Today, abortions are common across all demographics, including Christians. Their reasons are as varied and layered as any other personal life choice made without interference from the government or our neighbours. A quarter of all American women will have an abortion in their lifetime, and based on voter turnout, it’s statistically possible that half of those who voted for Trump are among them.

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Since Trump’s second-term win, my mammalian brain has been taking over, and my primal inclinations are spiralling into an amalgam of fear and determination, similar in tone and tenor, I imagine, to that of the suffragettes and bra-burners who came before me. They fought for their social equality and roared for their voices to be democratically counted. And if neither of those were won, then at the very least, they could have autonomy over their own bodies, right?

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has declared that access to abortion is an incontrovertible right. A reproductive right. A human right. This declaration was made in the aftermath of a bloody and recent history of “backyard” abortions and nightmarish scenarios of desperate women going to harrowing and sometimes deadly ends to abort pregnancies they could not have or did not want. The maths is clear: restrictive abortion laws lead to an increase in female deaths. In recent decades, more than 60 countries and territories have liberalised their abortion laws, and only four have rolled back these rights: El Salvador, Nicaragua, Poland, and now, the United States of America.

I am observing an emboldening of misogynistic and downright dystopian rhetoric, including rally banners at American universities heralding women as chattels. The day after Trump’s election win, photos were shared online of two men holding signs at the San Marcos Campus of the Texas State University, declaring: “Women are property”, “Homo sex is sin”, “Types of property: Women, slaves, animals, cars, land, etc”.

It is not known yet how dark the dark days ahead will be, primarily due to the president-elect’s vacillation on abortion and his previous declaration that women should be punished for getting abortions.

I refuse to report objectively on this issue any longer. I join women across America who are dusting themselves off, regrouping and organising. I will forgive myself for once believing the best path forward to protecting my rights was a passive one; hoping that polite grace made of hushed whispers and furtive glances in spaces they couldn’t hear us would be enough. I will remember that keeping the peace just means keeping their peace, not ours. I will arm myself with knowledge as I enter a fight of grit and resistance against those who would do us harm.

And yes, I will buy an abortion pill and hope I will never need to use it.

Amy La Porte is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington State.