Life

The Jewish Woman Behind the Twitter’s #IHadAnAbortion

Steph Herold Image by Courtesy of Jewcy.com

By Hayley Goldstein January 5, 2011

In a time where social networking is a large part of almost everyone’s life, many activists have found social networking sites to be a successful venue for social action.

Steph Herold is one of them. A young abortion-rights activist living in Brooklyn, Herold has worked in direct service abortion care and reproductive health advocacy, and recently discovered that Twitter was a surprising way to get women’s voices heard loudly. So loudly, in fact, that they made it all the way to CNN.

#IHadAnAbortion is a Twitter hashtag started as a new venue for women to tell their abortion stories. The inspiration, said Herold, was a blog post she read which compares the modern pro-choice movement to the gay rights movement of the 1970s. “What strengthened the gay rights movement then, according to [this blog post], were people coming out, and the general public realizing that homosexuality is more common and prevalent (and normal!) than they ever imagined. The author of the post posed an interesting question: Why don’t we do that for abortion rights? That really struck a chord with me. The anti-choice movement has tried to make abortion the sin of a few bad women. In reality, abortion is a regular part of women’s lives,” explained Herold.

This post was originally published on Jewcy, and is reposted with permission.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO