so um but I have two questions regarding that because when you speak or when you spoke or of um a utopian feminist future you spoke of exactly that of broadening the idea of a nuclear family and expanding into larger systems where children are cared for by others as well but this is a model that I already know from my family which is both indigenous and african and I think these ethnicities have far more um experience with um not limiting the notion of a nuclear family that much into to people responsible for everything and then the second is when you mean when you say abolition do you mean something more like proliferation maybe because as I hear you speaking about it it is not the word that I use when I in my context of abolition of slavery where I where I would like the the definition to be about destruction and about and about um uh dismantling and not transcending and involving so is is is um if I were to implement your your theory in my life would you mind if I use emancipation instead of abolition sure yes there is a lot of debate around this word abolition and not all you know black feminists for instance whose ideas I am largely you know borrowing when I when I as well as the marxist tradition wages for housework wages against housework and so on but I I'm not I hope I hope it doesn't appear too arrogant to propose this because it's it's not it's fine for people to use whatever language I would say that several projects in the present and the and the past are sort of family abolitionists whereas they might not have called themselves that I guess I was trying to talk about abolition in that sense of um of hebong and universalization like when Ruth um Wilson Gilmore talks about um prison abolition it's it's about a building she says not just a destruction and there's there's a kernel of emancipation in the present that gets proliferated to universally but this is kind of semantics it doesn't it is but semantics as a linguist I think they are important and I think of course I wouldn't I wouldn't uh but no not without a struggle I would let abolition become something more like just but we are sisters in the struggle anyway um another one um you have a question for each other and in the meantime I'm going to be reading the questions that came in for you both in the chat so if you have something that you want to check out with each other this is the moment you can do it without me in between and I will be reading and selecting the questions that came in for you you're okay I actually have um a question maybe you've had more um because this uh free free of um this model of family let's say this about uh abolish okay okay abolish family let's call it uh abolishing family is something that I think would be um very practical with I'm sorry don't worry um kindness and spreading this care so much more than you know people that are basically your family um and it is needed and I think this is um remedy for what is happening in Poland and we are very divided right so what I'm interested in is actually how would you even see this no coming to life and implementing it in society in community such as Polish one right when we are simply divided in a half uh because of our you know uh preferences political preferences religion or you know um our our views simply so as it sounds very attractive to me and I think this is amazing to think about that we would live in in a world like this um it's simply also very interesting to see how would it happen even right so and how to promote such an idea and maybe how to find a way to actually go from theory to practice and to start implementing this and much more you know on a much more scale Sophie I'm adding one small question to that from Alexandra because it's uh so close to the question that you got in a chat so Alexandra is interested in implementing your theory and I think she's going to make a strategy to change Poland so she's taking notes yes and she wants to know how it can be implemented directly and I will be taking notes too and the one in the chat is asking for your viewpoints so maybe you can dissect it from commercial surrogacy as a term and how to make sure that you can implement such a such a theory in a country especially so divided making while making sure the system doesn't exploit the existing inequalities between women already so here's your question yeah no of course um you know uh just to be clear you know full surrogacy now is not a book that is promoting uh what we currently refer to as surrogacy which means commercial usually surrogacy in fact you know most of my book is uh really critical of the of that industry it's it's a book that talks about all relations of care and gestating pointing out that today we also have a new emerging you know commodified sphere of production of parentage but contrary to the you know some conservatives who think that commercial surrogacy is somehow threatening to the the private nuclear household and the whole ideology of family it's quite the contrary right it's it's it's an extension of the same logic of uh children as genetic property um and so the the thing that we would need to abolish needs to take into account both this kind of supposedly new not really that new when you look at the racialized class divisions of labor that under undergird it not new at all right and the kind of unexamined sort of natural site of reproductive labor the household doesn't get away scot-free simply because we have you know a new exploitative uh zone you know commercial surrogacy that's the point of my book right it's trying to think about how we might have solidarity between people who do gestating in paid locations and unpaid ones and wondering how we could and you mentioned Carolina your experience of um indigenous and african poly maternalisms how we might return to a sensibility uh or learn for the first time for many of us being settlers and you know how to relate to not just children but each other as though we don't belong as though we aren't property right children in the phrase of the sisterhood of black single mothers in 1980s USA you know do not belong to us they do not they belong only to themselves and they are the responsibility of all of us right so how we get there concretely is you know i i'm not being flippant when i say luckily not something for me to work out in a book of of theory and critique however you know i i think um you know since i've been asked directly um the polish situation might benefit from some of the same sorts of conclusions we've reached in the US where you know um apologizing triangulating uh reassuring our enemies you know that abortions um are done regretfully um and sorrowfully um and only when absolutely necessary is a bad strategy i think we need to understand that for centuries those who make the world and who make one another which is kind of all of us but or ideally would be all of us but you know historically has been racialized feminized human beings that they have also been um skilled uh and at the art of unmaking life as well as making it so enslaved people have always you know shared the knowledge required to do abortions abortifacient herbalism thrived among enslaved uh a sort of uh such uh labor industries right and i am a proponent and a and a supporter without um without reserve of all those underground uh still today you know clandestine networks of mutual aid and healthcare provision and smuggling and abortifacient airlifting and all the means by which women have uh and and people and pregnant people of all genders have given one another access to to freedom from unwanted pregnancy right and you know that that is something we need to celebrate and not simply agree with our enemies is somehow something that needs to be minimized right i think we need to sort of really stop being on the defensive with this and and show that people who look after generations you know children and and and all generations are also people who sometimes kill fetuses and i am not afraid i wonder if we could do because this strategy is not winning right now against the far right what if what if we agreed that there is a killing of a fetus that is involved in the labor of social reproduction and that we are not afraid of saying that because it is a a wonderful thing that makes women happy right the the studies show that abortions make people happy this is like a sociological fact um so why do we have to agree that it needs to be eradicated of course there would be less abortion in a world in which we had real gender freedom and proper contraception and and and but that's that's a separate question in the present abortion is good you know that's what i want i think to hear people people say and show that it goes together with a genuine commitment to lives worth living i agree that we need to kind of say that abortion is good and that's what we are actually trying to do here in poland and i actually as you said about these you know killing fetus i found this video of yours when you talk about you know abortion being unnecessary um violence right and i thought about this as a kind of strategy to use but um you see what we are struggling here in poland as i said is education and trying to give them an argument right and i would like to imagine you know just having a public conversation with my government and saying to them that this is a form of killing but we have to justify this and we need to defend this right it wouldn't be able even to happen because we're just on our way to talk to them about the medical issues that are you know associated with abortion and that people are not aware of so i i agree that we need to kind of normalize abortion and say about facts and statistics that you said which are very important that abortion brings happiness and brings freedom and it makes people who are pregnant and who will make an abortion do an abortion make them happier and this is this is a fact and it's important to say but yeah we are just on our way to kind of let them know that this is actually happening right because then they will go out and say that they have some other data or statistics and that we are not right so there is no place for such a discussion but yeah i agree that we have to say that abortion is totally okay and it's normal and it makes us happy and this should be this should be normal we shouldn't say about any kind of regret because there is no regret i don't maybe i don't yeah sorry there's some delay a big story behind an abortion to understand it right for me it would be easy i i don't want to have a children so i will do an abortion there is no big story there's no big motivation behind it or you know a full regret difficult situation this is simple right i would abortion and i will be very happy if i will be in a position that i will have abortion and they don't have to carry a pregnancy might i suggest maybe sorry another another delay so i keep interrupting you i'm not intending to cut but might i suggest that we include pregnancies as well as a thing that can make you happy if you choose to be pregnant and be a mother and that an abortion can make you happy if it's your choice to abort but i think an abortion that is forced is also not a source of happiness so i'm i think we are here struggling to define um a woman's right to create and destroy what happens in her body um i i may maybe not but i have one more question for for alexandra and then maybe a time for a question that i made myself i'm just trying to put the audience first here before we have to close up so alexandra he's a question from the audience i don't know who he came from alexandra mentioned that the movement that is now going on in poland has been able to reach out to a broader audience what do you think boy the main reasons for that and what can we learn from that for the international feminist struggle for reproductive rights a part of this answer i might mention was already given by sophie when you said sophie as i understand to invest in underground networks and illegal and plan that sign not official networks and invest in helping people who are have acute needs right so keep investing in that and then maybe the rest of the answer for you alexandra i'm gonna repeat yeah could you repeat the question so you mentioned that the movement that is going on now in poland has been able to reach out to a broader audience so your the people the number of people that joins your you your organization or your views is growing how come is a question and my diet but i lost the question here is what do you think were the main reasons and what can we learn from that for the international feminist struggle for reproductive rights um so i think there is so it all became it all started with this um abortion ban this this um idea that we should have further abortion ban and this was the main reason we even started protesting but throughout those protests i realized that it became much more because we not only have you know demand of liberalization of abortion we have so much demands now and it's actually becoming becoming kind of you know more political because we have a woman's strike uh whose leader is martin empelt and they are you know organizing a council that is finding ways and solutions legislative solutions also on how to fix all the mess that piece um made um but it became not only a access and liberalization of abortion of course access to contraception uh separating state and church and independence of a constitutional court and of course the chief justice who is now not very independent um and all the things that piece done throughout the years for example to have a system this is becoming much much more you know there things that piece that during the pandemic and their their weak decisions both economic and social what they are doing also to LGBT community it it it's like you know adding that's and adding everything that they've done and you know this is just a huge explosion right now of people realizing what they are doing on every field you know every field in this country is is in a weak weak state so i think that uh all that if we add all of this we have a picture of country that is not stable and it's uh you know on an easy road to get in a really bad situation like for example you know Belarus right so um i think that it touched so many uh groups of our society that are now coming together this is kind of you know uh this is a plus of this the situation that we are coming together and there are you know women uh who are for example very religious and have children and would never do an abortion but they are here fighting with us there are men who have similar uh views right um they are lawyers students everyone every age group you know and this is what is very this is amazing right and no matter how this will end and i i would you know idly it would end in you know um in having a new government or earlier elections but that's not going to happen right so i think if we would have to learn uh something from this is that first of all democracy human rights are given to us and they can be taken away at any time and as we still have to end our we have to co-op on a democratic state we are you know uh it's it's a it's a weak state of this democracy right and we can't do much and they have all the tools they have the control of what is happening and um yeah so we have to remember that democracy and human rights even if they are given to us can be taken away at any time and i think uh as i said this coming together and seeing you know the cause that is bringing us together is very important in order to have a successful you know uh successful i would like to say you know some kind of solutions but as i said we are kind of preparing those for for the next elections or for you know for resignation of the government um but yeah coming together and you know adding the dots and seeing that someone's else you know um situation for example a gbt community touches all of us right because there was first a gbt community and there are women right now so uh so we're you know we are all together in this and it's it we have to remember about this no matter you know what kind of field they are going to destroy next so i think this is a lesson that i that i have right now you know and not letting kind of um government ruin this because they are they are trying to do it you know you know they are for example fretting us with arrests or or saying that we are you know putting people at risk because of the pandemic right but they are they were the first that um made this situation happen and they made us go to the streets you know uh during the pandemic so yeah having this kind of little utopia that you said about during those protests we see so many people together you know and the best okay so maybe the most emotional for me moment was the day that um constitutional tribunal um you know announced this new law and everyone in a few hours later decided to you know gather together and be together for this moment so um you know going through this with other people who you wouldn't normally you know uh see it doing is is something that reminds me that we are really all in this together and if we will not do it you know collectively then we will not do it at all you're introducing my last question alexandra uh perfectly i have another question in the chat but it's about bodies and gestational work and work and capitalism and i think that's a little a little bit too um tight in time to go into a question that might easily take a half an hour in answering i would prefer rather to slowly check out enough for some space for sofi to maybe get herself out of the framing that i proposed just now and so both of you my last question would be um as being bodies of resistance in in um or against a system that has been so widely spread worldwide and so that is so powerful and so ingrained in all all the the facets of our lives like religion and work and politics so what do you do for self-care or for um resistance strategies that you use or find useful to to ensure that you can keep struggling on the on the long run because i think that's also important to share not only the knowledge but how to how to stay sane in the midst of insanity or okay so um i can answer this question i guess um that's a very good question actually um there was a moment when i found myself you know very exhausted now they're gonna lie they were like you know 20 um actually it was around you know 20 days of us protesting and you have all those different areas of your life that you have right it's your family that you want to uh have a good relation with and spend time with you have university which is the whole other thing that is you know consuming your time and your energy and then you have protests so finding um a way to you know stay sane is actually something that i'm still learning kind of to do you know um the best way is for me to i think being with people that you know have have a positive impact on me and kind of make me forget sometimes about um what is happening when i find myself with people you know during even after the protests when i find myself with people that are you know uh kind of can make me forget about what's happening it's very helpful and you know have a actually day or evening as a you know just 20 years old student having fun and you know relaxing is something that kind of helps me a lot reading also helps a lot yeah you all should read it makes you very very sane and very healthy and this is the very way to uh self-care from me um but yeah i would say that that this is what i have right now briefly i would agree that um reading history can be um quite consolatory in this moment because the the can seem to so many of us particularly in this absurd year like the future has been canceled to an even greater extent than it was you know already feeling in the last few years but you know the the tides of history are really volatile it's difficult to know sometimes uh what is immediately around the corner i mean even just reflecting on the fact that poland was the first country in europe to legalize abortion beyond medical cases um you know it shows us in a sense you know how how unpredictable and and i mean in a sense it's a warning isn't it um as our comrades in argentina were saying you know you you may think the forces were up against uh you know uh south american and you know but they're coming for you too you know in a sense the the abortion struggle is emerging um as as one of the great sources of revolutionary hope and i think just just reading about that i mean you said not just knowledge but also strategies i mean i it's i think yeah i think we need to i mean self-care is a collective practice and uh resisting the individualization of self-care i suppose would be my real answer to that particularly with covid um we need to recognize that taking care of one another's bodies including through gestures that seem like gestures of of of privacy and rejection are actually tenderness technologies of tenderness um and mutual sort of love right but we need to stay connected to one another or perhaps get more connected to one another than we have been for many decades the fact that um yeah the polish feminists are are saying is a is so generalizable you know get the fuck out of here um is a is a message to the establishment that echoes the movements of the squares you know the movements around occupy it's it's a very uh you know universalizable slogan that has um you know ripples and repercussions far beyond the simple matter of reproductive injustice reproductive rights um and so on and i think one last thing is that history also teaches us that um emancipation struggles only succeed when you know they don't throw portions of their you know of their allies and and partners in struggle under the bus right so when there are attempts including among the left to divide for example you know hardworking families from um immoral queers for example you know or uh we need to insist armed with history that you know there have always been all kinds of family including that kind of natural biological kind that our enemies have in mind among you know the ranks of the queer and it is in fact you know queer poly maternal caregivers and many gendered mothers who have ensured the well-being of so many you know of of our people throughout you know throughout the AIDS pandemic throughout the sort of uh crisis of you know uh homeless queer youth you know uh shelters um trans women have always been part of feminist struggle including in shelters um and women's refuges you know we need to make sure that there are no successful attempts to divide us or or or trade certain thing policies and goods off um again in order to you know to keep us um weaker than we than we might be thank you and also for that sentence that you threw that i might just ask you to throw in a final sentence or how do you call it um uh something that you pronounce and then hope to become a reality and a citation and affirmation was it and i i'm gonna use that one uh the part from Sophie's um where we should be feel empowered to change the future armed with history so to both of you maybe maybe any final wishes for the future um respectively maybe in your country or worldwide or universe wide i won't keep you for that um what's the ideal future for you what's what's the ideal the with no restrictions and no no restrictive church or economic politics maybe a future where they would be supporting um our rights and defending our rights as bodies of of protection of women rather than attacks throwing attacks well yeah sorry go on Alexandra um i think for me it's it's very easy for me but very hard to understand for our government just let people live however they want really if they want to have like you know 20 of children and they want to you know uh attend church every week and if that's make them happy let them if there is a woman who doesn't want to have children and wants to be with multiple partners let her be just let everyone live their own lives and don't put any labels labels are awful um and don't let you know anyone kind of um invades your own privacy and don't do it either so yeah just kind of letting people live however they want it's what is it's so simple i mean i mentioned that like Sandra Sophie oh well you know i um as a killjoy i suppose i have to mention that none of my real demands can be realized in the absence of you know the the overthrow of capitalism colonialism these ecosidal amongst other things like really you know antagonistic to life and to flourishing you know this this cannot happen in one little enclave or one country we need this is a movement that i might call communism with a small c but again nomenclature isn't the be all and end all you know the these without um you know massive transformations of this order one can't really imagine a real end to reproductive stratification right the system where the reproduction of some lives is assisted and the reproduction of others is sort of depressed or assisted um so you know it's it's uh it's a pragmatism of utopia yeah we you know to really have the the world at which we can glimpse in the cracks of the present but for all you know we're gonna have to we're gonna have to make a real revolution but in the meantime i could quote from the um the manifesto of that group nyc for abortion rights who point out uh and this was on the you know the the passing of the much venerated by liberal feminists ruth bader ginsberg the supreme court justice and they said you know because this was this was heralded as a kind of you know terrible you know terrible tragedy for for the future of abortion uh in this country which you know is not completely incorrect but they say we reject veneration of any supreme court justice as a form of doubling down on the same failing strategy that got us here in the first place um we reject despair our goal is not to preserve roe versus wade in the end our goal is to win free abortion on demand as part of universal health care um memory at the end we call on yeah all we have is us and we have the only tools that ever won anything protests refusals strikes riots struggles will need many kinds of tactics for the fight we call on our comrades across the country to join with us in preparing to protect clinic workers patients and each other because abortion is in our hands thank you sophie and also for mentioning sarah ahmet and her mother are manifesto i think we should be the three of us have read that and shared it i would like to thank you i would love to thank you both the both of you for expanding my knowledge and my knowledge of theories and strategies um and hopefully that of our audience tonight as well maybe we can have another talk in the future about um sarah ahmet alone and strategies and how we have changed the future in the meantime maybe in a year or two but um i am i'm so thrilled to have had you here any anything you would like to say sophie no i just wanted to thank you and thank you for putting up with my terrible setup with lighting and technological failures it's been such an honor to talk to you both alexandra and carolina thank you for having me thank you i thank you big pleasure and and i hope that we could you know do it again in different circumstances after a year okay otherwise expect me in poland for strikes yeah i'm with you i'm with you and for the audience we will be closing up here tonight so keep in touch with antigens or the other partners for the 12th episode of school resistance and please keep reading on what these wonderful women are doing for aksha's future thank you