Woman who created #ShoutYourAbortion in hiding due to death threats

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

published 1 October 2015

After receiving death threats when her Facebook post went viral, the woman who started the #ShoutYourAbortion campaign is now in hiding.

The morning after the House of Representatives voted to defund Planned Parenthood on Sept. 18, Amelia Bonow shared on Facebook her experience with having an abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Seattle. In her post, she argued that "the narrative of those working to defund Planned Parenthood relies on the assumption that abortion is still something to be whispered about," and ended it with #ShoutYourAbortion. Some friends shared it, including writer Lindy West, who has 60,000 Twitter followers. As the post started to go viral, Bonow said she received positive and negative feedback, as well as death threats.

After her home address was published online, Bonow went to stay in a hotel with her boyfriend. She briefly returned home but left again due to safety concerns, and is now in an undisclosed location; the FBI and Seattle Police Department are involved and assessing her situation. Bonow told the Los Angeles Times she is a "liberal, pro-choice, loud, political woman" who believes "stigmatizing abortion is wrong," and realized that by not speaking with her friends about her abortion, "in some way, we have colluded with our silence." She said she understands that not every woman can speak freely about having an abortion, but told the Times that she won't be "drowned out by the people who make me not want to be at my apartment now. Many women want to live in a world where you can say, 'I've had an abortion, and I'm perfectly fine with that,' and not have people saying they want to kill you."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.