The Daily Beast
Women are having their abortions on TikTok – but is this real?
Photo illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos via TikTokThe woman in the 10-second TikTok wears the Gen-Z uniform: matching purple tie-dye shorts and a short top, thick white sneakers, long-necked socks. Above the infectious sounds of the song “Photo ID”, she vamps for a selfie, then turns the camera to shift the length of the doctor’s office where she is sitting. It ends with a scene of her in the exam room chair, kicking her legs and laughing. “It’s a great day to have an abortion,” says the caption. The video is a clear and unapologetic representation of abortion – the gentle movement activists have been trying to enter the mainstream for years, and opponents of abortion consider it “sick and depraved”. It is playful, transgressive, an instant success. It is also completely false. “I just started posting videos of myself at random medical appointments and saying, ‘I’m going to have an abortion,'” the video’s creator, a 21-year-old college student who goes by the nickname @abortionqweenn, told The Daily Beast. “I was in urgent care.” Feel your faith in 15 seconds: Meet Christians by conquering TikTokTikTok, the standard Generation Z club, is also a thermometer of teen activism. This summer, with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, users uploaded videos of victims of police brutality and images of protests for racial justice. (According to an analysis, TikTok users were twice as likely as non-users to have recently participated in a Black Lives Matter demonstration.) In June, TikTokers helped prevent participation in a Trump rally by buying tickets that they did not intend to use. last February, a video of a young woman having an abortion brought up the existence of a pro-choice TikTok. The clip, which appears to have been filmed and uploaded by her friend, starts with a positive pregnancy test, then cuts out of a planned Parenthood and then into an exam room. It is defined as “It Will Rain” by Bruno Mars and features a photo of the woman raising her fists and laughing. When the creator deleted the video, it had been viewed thousands of times and provoked a strong conservative reaction. “When society celebrates abortion, we should be surprised to see this kind of cruelty,” tweeted Lila Rose, president of the anti – abortion group Live Action. “What happened to ‘should abortions be safe, legal and rare’?” added Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. “Now they are celebrated and aired on social media.” The account that posted the video was finally deleted, but the genre proliferated. Last week, Autumn Lindsey, a spokeswoman for Students for Life, uploaded a video criticizing the “trend” for young people to post their abortions on TikTok. “This is disgusting and moving and it shouldn’t be a trend on the internet,” she said in an Instagram Live video. “Videos like this prove that the pro-abortion side celebrates abortion.” “Absolutely unreal!” a commentator wrote. “THANK YOU FOR TALKING!” In fact, many of the videos can be literally “unreal”. The Daily Beast found more than a dozen clips of people claiming to be on abortion appointments, which ranged from obvious jokes – a woman dangling her feet off the exam table next to the words “when he sends you a message good abortion “- for simple photos of an exam room with the hashtag” abortion check “. In most of them, women are smiling, dancing and dubbing whatever music is a trend – essentially, doing what everyone at TikTok does. The Daily Beast tried to get in touch with all the creators of the video. Only one, @abortionqweenn, responded. The student and her girlfriend, who goes by the nickname @abortioncounselor, work with reproductive rights and make content almost exclusively about abortion and contraception. (In fact, they met on TikTok and recently moved in together.) At one point, @abortionqweenn said, she realized that filming her doctor’s appointments and passing them off as abortions was a recipe for instant success. “I think many of my followers know that I am not having about 50 abortions a month,” she said. “But people will see that and I think it will normalize. People will also be very angry about this. But it always goes viral. ”The strategy seems to have worked. The duo gained 165,000 followers and more than 20 million views, despite having their accounts blocked repeatedly by TikTok moderators. (TikTok says it does not have a policy that prohibits discussions about abortion. After the Daily Beast got in touch, the accounts of previously blocked women were restored.) Many of their videos contain medical advice on the abortion procedure or information on how to get one. Others intend to be irreverently humorous: one of the first videos of @abortioncounselor shows her dancing to the song “Thotiana” by stallion Megan Thee, under the text “my fetus dancing a little before being aborted”. Another features a drive-thru and the words “in-n-out after an abortion reach different”. For those used to the stoicism of the conventional abortion debate, the fun of the videos can be surprising. Even some abortion rights advocates question some of the pair’s tactics. But for Amelia Bonow, the founder of Shout Your Abortion, the videos are the last step in normalizing a procedure that has historically been stigmatized and kept secret. Bonow hired @abortioncounselor as a resident artist for her organization, which publishes and disseminates abortion stories, because she felt they needed a bigger presence on TikTok. “The idea that abortion is always a serious and sad thing is old-fashioned, does not reflect reality and has definitely not done us any favors,” she said The Daily Beast in an email. Abortion TikTok, she said, “is a nail in the coffin in the old way of doing things. We can talk about abortion any way we want, it doesn’t always have to be heavy. Sometimes it’s hilarious. ”Behind all this humor is the heart of truth: @abortionqweenn and @abortioncounselor have aborted in the past six years. When she did hers at 18, @abortionqweenn said, she knew only one other person who had undergone the procedure. Reading and watching other people’s abortion stories online brought her comfort and inspired her to start making her own videos. “We get so many DMs every week from young people like, ‘I’m pregnant, I want an abortion, what do I want? ‘”She said. “Obviously I am not able to answer everyone, but I like, even through my videos, to be someone I didn’t have.” “It is not a question of whether it is true or not, it is that they are being exposed to positive messages about abortion,” added the girlfriend. Especially for those who live in conservative families, she said, “this may be the first time that they are seeing something positive about abortion, and just having that seed planted can really change people’s lives.” The year that TikTok conquered the world – and directed Trump Mad – the two are not the only provocateurs of abortion in TikTok. In Charlotte, North Carolina, a group of Generation Z “clinic advocates” went viral many times because of videos of them provoking anti-abortion protesters outside a local clinic. In one, they blow Whitney Houston out of a parked car and ask a protester to dance with them. In another, a clinic advocate reads the letter “WAP” to stifle a man who reads the Bible. The latter has over a million views. Although popular, the tactics are controversial: in August, on the same day that the WAP video was posted, four members of the organization’s board resigned, citing “difficult and emotional growth pains”. Under the Facebook ad, a commentator wrote: “I am shocked by the direction I see this organization going towards social media platforms. If this is how the clinic is going, I lost a lot of respect. ”Videos from inside abortion clinics are also controversial, even within the movement’s space. If clinics are identifiable in the videos, providers say, this could put them at physical risk. And videos shot in clinic waiting rooms can pose a threat to the privacy of other patients. Even fake videos, like @abortionqweenn, are at risk of spreading misinformation, according to Mona Walia, owner of the All Women’s Health Clinic in Tacoma, Washington. Perhaps someone will recognize this urgent care and assume it offers abortion, she said, or perhaps compare this fictional experience with your own. “As health professionals, we want to normalize abortion,” she said. “We just need to find a way to do this so that it is available, but that information is accurate.” Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the United States, supported the clinic’s videos, saying in a statement that there should be “no expectation of silence or shame” about the procedure. “Many organizations and individuals have worked for years to end the stigma surrounding abortion and we are proud to work alongside them,” said senior director of communications Erica Sackin in a statement. “Eliminating the stigma of abortion and its impact on patients, staff and policies is an important cultural change that cannot happen as quickly as necessary.” For @abortioncounselor, criticism of his work – whether from well-meaning advocates or opponents of abortion rights – is beside the point. “I didn’t join TikTok to make videos for people who already support abortion,” she said. “I made them for people who are fighting their decision. And I also did it to educate young people about their rights and opti “She added:” There are so many things that have changed as a result of our videos that a pro-choice person who doesn’t like it doesn’t really bother me because, again, our videos just don’t are for them. “for everyone who says abortion shouldn’t be a laughing matter, the joke may be theirs. The original viral video, in which the teenager goes to parenthood planned to have an abortion, also seems to be unreal. ScreenRant, the creator posted a second video – also deleted – claiming that her friend was not having an abortion, but simply having an ultrasound. Read more at The Daily Beast. Do you have a tip? Send it to the Daily Beast here. Get our top news in your inbox every day. Sign up now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper into the stories that matter to you. Learn more.