“Roe v. Wade is not going to be overturned. I think that’s a concern that’s not founded in reality,” said Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello in 2018 (Donnis 2022). As much as his words stung activists working to protect the right to abortion, they also signaled that he was out of touch with concerns about access to abortion in the nation as well as the state. National polling generally shows that 7 in 10 people support the right to abortion, and the same was true in Rhode Island (Bender 2018). So how did the smallest, most Catholic state in the United States manage to legislatively protect the right to abortion in 2019 without his support or the support of Rhode Island Senate Leadership?
In this essay, we consider the role of storytelling in relational movement-building work. Our analysis relies on nearly 50 oral histories, as well as on archival materials, to help understand what made that legislative moment possible. These oral histories were collected between 2025 and 2026 as part of an ongoing project that will ultimately result in a public oral history archive. Quotes are shared with the real names of oral history participants and have been edited only for flow and clarity. The stories we relate here were told in a wide variety of contexts: legislative hearings, public speak-outs and rallies, and private conversations. Many were told for the first time, or at least the first time in public, during the 2017 to 2019 period as part of mobilizing support for abortion legislation while reducing stigma. As such, storytelling itself can be understood as a form of activism (Kimball et al. Reference Kimball, Moore, Vaccaro, Troiano and Newman2016) and is an essential part of organizing. In sharing their stories in long-form oral histories, activists and leaders alike provide more contextual and complete narratives of their lives and experiences, and how those intersect with the halls of government and the change-making process.
As the case of Rhode Island shows, the reason some states have not passed legislation protecting the right to abortion is not due to lack of public support. Rather, passage of such bills faces a two-fold barrier. First, many people do not see abortion as an issue that impacts them or is relevant to their lives. Second, they do not understand how the political process works in relation to abortion. What the oral histories we have collected so far show is that stories help organize people. They help people get engaged and stay engaged, building the empathy that catalyzes action (Sirin and Villalobos Reference Sirin and Villalobos2024). And finally, they build political power that leads to policy changes. Stories, in Solnit’s framing, “are seeds in which to plant forests of possibility” (Reference Solnit2026, 18). With this in mind, this essay highlights examples from this impact pipeline.
Storytelling and Political Organizing
We have found that many people share a personal connection to reproductive healthcare and abortion, either as part of their own story or a story that resonates with them. Stories, it is said, “are data with a soul” (Nadar Reference Nadar, Oren and Press2019, 74). As such, stories can change minds, create urgency, propel action, and change the storyteller; they can also be used as a tool for subverting power (Sterett Reference Sterett2018). They may not always change legislators’ votes, but they lead new candidates to run for office, remind legislators why legislation is needed, and encourage activists to show up and do the work. Stories, we argue, are an organizing tool, and it is organizing that helps build the collective motivation for change. Story sharing is also inherently vulnerable, and as Brown (Reference Brown2011) says: “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change … If we’re going to find our way back to each other, vulnerability is going to be that path.”
As other scholars have found, sharing painful stories with others, whether one-on-one, in small groups, or in public, can be a key part of organizing (Han, McKenna, and Oyakawa Reference Han, McKenna and Oyakawa2021), and can provide an accessible entry point into activism for people who might not ordinarily think of themselves as the type to engage in political activity (Braunstein Reference Braunstein2012). Part of the work of organizing, then, is helping people “with the lived experience of the problem at hand” (Crutchfield Reference Crutchfield2018, 48) develop the capacity to exercise voice in telling their stories (Han, McKenna, and Oyakawa Reference Han, McKenna and Oyakawa2021).
As activists and organizers take action, “their values become articulated” and theory emerges (Shulman 2021, 320). Holding true to these values while having demonstrated the flexibility to work with others provides powerful opportunities for making change (Han, McKenna, and Oyakawa Reference Han, McKenna and Oyakawa2021). As Han, McKenna, and Oyakawa (Reference Han, McKenna and Oyakawa2021, 65) argue, “Through relational work, people can realize their own agency and bridge across difference to exercise agency collectively with others.” Storytelling, then, is a key element of this relational work, enabling the building of bonds (Swerts 2015) through personal connection, which then encourages collective action (Crutchfield Reference Crutchfield2018), and lays the groundwork for deeper change.
Abortion Storytelling and Legal Reform in Rhode Island
How then was storytelling used in Rhode Island, and where do we see the threads of this relational work? On the 10-year anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 1983, Planned Parenthood held a speak-out. Former Executive Director Mary Ann Sorrentino, who was in 1985 excommunicated by the Catholic Church, describes the event as “story after story until we were all spent. I heard from women I had known all my life and whose abortions I never knew had taken place. There were tales from elderly women, young mothers, teenagers, and even a few stories from the men who loved them” (United Press International 1986).
In 1986, the year after Sorrentino was excommunicated, Rhode Island held a Constitutional Convention, which put an anti-abortion amendment on the ballot. Voters voted it down by a 2-to-1 margin. Governor Lincoln Chafee, who served on the Constitutional Convention, recalled in his oral history: “Well, after the Constitutional Convention approved a pro-life platform in our Constitution, and the voters rejected it two to one, I mean, the state is pro-choice.” The results of this vote highlight that—as would continue to be the case over the next four decades—robust popular support of abortion access was not sufficient to shape the actions of political leadership.
Starting in 1992, the Reproductive Health Care Act was routinely introduced with the legislative intent to codify Roe v. Wade into Rhode Island law and repeal old statutes that had previously been struck down by the courts as preempted by Roe. Despite the clear public support demonstrated by voters in 1986, this bill was introduced year after year and never made it to the governor’s desk. Representative Edith Ajello, the bill’s lead sponsor for many years, only decided to share her personal abortion story in 2017, after Trump’s election (Staff Writer 2017).
Linda Kushner, the bill’s original sponsor, returned to testify on behalf of the legislation, which had been reintroduced as the Reproductive Privacy Act in 2019 with a new sponsor. She told the story of her own experience having an illegal abortion in the 1960s that led to a life-threatening infection: “I have never regretted that decision. But I can say that I have also been always angry that my life was put in such terrible danger because some group of people thought that I should not be able to control my body” (Bawden and Kalunian Reference Bawden and Kalunian2019).
Paula Hodges, then working for Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, reported that in 2013, when marriage equality passed in Rhode Island, the General Assembly sent Chafee, then governor, legislation creating a “choose-life” license plate. Governor Chafee became the only governor to veto such legislation. When asked about his position on abortion, Chafee recalled, “I remember reading a book about a fellow that had, his girlfriend had gotten pregnant, and she had gone to Sweden for an abortion. I’m thinking, well, they could afford it. How about the poor person that can’t afford to go to Sweden for an abortion? They’ve got to go to a back alley.”
After the marriage equality and license plate votes, organizations and activists supporting the right to abortion, like Planned Parenthood, had what Hodges referred to as a “scoreable vote.” In other words, the marriage equality and anti-abortion license plate votes provided a story to tell Rhode Islanders about their General Assembly Leadership, and Rhode Island started electing more people supporting the right to abortion. What these moments highlight are agents of change grounded in personal stories and collective narrative. In Lamont’s (Reference Lamont2023, 113) words, “… what unites change agents is their commitment to close the recognition gap. Across professions and areas of influence these individuals use a range of strategies to convince others that a different world is possible.”
Destigmatizing Abortion Through Storytelling
Representative Ajello, alongside a new wave of activism ignited after the 2016 election, set the stage for more storytelling and thus the destigmatization of abortion stories. Lamont (Reference Lamont2023, 149) argues that “… destigmatization required a recognition chain that included support from prestigious public figures, a wide broadcast of messaging, and activists borrowing effective strategies from other successful movements to gain traction.”
Moira Walsh, a state representative from 2017 to 2021, highlights her own journey to destigmatization when she recalls that before she ran for office, due to her Catholic upbringing, she “identified as pro-life.” It was through conversations with a friend that Walsh said she began to see that she’d “left the Catholic Church already, but I hadn’t left a lot of that indoctrination.” Her friend helped her see that there were many reasons why pregnant people seek abortions and thus changed her mind about abortion. Her own experience of changing her mind left her with the belief that “we need to be more receptive to people who change their minds. That’s what we want in people …. Nobody ever changed their mind because of somebody yelling real loud. You know, you have to meet people with compassion.”
Tammy Brown, an activist, tells the story of when her mother was pregnant with her; she was pressured to have an abortion. As Tammy relates, her mother “had a mental illness and people, her doctors, her family, almost nobody thought she should have a child. But she really desperately wanted a child.” Tammy went on to say that “some people might say, well then, you should be anti-abortion and I say no that makes me even more pro-choice. You shouldn’t force somebody to have a kid that doesn’t want to have a kid.”
Sorrentino herself, as she shared in her recent oral history, reflected on time at Planned Parenthood and beyond and concluded that: “I’ve shown Catholics, especially Catholic women, that, if the church feels that it has to do something hurtful to them, like, because of divorce, or because of abortion, or whatever, it is that this week, is something they don’t like, and they’re gonna do something bad to you. If they do that, your life isn’t over.”
This perspective is similar to how Jennifer Rourke, an activist who ran for the State Senate in 2018, described telling her abortion story during a legislative hearing. It was around one in the morning, and it was also the first time she told her story in a hearing, an experience she describes as “liberating.” Jennifer, already a mother, told of being sexually assaulted by a friend whose father was a judge at the time. After giving her testimony, Jennifer describes being greeted by State Representative Carol Hagan McEntee “in the hallway, and she grabbed me, and she was crying. She just grabbed me, and she was like, thank you for sharing. She’s like, you didn’t have to do that. She’s like, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry … and I didn’t cry. Until she said, I’m sorry.” Representative Hagan McEntee had previously shared her own personal story during a House Judiciary hearing while serving as a member of the Judiciary Committee and greeted Rourke with a similar warm welcome of a shared path.
Sarah Markey, a co-founder of The Womxn Project, an activist organization founded in Rhode Island after the 2016 election, told her mother’s abortion story at a story-sharing event. She was supported by her husband, another activist, and a man she knew from a local theatre organization. She says: “I just remember this look on his face where he was like … it’s okay, you’ve got this. I don’t know. He just was in my eyesight for whatever reason, and I just remember feeling … I don’t need to feel pressure. And this random guy who does, like, seems very nice, but I don’t know him, is like, supporting me. This is a safe space, I guess, right?” Feeling supported in sharing her story, then, provides that moment of destigmatization that enables others to share their stories in turn, and thus change the conversation about abortion.
What We Can Learn From Abortion Storytelling in Rhode Island
Considering where we go next in terms of abortion access, what the oral history project has shown thus far is that storytelling among activists and supporters can bolster individual and communal involvement and build bonds of solidarity inside and outside of government. What we can learn from Rhode Island is that cultivating space for sharing stories as a form of intentional organizing work can be an actionable starting point that leads to change. This approach provides a roadmap for the use of stories in other states where abortion access is currently restricted, a roadmap in which sharing our stories with each other and in public can help reduce stigma, increase urgency, build community, and organize for action. The motto of the State of Rhode Island is “Hope,” and this roadmap—built from the stories we share in our oral history archive—can provide a path of hope.
You have
Access
“Roe v. Wade is not going to be overturned. I think that’s a concern that’s not founded in reality,” said Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello in 2018 (Donnis 2022). As much as his words stung activists working to protect the right to abortion, they also signaled that he was out of touch with concerns about access to abortion in the nation as well as the state. National polling generally shows that 7 in 10 people support the right to abortion, and the same was true in Rhode Island (Bender 2018). So how did the smallest, most Catholic state in the United States manage to legislatively protect the right to abortion in 2019 without his support or the support of Rhode Island Senate Leadership?
In this essay, we consider the role of storytelling in relational movement-building work. Our analysis relies on nearly 50 oral histories, as well as on archival materials, to help understand what made that legislative moment possible. These oral histories were collected between 2025 and 2026 as part of an ongoing project that will ultimately result in a public oral history archive. Quotes are shared with the real names of oral history participants and have been edited only for flow and clarity. The stories we relate here were told in a wide variety of contexts: legislative hearings, public speak-outs and rallies, and private conversations. Many were told for the first time, or at least the first time in public, during the 2017 to 2019 period as part of mobilizing support for abortion legislation while reducing stigma. As such, storytelling itself can be understood as a form of activism (Kimball et al. Reference Kimball, Moore, Vaccaro, Troiano and Newman2016) and is an essential part of organizing. In sharing their stories in long-form oral histories, activists and leaders alike provide more contextual and complete narratives of their lives and experiences, and how those intersect with the halls of government and the change-making process.
As the case of Rhode Island shows, the reason some states have not passed legislation protecting the right to abortion is not due to lack of public support. Rather, passage of such bills faces a two-fold barrier. First, many people do not see abortion as an issue that impacts them or is relevant to their lives. Second, they do not understand how the political process works in relation to abortion. What the oral histories we have collected so far show is that stories help organize people. They help people get engaged and stay engaged, building the empathy that catalyzes action (Sirin and Villalobos Reference Sirin and Villalobos2024). And finally, they build political power that leads to policy changes. Stories, in Solnit’s framing, “are seeds in which to plant forests of possibility” (Reference Solnit2026, 18). With this in mind, this essay highlights examples from this impact pipeline.
Storytelling and Political Organizing
We have found that many people share a personal connection to reproductive healthcare and abortion, either as part of their own story or a story that resonates with them. Stories, it is said, “are data with a soul” (Nadar Reference Nadar, Oren and Press2019, 74). As such, stories can change minds, create urgency, propel action, and change the storyteller; they can also be used as a tool for subverting power (Sterett Reference Sterett2018). They may not always change legislators’ votes, but they lead new candidates to run for office, remind legislators why legislation is needed, and encourage activists to show up and do the work. Stories, we argue, are an organizing tool, and it is organizing that helps build the collective motivation for change. Story sharing is also inherently vulnerable, and as Brown (Reference Brown2011) says: “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change … If we’re going to find our way back to each other, vulnerability is going to be that path.”
As other scholars have found, sharing painful stories with others, whether one-on-one, in small groups, or in public, can be a key part of organizing (Han, McKenna, and Oyakawa Reference Han, McKenna and Oyakawa2021), and can provide an accessible entry point into activism for people who might not ordinarily think of themselves as the type to engage in political activity (Braunstein Reference Braunstein2012). Part of the work of organizing, then, is helping people “with the lived experience of the problem at hand” (Crutchfield Reference Crutchfield2018, 48) develop the capacity to exercise voice in telling their stories (Han, McKenna, and Oyakawa Reference Han, McKenna and Oyakawa2021).
As activists and organizers take action, “their values become articulated” and theory emerges (Shulman 2021, 320). Holding true to these values while having demonstrated the flexibility to work with others provides powerful opportunities for making change (Han, McKenna, and Oyakawa Reference Han, McKenna and Oyakawa2021). As Han, McKenna, and Oyakawa (Reference Han, McKenna and Oyakawa2021, 65) argue, “Through relational work, people can realize their own agency and bridge across difference to exercise agency collectively with others.” Storytelling, then, is a key element of this relational work, enabling the building of bonds (Swerts 2015) through personal connection, which then encourages collective action (Crutchfield Reference Crutchfield2018), and lays the groundwork for deeper change.
Abortion Storytelling and Legal Reform in Rhode Island
How then was storytelling used in Rhode Island, and where do we see the threads of this relational work? On the 10-year anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 1983, Planned Parenthood held a speak-out. Former Executive Director Mary Ann Sorrentino, who was in 1985 excommunicated by the Catholic Church, describes the event as “story after story until we were all spent. I heard from women I had known all my life and whose abortions I never knew had taken place. There were tales from elderly women, young mothers, teenagers, and even a few stories from the men who loved them” (United Press International 1986).
In 1986, the year after Sorrentino was excommunicated, Rhode Island held a Constitutional Convention, which put an anti-abortion amendment on the ballot. Voters voted it down by a 2-to-1 margin. Governor Lincoln Chafee, who served on the Constitutional Convention, recalled in his oral history: “Well, after the Constitutional Convention approved a pro-life platform in our Constitution, and the voters rejected it two to one, I mean, the state is pro-choice.” The results of this vote highlight that—as would continue to be the case over the next four decades—robust popular support of abortion access was not sufficient to shape the actions of political leadership.
Starting in 1992, the Reproductive Health Care Act was routinely introduced with the legislative intent to codify Roe v. Wade into Rhode Island law and repeal old statutes that had previously been struck down by the courts as preempted by Roe. Despite the clear public support demonstrated by voters in 1986, this bill was introduced year after year and never made it to the governor’s desk. Representative Edith Ajello, the bill’s lead sponsor for many years, only decided to share her personal abortion story in 2017, after Trump’s election (Staff Writer 2017).
Linda Kushner, the bill’s original sponsor, returned to testify on behalf of the legislation, which had been reintroduced as the Reproductive Privacy Act in 2019 with a new sponsor. She told the story of her own experience having an illegal abortion in the 1960s that led to a life-threatening infection: “I have never regretted that decision. But I can say that I have also been always angry that my life was put in such terrible danger because some group of people thought that I should not be able to control my body” (Bawden and Kalunian Reference Bawden and Kalunian2019).
Paula Hodges, then working for Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, reported that in 2013, when marriage equality passed in Rhode Island, the General Assembly sent Chafee, then governor, legislation creating a “choose-life” license plate. Governor Chafee became the only governor to veto such legislation. When asked about his position on abortion, Chafee recalled, “I remember reading a book about a fellow that had, his girlfriend had gotten pregnant, and she had gone to Sweden for an abortion. I’m thinking, well, they could afford it. How about the poor person that can’t afford to go to Sweden for an abortion? They’ve got to go to a back alley.”
After the marriage equality and license plate votes, organizations and activists supporting the right to abortion, like Planned Parenthood, had what Hodges referred to as a “scoreable vote.” In other words, the marriage equality and anti-abortion license plate votes provided a story to tell Rhode Islanders about their General Assembly Leadership, and Rhode Island started electing more people supporting the right to abortion. What these moments highlight are agents of change grounded in personal stories and collective narrative. In Lamont’s (Reference Lamont2023, 113) words, “… what unites change agents is their commitment to close the recognition gap. Across professions and areas of influence these individuals use a range of strategies to convince others that a different world is possible.”
Destigmatizing Abortion Through Storytelling
Representative Ajello, alongside a new wave of activism ignited after the 2016 election, set the stage for more storytelling and thus the destigmatization of abortion stories. Lamont (Reference Lamont2023, 149) argues that “… destigmatization required a recognition chain that included support from prestigious public figures, a wide broadcast of messaging, and activists borrowing effective strategies from other successful movements to gain traction.”
Moira Walsh, a state representative from 2017 to 2021, highlights her own journey to destigmatization when she recalls that before she ran for office, due to her Catholic upbringing, she “identified as pro-life.” It was through conversations with a friend that Walsh said she began to see that she’d “left the Catholic Church already, but I hadn’t left a lot of that indoctrination.” Her friend helped her see that there were many reasons why pregnant people seek abortions and thus changed her mind about abortion. Her own experience of changing her mind left her with the belief that “we need to be more receptive to people who change their minds. That’s what we want in people …. Nobody ever changed their mind because of somebody yelling real loud. You know, you have to meet people with compassion.”
Tammy Brown, an activist, tells the story of when her mother was pregnant with her; she was pressured to have an abortion. As Tammy relates, her mother “had a mental illness and people, her doctors, her family, almost nobody thought she should have a child. But she really desperately wanted a child.” Tammy went on to say that “some people might say, well then, you should be anti-abortion and I say no that makes me even more pro-choice. You shouldn’t force somebody to have a kid that doesn’t want to have a kid.”
Sorrentino herself, as she shared in her recent oral history, reflected on time at Planned Parenthood and beyond and concluded that: “I’ve shown Catholics, especially Catholic women, that, if the church feels that it has to do something hurtful to them, like, because of divorce, or because of abortion, or whatever, it is that this week, is something they don’t like, and they’re gonna do something bad to you. If they do that, your life isn’t over.”
This perspective is similar to how Jennifer Rourke, an activist who ran for the State Senate in 2018, described telling her abortion story during a legislative hearing. It was around one in the morning, and it was also the first time she told her story in a hearing, an experience she describes as “liberating.” Jennifer, already a mother, told of being sexually assaulted by a friend whose father was a judge at the time. After giving her testimony, Jennifer describes being greeted by State Representative Carol Hagan McEntee “in the hallway, and she grabbed me, and she was crying. She just grabbed me, and she was like, thank you for sharing. She’s like, you didn’t have to do that. She’s like, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry … and I didn’t cry. Until she said, I’m sorry.” Representative Hagan McEntee had previously shared her own personal story during a House Judiciary hearing while serving as a member of the Judiciary Committee and greeted Rourke with a similar warm welcome of a shared path.
Sarah Markey, a co-founder of The Womxn Project, an activist organization founded in Rhode Island after the 2016 election, told her mother’s abortion story at a story-sharing event. She was supported by her husband, another activist, and a man she knew from a local theatre organization. She says: “I just remember this look on his face where he was like … it’s okay, you’ve got this. I don’t know. He just was in my eyesight for whatever reason, and I just remember feeling … I don’t need to feel pressure. And this random guy who does, like, seems very nice, but I don’t know him, is like, supporting me. This is a safe space, I guess, right?” Feeling supported in sharing her story, then, provides that moment of destigmatization that enables others to share their stories in turn, and thus change the conversation about abortion.
What We Can Learn From Abortion Storytelling in Rhode Island
Considering where we go next in terms of abortion access, what the oral history project has shown thus far is that storytelling among activists and supporters can bolster individual and communal involvement and build bonds of solidarity inside and outside of government. What we can learn from Rhode Island is that cultivating space for sharing stories as a form of intentional organizing work can be an actionable starting point that leads to change. This approach provides a roadmap for the use of stories in other states where abortion access is currently restricted, a roadmap in which sharing our stories with each other and in public can help reduce stigma, increase urgency, build community, and organize for action. The motto of the State of Rhode Island is “Hope,” and this roadmap—built from the stories we share in our oral history archive—can provide a path of hope.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of Robert W. Widell, Jr., who conducted some of the oral histories upon which this work draws.