WE ARE CHILDFREE

This isn’t a lifestyle.

It isn’t an ideology.

It’s our LIVES.

Our human right to bodily autonomy.

The freedom to determine what we do with our bodies, our time and energy, our one precious life.

That freedom is under threat.

When people ask, “Why are you talking about this? Who cares if you’re childfree? Why do you even need this project…?”

We point to places like Russia, where they’ve banned talk of being childfree, the thought of it, in a dangerous, regressive step back into a time when women didn’t have reproductive rights.

We point to parts of the US and other countries, where they’ve banned or are trying to ban abortion, even contraception. To the many other places where abortion isn’t legally protected and we have to fight for permanent birth control procedures.

We point around us, wherever we happen to be standing, to a society that still considers it the norm, the ideal, to have children – and anyone who doesn’t to be “othered” as outsiders, whether we’re tolerated or stigmatised or demonised or persecuted for that decision.

Where pronatalism leads is a dark place. And what Russia has planned isn’t even the end of the line. The lawmakers in so many places would love to formalise a system of total female subjugation, forced-birthism, the erasure of any identity not considered “normal”.

If they could get away with it.

But we won’t let them.

Our hearts are with the activists in Russia and other repressive countries, who are fighting for our rights, for our lives. And with the childfree and childless people there whose freedoms are being threatened.

If you’re with me, share this post so the people around you know what’s happening in Russia (and the rest of the world) and what’s at stake! 🙏