Refusing to be silenced
One Washingtonian spurred to new action by Dobbs was Madeline Brown, who had previously volunteered with Planned Parenthood. After the Supreme Court reversed the nearly 50-year decision, Brown felt a new urgency to be of service, and she officially found employment with the organization. "I have been an employee with Planned Parenthood since the end of July [2022]; however, I have been working or volunteering as a storyteller [there] since 2020," Brown said.

At the time of the Dobbs decision, Brown was well on her way to establishing a career as a political lobbyist in a field other than reproductive justice — until everything changed. "I was doing an internship at a lobbying firm and I was offered a position at the company, but I would have had to be quiet about my pro-abortion stance and my support of Planned Parenthood and reproductive justice," she said. "Honestly, that job was a dream job. It was exactly what I wanted. It wasn't in the reproductive justice field, which would have been ideal, but it was a position I could have learned a lot from. But I couldn't sit back and know that I have a powerful voice in this movement and not use it. So I gave up a dream job."

Giving up such an important job could have been devastating for Brown, but Planned Parenthood, the organization she was so passionate about, was there to catch her. "I got involved with Planned Parenthood in one of our most critical times in history. It reinvigorated my passion for organizing. I had veered outside of organizing, but I came back as soon as the Dobbs decision came down."

Brown's story isn't unique. Many young people found themselves thrown into the political fray following the decision. Political analysts have cited the reversal of abortion rights as one of the key factors that played into the drastic increase in young voter participation in the 2022 midterm election. "It has engaged a lot of people who normally wouldn't, and I think you can see that with the election results," Brown added. "It was kind of expected to be the 'red wave,' but it wasn't. I think a big part of that was because of the Dobbs decision and people who were like, 'It's fine, I'll be fine,' you know, for the last 50 years were like, 'Oh, crap, this is scary, and I might need to get involved.'"

Brown got involved with the group she had originally volunteered for, the storytellers. "We are a group of people who have done some training about how to most effectively tell your story," she explained. "It provides an opportunity for you to share your story outside your circle. I have been invited to speak with the teen group over Zoom and told them my abortion story, and I have also spoken at a rally in front of thousands of people. I have had media requests, so we kind of do anything, kind of any scale, from groups of just volunteers and people who want education up to major media requests," she said. "Now, actually, what I'm most excited about in this position is that I am taking over the storytellers group. I am very excited. The storyteller group is powerful, and I am excited to be a part of it."

Working with the grassroots
There are many facets to working at Planned Parenthood. For some, involvement comes on the clinical end, working with actual patients and performing medical tasks and procedures. For others, the task is lobbying for more funding with the national Planned Parenthood Political Action Committee. For people like Brown, most of the work is done on the ground, advocating for the organization and building a movement up from the grassroots.

"What do we do in the community? We want people to understand the services that are provided by Planned Parenthood. Clinic staff can't be the only ones who are disseminating that information. There are a lot of people who think that Planned Parenthood is just for birth control and abortions, but it provides so many other things — gender-affirming care, vasectomies. We refer out for general care, we don't do mammograms, but we do tests and referrals. We have a lot of services that are available, and I get to remind folks that Planned Parenthood is in their community by talking about it a lot," she said.

Brown also gets to help new volunteers find their place in the movement and unlock their activist potential. "The other part is getting folks involved. That is the bread and butter of what I do, and what I have been doing as an organizer for years, making sure that people have the opportunity to get involved in transformative action."

Sometimes her work involves politics and encouraging voters to support candidates who will protect abortion rights in the office. "We just got out of election season, and we did canvassing across the state. We did canvassing for our endorsed candidates. That is an opportunity for pro-choice advocates to come out to the community and talk about the things that are the most important to them and why we should vote and elect pro-choice candidates."

Brown's involvement with Planned Parenthood couldn't have come at a more dire time. Due to anti-abortion laws that went into place following Dobbs, Washington clinics are now seeing a large influx of out-of-state patients. "We are getting more patients into Washington. The volume has gone up and we also know from addresses and stuff that people are coming in from outside the state. It's not something we specifically ask about, but when you check the numbers from last year, or over the last five years versus this year, I guarantee as the new year comes in and we start resetting those numbers, we're going to see some staggering results." Because of all the new patients, Washington's Planned Parenthood PACs are working overtime to secure more funding to ensure all patients can get the care they need.

Brown's favorite part of her job is "helping people find their inner activists and giving them the tools and guidance and opportunities to be really powerful activists. What I always say is that we all have a lane in the revolution, so what I'm good at is what someone else isn't good at, and what someone else is great at, we're all gonna make up for it because we're all in it together. We get people who want to be involved, and then help them build power."

Facilitating community growth
As a grassroots activist, Brown meets people where they're at and learns about the needs of specific communities. "People in their community are the experts in their community. I'm just here to help facilitate, that's kind of how I see it. I want to be intentional about who we are reaching out to and the communities we are trying to talk to. We have a wonderful network of upper-middle-class white folk volunteers, but one thing I want to focus on is going out into the communities where that is not the represented group. Where we can power build in communities where power building is the most important, so kind of branching out from our traditional base and finding more folks to get involved."

Reaching out to communities that are less likely to be involved with Planned Parenthood also means dispelling common mistruths that are spread about the organization. "I think that people who are not supportive or understanding of Planned Parenthood, kind of the layperson who is uninvolved, who stays out of the fray, I think that people assume when we say 'pro-choice' we mean just pro-birth control or pro-abortion, but I haven't met a group of people who are more pro-babies than the group of people I work with," Brown said. "When we say we are pro-choice, we are genuinely and deeply pro-choice. We just want every single person to make the right reproductive choice for them, and for some people, that is having babies and for some people, it is not, and for some people, it is adoption, IVF, or surrogacy, and we support every single one of those."

Another thing people often don't realize about Planned Parenthood is that the services are not just for heterosexual cisgender women. The clinics often provide care to Queer and Trans people, either in the form of STI testing, or aiding in medical transitions. "I come from a more conservative town on the East side of the state, and I know how hard of a time my LGBTQ+ friends had trying to access good service. I think that that's part of why people must know the breadth of services Planned Parenthood offers because I think, had my friends known about Planned Parenthood and all of the services, they probably would have been able to get healthcare that honored them as a whole human being, not just as a patient."

Planned Parenthood is a great resource for LGBTQ+ people seeking affordable healthcare. Everyone at the organization, from the doctors to the receptionists, is respectful of Queer and Trans identities. "One of the best things I think about the clinical side of Planned Parenthood is the staff is understanding. It's such a simple way of putting it, but it is that simple. If you go to Planned Parenthood, you can expect that you can talk to your medical providers or anyone on the medical team about issues you might not be able to talk to with a regular primary care physician. You're not going to be faced with stigma if you are getting STI checks; you are going to be met with compassion and understanding when you are talking about difficult things. You are not going to face people who don't support Trans people or who are disrespectful of the type of sex that you are having or the people that you have sex with or just love," Brown said.

Moving toward the future
Brown hopes to use her position as an activist for Planned Parenthood to reach out to people who may not be aware of all the services the organization offers — including members of the LGBTQ+ community. As the year comes to a close and she looks toward the future, one of her goals is to help form more political coalitions that can help protect all people who seek care from Planned Parenthood from discrimination.

"I know that we are not going to fix all of the problems across the nation, but we have an opportunity this legislative session to invest in the future that we have here in Washington, not just as Washingtonians but as people who are coming to this beautiful state to obtain basic healthcare," Brown said. "We've got a really solid plan about how we're going to go about doing that, and for folks who want to get involved in testifying and talking to lawmakers, we would always love to have more help with that."

"Throughout the year I want to be very intentional about the work we do and who we are reaching out to and what communities we are trying to uplift the most. The LGBTQ+ community is one of the most important," she continued. "I want to build connections. We also want to find ways to find joy in our lives and with the people around us even when our communities are pushed down, forgotten about, and ignored. I think that finding joy amongst the sorrow and chaos and confusion is one of the most powerful things we can do for ourselves. Deep, unabashed self-love, community love, that's another more personal hope for the year."

One way Brown started expressing love, for herself and her community, was through working with Planned Parenthood. Now, as she moves into 2023, she hopes she can help more people embrace the activist inside themselves and continue to fight for reproductive rights.

"I am here to make activism more accessible for people. I want to coax it out of them. All they have to do is get a hold of me, and I will find out ways to help people get involved. It kind of starts with a quick one-on-one, like a fifteen- or twenty-minute interview or chit-chat to find out what they're interested in. We've got so many things that we do, grassroots-wise," she said.

"If you have a passion, you can be an activist. There is no prerequisite for being an activist. There is no resume or set of skills that you need to advocate for yourself and your community and the people around you. Activism is for anyone. And anyone who says there needs to be a barrier to entry or a hurdle you need to jump before you can call yourself an activist is a kind of doing a disservice. Show up as you are, where you are, and we will meet you there and move the needle forward and figure out how we can get you more involved."