Thanks to a sweeping state law that shuttered 13 reproductive health care clinics in Texas earlier this month, leaving only eight remaining clinics in the entire state, it’s now extremely difficult for a woman in Texas to have an abortion. An artist who goes only by the name “Chloe,” however, wants to change that.
Chloe just launched a Kickstarter campaign (NSFW) to cover the food, lodging, and travel expenses for women who are traveling to the remaining abortion clinics in Texas. And she’s planning on raising this money by building a giant, 6-foot-tall sculpture of a vagina.
“I am not so much in this for the money, I want to make something meaningful, and use the money to start something that I think is very cool,” Chloe writes on her Kickstarter page.
“Essentially you are funding an art project that will ultimately end in a giant vulva and hopefully make some women’s lives better.”
According to her Kickstarter page, Chloe plans to raise enough money to fund the production of the giant vulva sculpture, which will be “about the size of a person (6 ft tall).” After she exceeds her fundraising goal of $600, she plans to use the money from her Kickstarter campaign to create a fund for women in Texas seeking abortions, some of whom are now being forced to travel hundreds of miles at great personal financial expense to get an abortion at one of the state’s few remaining clinics.
“Abortions already cost a good deal of money, adding hotel, food, and transportation on top of that can get crazy,” Chloe writes. “I want to start a group that provides housing, meals, and transportation to women who are traveling for the procedure.”
Chloe has already raised more than $1,000 for her project, exceeding her original $600 goal. But unsurprisingly, some conservatives aren’t too thrilled with her Kickstarter campaign, with one National Review blogger referring derisively to her project as a “vagina statue that would apparently raise money for abortions somehow.” (Anyone who’s taken a seventh-grade English class would know that we refer to this as “symbolism.”)
But of course, that’s precisely the point of the project, if Chloe’s description of herself on her Kickstarter page is any indication. “I am ready to say ‘fuck you’ to the rich, white men in Texas who are limiting my rights to my own body and I am ready to make something hilarious,” she writes. Seems like she’s already succeeded in both regards.
H/T Styleite | Photo by Surdarshan V/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
