It was May 15, 2019, a hot and sticky spring day in California. I held my phone in my hand, awaiting a response from a friend. I had just sent her a text: “You OK?”

Earlier that day, Alabama governor Kay Ivey, a Republican, had signed the most restrtictive and draconian abortion bill in the country. After hearing the news I angry-scrolled through Twitter, knowing intuitively what I would see: the onrush of women mining their personal traumas on public platforms to combat ignorance and hate, in this case surrounding abortion.

I was right. In that moment, women were talking about their abortions on every available social media outlet. Some were just quick tweets: “I had one #ShoutYourAbortion.” Some were longform, moment-by-moment personal stories. Many were devastatingly gruesome, while others were lighthearted or leaned on humor. Most fell somewhere in between, but the point was the same: to destigmatize, humanize, normalize. I was equal parts inspired and horrified.

I was also worried about my friend whose conservative evangelical family members knew nothing of the abortion procedure she’d had some months earlier, worried about the patients I’d seen, heads down, arms linked with a friend’s, outside the abortion clinic in Jamaica, Queens where I volunteered as an escort. Would they have the privilege of airing this information to a consuming public? Would they want to even if they could?

Lindy West, Amelia Bonow and Kimberly Morrison started the #ShoutYourAbortion movement in the fall of 2015 after the House of Representatives took major steps toward defunding Planned Parenthood. The anti-choice organization Center for Medical Progress had just published heavily manipulated undercover footage of abortion-providing doctors in an attempt to discredit the health care professionals as profit-seeking and inhumane. Other anti-choice activists and elected officials used the opportunity to chip away not only at Planned Parenthood but at abortion access altogether. It was also around this time that Republicans began to toss their hats in the ring for the 2016 presidential election. Businessman and megalomaniac Donald Trump said that, if elected, he would defund Planned Parenthood; Texas senator Ted Cruz declared birth control “abortifacients.”

#ShoutYourAbortion was a swift and powerful response. What started as a viral hashtag turned into a movement that empowered and encouraged women to own and share their stories. But having to do it again less than four years later feels like less of a triumph. And unacknowledged questions remain about who gets to shout their abortion and the lack of representation of women in actual danger.

Last October, a South Carolina man was arrested for calling in a bomb threat to an abortion clinic. His ex-girlfriend was trying to access the procedure after he’d raped her. The woman also alleged he had been physically violent and had threatened to kill her family members. I wonder if she had her abortion. If she did, I wonder if she gets to shout it.

Often, one of the greatest burdens of womanhood is that we’re expected to both live through stigmatized experiences and work to destigmatize them. While most abortions happen without incident, it is a medical procedure and a personal decision, one that can cause discomfort, pain and, for many, a great deal of blood. Even in the most staunchly pro-choice parts of the country, patients likely navigate through some stigma. And it can be inescapably heavy on our conscience.

For those of us able to share our stories, our trauma is compounded by reliving it over and over as we try to change the systems that enable it. Sometimes we’re heard, often we’re not. An increasingly hostile state of political affairs doesn’t make sharing any easier. Since the last time women were shouting their abortions, three people were shot and killed at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado. Donald Trump was elected president. IRL handmaids regularly stroll through city halls across the country. And Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the Supreme Court.

That appointment, and Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that Kavanaugh had tried to rape her at a house party when they were both teenagers, unleashed a torrent similar to #ShoutYourAbortion. Several thousand women detailed their sexual trauma using #WhyIDidntReport. The viral hashtag filled my Twitter feed on the anniversary of my own experience surviving sexual violence. At the time, I was on sick leave, trying to get through my own reaction and subsequent depression. The entirety of the internet quickly devolved into a minefield of painful triggers. I wondered if I was being oversensitive. Maybe, I thought, this all might actually mean something. Kavanaugh was sworn in shortly thereafter.

This is the environment in which I sent my friend that text. “You OK?” seemed like something small, one tiny fish swimming in the opposite direction of its school, but nevertheless important. I wanted her to know that I saw her, saw that her procedure was the trending topic du jour but that no one was entitled to her story if she didn’t want to share it. “Honestly,” she wrote back, “not really.”

On May 15 we felt the way women often feel in a country that refuses to liberate them: tired. Tired of facing trauma and feeling obligated to explain the experience. Tired of hoping that the people in power, most of them men, would hear or believe us. Tired of waiting for them to do something about it.

A friend who works in California politics training women who want to run for office recently reminded me that there is the world we want and there is the reality we actually face. In the world we want, I can send my boss an e-mail saying, “I’ll be out for the next two days; I’m having an abortion,” as if it were a mammogram or Pap smear. In the world we want, friends don’t call at night, speaking in whispers, asking in tears, “What the fuck am I going to do?” In the world we want, a young girl can immediately access abortion at no expense, without judgment and without fear. And she can choose to share her story if she wants to, not because she feels obligated to, and not face potential danger. For now, if you want to shout but can’t, know we’re shouting for you.