PINK CUPS PROJECT
TL;DR: Pink Cups represent solidarity. They are fetishes for folks who identify as and/or have compassion for women.
A little story:
When I was 18 I went to the doctor for what I thought was appendicitis. When the doctor asked me if I thought there was any chance I might be pregnant, I said "no" confidently - I'd had my period regularly for the last three months.
The doctor at Cobb General in Austell, Georgia gave me an ultrasound and discovered I had an ectopic pregnancy. He told me I was pregnant, but that it wasn't a "have a baby type of pregnancy" and that I needed emergency surgery the next morning. The pregnancy was not viable and going to rupture.
Despite my regular period, I had been pregnant for 14 to 16 weeks and had no idea. I did not understand my body.
My parents were furious. They were angry I had sex, angry I was able to get an "abortion" without consent (even though the "pregnancy" was definitely going to kill me), and angry I had tarnished their self-image as good Christian parents. I remember the attending nurse threw both of them out of the hospital room after my mother yelled "I'm not paying for this. She shouldn't be able to do it. She made her bed and she should have to lie in it." They did not understand what an ectopic pregnancy was, and neither did I.
I'm 40-something years old, and now I'm the furious one. The conservatives pushing for these restrictions are my parents' age, and it seems they are all offended I didn't die in 1997.
Where I live in the South abortion is illegal, even in cases of rape and incest.
The Attorney General says interstate transport for abortion is prosecutable. This man is not very smart, but he's smart enough to avoid putting someone like me on the stand. I have a Master's in Rhetoric, gray hair, and a visible scar from the medically necessitated tubal ligation at 14+ weeks that allowed me to survive.
But we know how guys like this operate. He'll pick a younger, angrier, promiscuous, less "sympathetic" poster child who activates a) the overt misogyny of certain arrogant men and b) the internalized misogyny of certain insecure, jealous women.
Back to the topic of Pink Cups. . .
I began making pink cups to maintain my own sanity. I need to know that others share this reality. I want to be able to look at that page of weird pink ceramic things and be reassured there are many of us who see that that none of this is fine, and there are others like us who are fighting back.