Hey friend ,

We have good news for you!

We’re extending the deadline to submit proposals for our Self-Managed Abortion (SMA) Content Festival.

Applications are now due Monday, Oct. 20 at 11:59pm PST. Learn more and apply for this PAID opportunity for young people to make their voices heard! 

What Is SMA Fest? 

For many people, self-managed abortion (SMA) is the most accessible way to end a pregnancy. SMA allows us to choose when and where to have our abortions and decide who we want by our side. URGE’s SMA Festival is a digital campaign that allows young people to creatively share personal stories and educational resources about this critical method for termination.

All accepted and produced content will go live via URGE’s social media and website between December 2-5.  

SMA Festival is open to:  

People ages 18-30 yrs olds living in (or from) URGE investment states which include: Alabama, California, Georgia, Kansas, Ohio, and Texas. 

SMA Fest Application Details:

Accepted content includes (not an exhaustive list): 
✨ TikTok/Instagram reels

✨ YouTube videos

✨ Podcast episodes

✨ Zines

✨ Comics

✨ Instagram graphics

✨ Articles

As a part of this digital event, upon acceptance of a successful proposal and subsequent creation of content, applicants will be compensated $600 for their work.

See below for more details about this year’s theme.

What is this year’s SMA Fest theme? 

We invite participants to submit digital content proposals that reflect this year’s theme - Sometimes Messy, Often Meaningful, Always Ours: Honoring the Full Complexity of Self-Managed Abortion. 

In today’s political moment—amid bans, surveillance, and clinic closures—SMA is a critical tool for survival and autonomy. Yet, the lived experience of SMA is not always defined by choice or joy alone. For some, it can be empowering and liberatory. For others,
 it is shaped by hardship: working through pain without time off and/or fearing criminalization if they seek follow-up care.  

Past iterations of the festival have embraced themes like Our Pills, Our Power and The Fight for Self-Managed Abortions Isn’t Over, situating SMA as a site of strength and resistance. Empowerment can certainly be a part of the story—but it doesn’t capture the lived experience of abortion in totality. When we frame abortion only as triumphant or liberatory, we risk flattening people’s lived realities and erasing the ways abortion can also be messy, complicated, and contradictory—and yet still deeply ours. 

SMA festival invites creatives, writers, and storytellers to reflect abortion in all its complexity—beyond binaries, beyond stigma, and fully ours. 

Applications close Monday, October 20, at 11:59pm PST.

Applicants will be notified by October 27, and accepted content will be due by November 7.

The SMA festival will run from December 2-5 across URGE’s digital platforms. 

In solidarity,

Jasmine Dean (she/her)
URGE Communications Manager

PS: To learn more about self-managed abortion, check out
https://abortiononourownterms.org.

You can also see an archive of all the content from last year's SMA Fest for inspiration on URGE’s website. 

URGE: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity
1012 14th Street NW, Suite 305
Washington, DC xxxxxx
United States

You are receiving this email because you signed up to be part of the young people’s movement for reproductive justice centering the leadership of young people of color who are women, queer, trans, nonbinary, and people of low-income. If you no longer want to receive emails from URGE, please unsubscribe.