By: Andrea Yan

Lizz Winstead, along with her group Abortion Access Front, use comedy and music to help raise awareness about the lack of female reproductive rights.

Winstead first started using humor to talk about abortion rights in 1992 in a Comedy Central segment. Since then, she has started her own pro-abortion group and organized many shows, such as “Bro v. Wade.”

Winstead concedes that laughter isn’t going to bring more reproductive rights to women. However, she does believe that she will remove the stigma around abortion and get more supporters that are willing to get involved and fight for female rights. This involves bringing in male support.

This includes a “Bro v. Wade” show and a “Dads for Choice” video. Since men are also responsible for a woman’s baby, the video encourages men to think about the monetary implications of birth control. W. Kamau Bell, CNN host and commentator, says one reason he starred in the video is because “the more complicated the issues are, the more humor can break things down to their basic points, and clarify things.”

The Abortion Access Front does much more than put on comedy shows; they help abortion clinics. For example, in Alabama, the organization and its volunteers planted bushes in front of a clinic to block anti-abortion protestors. Viva Ruiz, a member of another pro-abortion group, Thank God for Abortion, says “[e]verybody needs to use their way – the more variance there is, the more tactics there are, the more successful we can be.”

Abortion rights have always been widely debated. But ever since reproductive rights have started diminishing rapidly, some are taking a new approach by bringing humor into this serious topic. It is the hope that with this humor, people begin to talk about abortion rights more and more people join in to fight for abortion rights.

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