Their Corpse

05.04.2024
Documentation photos from my performance piece on the Florida border. 
Performed the same week that Florida’s 6 week abortion ban officially went into affect on May 1st.

This Florida ban is a crucial blow to the entire Southern United States, decimating access in the South. Florida’s previous 15 week law brought in millions of women from southern states seeking help. Florida was the state with the second-largest surge in people seeking abortion care after the 2022 Dobbs Supreme Court decision. For the entire Southern region, the closest option is to travel to North Carolina and Virginia, a massive concern considering the fact that these states do not have the infrastructure to handle this intake. Florida itself is about a 13 hour drive from Northern-most tip to Southern-most tip, the same time that it takes to drive from Savannah, GA to New York City. Florida itself contains the same population size as the countries Greece and Sweden combined. The law (Florida Department of State FAR Issue Vol. 50/No. 87 Sections: Emergency 59AER24-1 and 59AER24-2), also dictate new information about abortion tracking in the state of Florida, as it states that this “Heartbeat Protection Law” requires “a physician’s office must submit a report each month to the Agency, regardless of the number of abortions, and regardless of method used”. The law also outlines scenarios in which doctors are unable to perform life-saving abortion procedures and must instead perform traumatizing and unnecessary C-sections, instead of a simple 10 minute procedure. This has been a common tactic used by the Republican party as an attempt to separate the definition of abortion from other forms of necessary medical procedures.

This piece is a signal and representation for the amount of people that will be affected by the need to travel hours for emergency care, and the people that will be caught in the crosshairs of these new complicated laws, and given unnecessary procedures.

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“When they pass a law, lay on the side of the road on the state line. Bleed out in the proactive remembrance of those who will. Be their corpse.”