How to be an Abortion Companion

Author: bex ya yolk
Publisher: THUNGRY x Secret Riso Club

On the 4 year anniversary of Roe v. Wade’s overturning, How to be an Abortion Companion comes as a timely antecedent to the callousness of the American healthcare system, instead offering much-needed clarity and hope.

“This publication was realized as a radical tool in practical care for each other and ourselves. If you have never experienced abortion or prenatal loss, this publication is for you—because you know someone who has. If you have ever been faced with carrying to full term against your will whether due to personal or political forces—know that I am with you. No one should feel a prisoner in their own body. No one has the right to govern what happens within your skin. I do not take ownership of this knowledge. I am merely a steward—organizing, editing, transferring for the sake of access, readability, and clarity. This publication is both my offering and my promise. Please use these pages as a communal tool, a generative resource, and a pathway to healing. Here’s to yours and mine.”

The zine was written and compiled by bex ya yolk and designed/published by Secret Riso Club, as a recipient of the SRC Political Zine Micro Grant, in an addition of 200. A portion of proceeds will be donated to the New York Abortion Access Fund.

A PDF of this zine is free to download here. We encourage anyone who chooses to download also make a contribution to the Chicago Women’s Health Center.

bex ya yolk (they/them) is a visual artist, designer, educator, and abortion doula based in Chicago, IL. yolk is the founder of THUNGRY— a publishing initiative and artists’ book bindery complicating traditional ways of Book building and semantics through experimentation + queering praxis. With a generative, multi-year, research practice rooted in reproductive rights, histories, and design— yolk focuses on the philosophy of ‘the maternal’, as a theology, a practice, a logic to live by. Exploring mothering as a non-exclusive physical fixed category or identity but instead as a representation of commitment and dedication to nurturance, protection, support, and care. As socio-political landscapes evolve in regards to what is acceptable, legal, and safe for AFAB and queer people, yolk interrogates and boldly addresses what could come of our collective futurity. Through sculptural practices, independent publishing, and the Book as an art object, yolk mines sub genres of ‘the maternal complex’ such as: care work, reproductive justice + design, health care disparities in the U.S, queer histories, and container technologies making visible the intersectionalities between the Book in form and the bodies this research pertains.

Softcover
7 x 5 inches
36 pages
2026

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How to be an Abortion Companion

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