In June, 28-year-old Jessica from British Columbia, Canada, faced an unexpected reality: she was pregnant and wanted to get an abortion. She knew she wasn't ready to become a mother and thought that maybe she could help other women facing the same choice. So, she turned to TikTok.
Over the next two weeks, Jessica uploaded 39 videos packed with educational content , walking her audience through the entire experience and offering a day-by-day breakdown of her journey with Misoprostol and Mifepristone, colloquially known as the abortion pill. “I really wanted people to see that abortion doesn't need to be this traumatic, scary, huge decision,” she tells Glamour . Women often share their personal experiences online to help each other feel less alone, and in diary-style “get-ready-with-me” TikToks, popularized by creators like Alix Earle and Bethenny Frankel from Real Housewives of New York, they discuss topics from their daily activities, to their relationships or even their finances.
These videos are seen as a comforting phenomenon because they make viewers feel like chatting with a close friend. So for sharing her abortion, Jessica decided on a similarly lighthearted tagline: “Have an Abortion on the Couch with Me.” This framing was intentional—she aimed to normalize abortion in a tense political climate.
Normalizing the procedure more cruciak than ever in the wake of the Dobbs decision, which ruled that Americans have no Constitutional right to an abortion, strik.