The Last Safe Abortion

Focusing on the near-fifty-year period in which abortion was legal in the United States (1973–2022), The Last Safe Abortion recognizes the care, advocacy, and community-building of abortion workers. Artist Carmen Winant draws from over a dozen personal, organizational, and institutional archives from across the Midwest, in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Kentucky, North Dakota, and Ohio. The photographs themselves are surprisingly regular: women answer the phone, sterilize medical equipment, throw staff birthday parties, offer workshops, and schedule appointments. In centering the tender, quotidian, and routine acts that inform this healthcare work, Winant works to counter the ways anti-choice activists have weaponized photography by proposing a visual that attends to abortion care.

The Last Safe Abortion presents a selection of this vast collection of photographs, accompanied by a text by Winant.