Every woman I know has a story about a bad man. No, wait. Every woman I know has stories about bad men.

They start when we’re too little to understand, with your teacher or your coach or your uncle. They get worse when we start to look a little more grown up, with the dad of the kids you babysit for or your mom’s new boyfriend or your dad’s old buddy. And then, when we set out on our own, convinced that we’re oh so very grown, they take a familiar turn, with your professor or someone you thought was a friend or a bunch of frat boys. And even when we really are all grown up, the stories don’t stop. Now they’re with your boss. Or your landlord. Or the cop who pulled you over. Or the man who came to fix your water heater. Or your boyfriend. Or the man you walked past on a hiking trail. Or your husband.

And sometimes our stories are so small that we aren’t sure they count.* And sometimes they’re so big that we aren’t sure how we’re still alive to tell them. But we all have them. And every woman we know has them. And we all carry them. Every day.

And the stories have consequences. They’re why we stopped swimming or quit track or didn’t take physics. They’re why we changed majors or lost the scholarship or dropped out of college. They’re why we didn’t go to grad school or didn’t apply for that internship or quit that job. They’re why we moved out of the apartment we loved. They’re why we don’t go home for the holidays.

And right now, our country is run by bad men.

Our president is a bad man. Everyone knows it, we’ve known it for years. And about a third of the men in your town voted for him anyway.** Because they didn’t think being a bad man should stop him from being president.

Two of our Supreme Court justices are bad men. Brave women tore their lives apart to tell their stories and make absolutely sure that everyone knew that they are bad men. And a bunch of other bad men confirmed them anyway. Because they didn’t think being bad men should stop them from being Supreme Court justices.

And we are all living with the consequences of these bad men.

Bad men are doing their absolute best to make sure that if you, or your daughter, or your sister, or your friend, or some woman you do not know and will never meet finds herself pregnant, quite possibly because of the actions of another bad man, she will have no choice but to have that baby. Because bad men do not think women are people and do not care what happens to them.

But you can help protect yourself and the women you care about. You can have abortion pills on hand. Because motherhood should never have to be the consequence of an encounter with a bad man.

Abortion pills are safe & effective. You can get them from Aid Access. They will mail them to you no matter where you live (even in states with bans). You can get them even if you’re not pregnant yet (they’ll keep for several years). You can get them even if you can’t afford them (no really, they want to help, it’s totally ok). I like Aid Access because they’re in the Netherlands and run by a stupendous badass who gives absolutely no fucks about american laws and will happily ignore any requests from law enforcement. You can also check out Plan C for other options.

* If you ever start to feel that way, ask yourself how you’d feel it it happened to your sixteen year old daughter (or grand daughter, or the daughter of your closest friend). I’m willing to bet you’d be outraged. So it’s ok to be outraged about what happened to you too.

**About 63% of eligible voters voted in the last presidential election, about half of them for a very bad man.