AN ARMY OF LOVERS CANNOT LOSE: AN INTRODUCTION

by Nikki Blazek, Aristilde Kirby & Camila Valle

Hello readers of the past, present & future! Welcome to the second volume of Abobo Zine. We’re happy to have you & to be held by you. Let’s begin with gratitude. Thank you for supporting this project & for supporting abortion access by association!

In volume two, we’re coming twice as hard at a time where the stakes seem raised twofold, two years after the Supreme Court’s striking down of Roe v. Wade, now in a US election year of all things & amid a continued state-sponsored genocide/expulsion of the Palestinian people. As a collective, we recognize the intersectional, knotted nature of reproductive health (abortion, surrogacy, etc.) with that of queer & trans self-determination (sexual health, transition care, etc.). We rely on the same architectures of biomedical care work as those who are disabled, those who are elderly, those with mental illness, men, women, or other. Hell, we all struggle with those things, in our own ways.

In light of that, we seek to further build coalitions & strengthen resistance, even in states where abortion as a procedure seems to be protected. The last two years have shown that none of this can be taken for granted. Because for many, all of that is annihilated the moment when bombs pulverize every hospital in Gaza & the West Bank. We believe that access to reproductive care, or care in general, is not merely a byproduct of a “liberal westernized lifestyle,” it is something all should have, full stop.

Sheer conquest masquerading as miserable war maims (à la Jasbir Puar), if not murders, populations. If doctors who have spent their whole lives dedicated to the act of healing have to do press conferences in the remains of a place where they can no longer even do basic triage, you come to recognize in the struggles of others that no one is safe. We advocate for the right to struggle, overcome & prosper over or outside of those ruinous forces in no uncertain terms. Yes: death to Zionism, the overall colonial pogrom program borrowed from this nation that has ruined people & planet. Yes: viva Palestina & any besieged territory in the program’s crosshairs. We want nothing but mutually assured peace on a planet where life can bud or perish unimpeded by corrupted forces that use death as a paving tool in service of capitalist greed, fascist normalization & collective selfishness.

We’re going to say this again, as in the last issue, because it bears repeating, if it isn’t obvious by now:

Abobo Zine is a loving piecing together, a tender attempt to cut through the influencer bullshit that pervades our creative spaces and the slicing away of poetry and art from a broader vision of social change.

Another issue of repro-themed ligatory art (shoutout to Adrienne Rich) is necessary. It is necessary in a nation where states are trying to slash funding to reproductive health clinics. It is necessary in a state where rats get more birth control than humans. It is necessary in a nation where infant deaths have risen in the wake of the striking down of a national right to abortion. It is necessary where mail-order mifepristone, the popular FDA-approved pharmaceutical post-Roe loophole, is being targeted by the Christian right just as it is being surveilled by the US Postal Inspection Service. Mifepristone is an easy Word-of-the-Year candidate these last two years. A pretty word, for how scientific it is. It shows up in none of the poetry & prose in this volume. That lack represents a clear throughline for this volume: to delve into thorny conversations, lay bare experiences & fabulate around these systems that need to be processed or fought in public & private without buzzwords, without jargon.

It is necessary in a nation that leverages reproductive health & civil rights as “hot-button” “special issues,” as cudgels, barricades, or lumpenprole metal for the weight of a given personal electoral decision for this sorry excuse of a rigged scale in this “democratic republic.” By the time this issue makes its way into your hand, the election will have already happened. In a lot of ways, nothing will have changed. We are under no illusions. What do we really need? In accord with the last issue, then, our mission is still the same:

We continue to affirm and support one another. We defend abortion clinics, we look after one another’s children, we cook meals for one another. We continue to celebrate queer and trans joy in public. We carry life-saving Narcan. We help friends access legal services and medication. We always extend a hand to hold.

We hope this zine serves as a glimmer of care reflective of reality as it currently exists, in all its contradictions and dynamics, as well as an imagining of what care can be. We reach for this future, over and over.

As we reach out to others, we hope you will too. “An army of lovers cannot lose.” Forward, soldier of love. Forward.