- Organizes an Open Mic session to give power to women’s rights and choices when it comes to abortion
- Launches multi layered campaign on the occasion of – Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion on September 28
To advance the conversation around safe and legal abortion and women’s reproductive rights, and to involve more and more women to come forward and share their stories, Love Matters India, in association with Myolo Headquarters, organized an Open Mic event in Delhi to celebrate Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion. Committed to bringing about a positive change in the society and engendering public dialogue around burning social issues in the most nonjudgmental, open, honest and inclusive way, Love Matters India has taken the initiative to talk about reproductive rights in women through its new campaign #ChoiceoverStigma.
The campaign was launched with the endeavor to give women a platform to come forward and share their experiences about abortion, along with recognizing, acknowledging, respecting, and celebrating all the diverse choices that women make pertaining to their bodies, sexuality and reproduction, including the right to access and have a safe and legal abortion.
“Women’s right to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and services, including abortion, is grounded in human rights. A woman should be able to decide for herself what choice she wants to make – be it having a child, not having a child or having an abortion. A woman should not be judged and/or stigmatized for reproductive choices she makes. When women are denied the right to access safe and legal abortion, they are subjected to cruel and degrading treatment, thereby perpetuating violence against women‚Äù, said Ms. Vithika Yadav, Co-founder & Head, Love Matters India.
In order to create an overwhelming impact, Love Matters India designed the campaign by giving it various legs. Using the medium of blogs, Love Matters India invited female bloggers to write their abortion stories and shared it on their website. Based on a survey conducted in Delhi College campuses, a 3- minute long Vox Pop video was launched keeping in mind the centre theme “Should women feel guilty about their choice to have an abortion?”. In order to create openness and awareness around various abortion options available to a woman, Love Matters India formed an association with well-known Gynaecologist Dr. Sharma.The campaign also had some fun activities like #ChoiceoverStigma photo series for women to showcase their right to choose and the Ice cream selfie challenge which denotes that women should be able to make reproductive choices just as easily and without judgment as they would pick a colour to wear, or have their favourite ice-cream flavour.
 ABOUT LOVE MATTERS INDIA:
Love Matters India is the first ever a multimedia platform in India (launched in year 2011) that provides gender friendly SRH (Sexual Reproductive Health) information to adolescents and young people and engages them to talk about love, sex and relationships in an open, honest and non-judgmental way. The vision of Project Love Matters (https://lovematters.in/en) is to be the leading source of information in a world where love, sex and relationships are a right, a choice and a pleasure. Love Matters is a global project with operations In India, China, Latin America, Kenya and Egypt. It is also the first project in India leveraging various technology platforms for providing rights based SRHR information to young people in India. Love Matters won the Award for Excellence & Innovation in Sexuality Education for being the most innovative sexual health project in the world in year 2013, from the World Association for Sexual Health. In year 2016, Love Matters has received the honor of being among the Top 5 Digital Activism projects in the world under Freedom of Expression Awards.
Facebook Link: https://www.facebook.com/lovematters.india/?fref=ts
