Two quick things:

•  A Texas cop used a nationwide network of more than 83,000 license plate reader cameras to hunt down a woman he suspected had taken abortion pills.*
•  Missouri Senator Josh Hawley asked acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to investigate and prosecute Plan C for providing information about where people can get abortion pills (not for providing pills, for providing information about how to get them).**

What’s that mean for you?

•  Recognize that you live in a surveillance state that is actively working to deny you your bodily autonomy, that the state is able to monitor your movement and activity, and that the state is criminalizing not only abortion itself but also information about abortion.
• Get abortion pills now, while you still can. They’re safe and effective, and you can get them even if you’re not pregnant (just in case you need them later). Aid Access (aidaccess.org) will send them to you anywhere (even in states with bans, even if you can’t pay for them).

This seems like an excellent time to remind everyone of one of the most fundamental ways to oppose fascism. Namely, Do Not Comply In Advance.

Some sentient carbuncle wants to direct the government to investigate an organization for sharing information about where people can get abortion pills (not for actually providing pills mind you, just for providing information about what the pills are and how to get them)? Cool, let’s make damn sure that information is replicated in as many places as possible. PlanCPills.org will send you free stickers with a link to this exact info that you can leave wherever the spirit moves you…like say every public bathroom you ever find yourself in.

A bucket of festering swamp water in a cop suit wants to use a nationwide system of horrifying surveillance cameras to hunt down a woman for exercising agency over her own body? Cool, let’s do absolutely everything we can to make sure we don’t have flock cameras in our neighborhoods. Go be a menace at your local town meeting, this is a spot where you can absolutely make a difference.

Find something you can so and do it. And when you can, do a little more. And then do a little more after that. Make an absolute stink when something outrageous happens, don’t pretend any of this is normal, and never ever ever do the fuckers’ work for them.

It’s never going to feel like enough (and it’s never going to feel like the one triumphant, nazi-punching moment we were taught to expect by the movies of our childhood). But it helps. It does. I promise. Uncountable tiny actions, little things that feel hard and scary and insignificant and deeply anticlimactic, repeated day after day after day, by each and every one of us is how we make this better.

So find your thing and do it. Then get up tomorrow and do it again.

* Excellent article about this over here. To quote from the article, despite the sheriff repeatedly denying the search was because of Texas’s abortion ban, “according to a sworn affidavit by the lead detective, the case was in fact a death investigation in response to a report of an abortion, and deputies collected documentation of the abortion from the “reporting person,” her alleged romantic partner. The death investigation remained open for weeks, with detectives interviewing the woman and reviewing her text messages about the abortion.” Not only did they do this, the cops lied about it after the fact. You should absolutely go read every single word of that piece.

** You can read about that feculent little troll’s vile request on his very own page where he boasts about his attempts to further restrict women’s bodily autonomy. And you can read about exactly why this is so bad and how it fits into the larger pattern of limiting free speech and information about abortion on Jessica Valenti’s always magnificent newsletter.