TRIGGER PLANTING
Frieze Art Fair, New York, 2022
Kadambari Baxi, Maureen Connor, Landon Newton

Collaborative Project: as current members, Artist Collective: how to perform an abortion

Commissioned by: A.I.R Gallery in partnership with National Women’s Liberation

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On Monday, May 2, 2022, a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked to the press. This draft laid bare the Court's intention to nullify the 1973 decision, which established the right to an abortion without excessive government restriction. For thousands of years, people have managed fertility healthcare with herbs that function as abortifacients and emmenagogues. Trigger Planting uses those same plants to mark on a map of the United States the states in which trigger laws automatically banning abortion would go into effect should Roe v. Wade indeed be overturned.

In the decades since the Court’s landmark ruling in Roe, access to abortion healthcare has been under attack. Many states have passed restrictive laws, greatly limiting, and in some cases banning altogether, access to abortion healthcare. Most significantly, in 2021, Texas enacted a six-week abortion ban law, effectively outlawing abortion. Restrictions such as these most severely impact Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and low-income communities.

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We advocate for the safest, most accessible forms of abortion healthcare, which means free and easy access to medical professionals and care everywhere. Overturning Roe will not stop people from needing or accessing abortion healthcare. It will only make accessing it more dangerous, further denying pregnant people’s autonomy over their bodies, personal liberty, dignity, and their right to equal protection under the law. These plants represent a history and practice of self-actualized bodily autonomy, we stand in allyship with the herbal practitioners who use them.

Abortion is still legal in the United States.

Abortion is healthcare.

People have a right to healthcare.

People have always had abortions. And they always will.