The Important Bit Up The Top so You can Action Straight Away
If you listened to the episode above, or on Wild, you’ll know that Nika has created an opportunity for everyone here to have a big impact on the lives of women in the world, at at time when rights are being stripped globally in all kinds of horrific Bridesmaid Talesian ways. Her My Voice My Choice campaign could achieve free, accessible abortion for all women in the EU. Currently women in Malta, Italy, Poland, Austria, Germany, Croatia are not afforded these full rights…and should be!
If you’re not a citizen, send this post to all your EU friends now, or do it over on my IG. Follow My Voice My Choice here. Use this wording if you like:
Dearest European Citizen Friends! This campaign is just awesome - it has a very good chance of achieving FREE, SAFE AND ACCESSIBLE abortion for ALL women in Europe. We have to fight the rollbacks on women’s rights NOW. It takes a few minutes to sign the EU petition. Spread the word. #myvoicemychoice @myvoicemychoice
Or share this Mark Ruffalo IG post where Mark’s wearing the “My Voice My Choice” badge at The Oscars (bless the guy) and tag or message a Euro celebrity in your midst.
Basically, do whatever you can to get European citizens signing this petition in the next month or two! More details below.
The Fun Background
I do these interviews occasionally where I interview someone I met on one of my adventures and who I wrote about in one of my books. There was The Lady in Red and Mammoth Guy (and others!). These “characters” somehow come back into my life in the most gorgeous ways. Mammoth Guy (a young punk working in a vegan smoothie bar in Sierra Nevada who asked to read my chapter on capitalism in This One Wild and Precious Life that I was writing from his cafe table ) wound up reading my book (by accident) and, subsequently, quit his “disposables habit” (which I’d lectured him on that day) and his day job to live out the life he’d always wanted, inspired by my hiking hoo-ha-ing (he now lives in a forest and runs a dog hiking daycare business!). I mean, it’s just beautiful and you might like to read this post where the full, wild story is laid out. You get to meet his dog, too.
The Lady in Red tale is equally looping and loopy. And actually ties in another young woman I met on my adventures: Nika Kovač.
So, to Nika…Nika was a controversial Slovenian teenage activist when we met. She randomly invited me on a gondola ride with a communist philosopher who said he wanted to meet me when I was stranded without a bed for the night. I had just that morning found out I was pregnant (read This One Wild and Precious Life to learn more; the story only gets weirder).
The above episode/video explains how we crossed paths again several times, without realising it.
Today, Nika is an Obama scholar, the founding director of The Research Institute of 8th March, which won two referendum campaigns, one against the privatization of water in 2021 and the other against political influence on public media in 2022, and she’s also led the most extensive “Get-Out-The-Vote” campaign in Slovenian history ahead of the 2022 Parliamentary election, which contributed to a 71 per cent voter turnout. She’s been photographed with Oprah and managed to get Mark Ruffalo on board her latest campaign.
As per above, her latest campaign could achieve free and accessible abortion for all women in the EU. It’s a wild goal, but if anyone can do it, it’s Nika. And I know everyone here is always looking out for tangible ways to make a difference that will actually cut through. This is one such!
You can learn about Nika and follow her on IG here. Follow My Voice My Choice here. I’ll be going hard on this in my own circles and hope to join Nika in presenting the petition to the EU once the million mark is met!
Are you in?
Sarah xx
A beautiful story of a young Slovenian activist I met on a gondola who is changing abortion laws in the EU