breadbox: promoting access to high quality abortion care through peer-to-peer education and art

This talk reflects on key moments in the research, production, and outcomes of breadbox, an ongoing social project supporting access to abortion care through peer-to-peer education, commensality, and art. Proofing and baking a boule of sourdough takes about the same amount of time as a person might take to end a pregnancy by pills. One might fold the dough and set it to rise overnight; one might take mifepristone and wait a day before absorbing doses of misoprostol. Both acts involve attentiveness and care. This foundational analogy resists false narratives perpetuated by anti-abortion extremists while revising outdated symbols of feminist movements—moving beyond the wire hanger, and beyond blue-or-red political permissions.

breadbox is iterative and multimodal, evolving and traveling as social conditions require. Videos linked to the project avert surveillance by carrying information about pregnancy release through embedded closed captioning. 'Bread bags’ are informational kits supporting access to care in the communities that the project visits. Installations, live conversations, community production sessions, and the near-universal folk tradition of breaking bread all have their own magics.

Rather than represent social issues, breadbox works to improve our conditions. breadbox moves toward collective autonomy and reproductive freedom with people who have been pregnant or have never been pregnant, women, gender expansive folx, trans people, and all those who support us. breadbox treats the liveliness of sourdough baking (and each other) with responsive, sustained, and tender care, inviting us to articulate regionally-specific answers to a practical question: how do people access abortion care here?