Hey URGE family,

On Friday, we shared information on the EACH act and invited you to to take action as a way to commemorate Rosie Jimenez.

Today, we continue to honor her memory by launching our annual open call for Self-Managed Abortion (SMA) Festival under the theme, Sometimes Messy, Often Meaningful, Always Ours: Honoring the Full Complexity of Self-Managed Abortion! 

What Is SMA Fest? 

For many people, self-managed abortion (SMA) is the most accessible way to end a pregnancy. SMA allows us to choose when and where to have our abortions and decide who we want by our side. URGE’s SMA Festival is a digital campaign that allows young people to creatively share personal stories and educational resources about this critical method for termination.

All accepted and produced content will go live via URGE’s social media and website between December 2-5.  

SMA Festival is open to:  

People ages 18-30 yrs olds living in (or from) URGE investment states include: Alabama, California, Georgia, Kansas, Ohio and Texas. 

As a part of this digital event, upon acceptance of a successful proposal and subsequent creation of content, applicants will be compensated $600 for their work. See below for more details. 

Who Was Rosie Jimenez? 

Rosie Jimenez, a young working-class Chicana woman and mother from McAllen, Texas, died on October 3, 1977, just one year after the U.S. Congress passed the Hyde Amendment. The law prohibits federal funds for abortions, effectively denying abortion access Medicaid recipients, the majority of whom are disabled, low-income, and Black, Latine, or Indigenous. When Rosie became pregnant and decided to have an abortion, her options were limited. Unable to pay out-of-pocket due to mounting systemic barriers, she sought care outside the bounds of law, medical oversight, and safety protocols. Tragically, Rosie became the first known person to lose her life because of the Hyde Amendment. 

What’s the Relationship Between Rosie Jimenez Day and Self-Managed Abortion Fest?  

Though Rosie did not access a self-managed abortion, SMA Fest 2025 is launched in her honor. In today’s political moment—amid bans, surveillance, and clinic closures—SMA is a critical tool of survival and autonomy. Yet, just as abortion access under Hyde, the lived experience of SMA is not always defined by choice or joy alone. For some, SMA is empowering and liberatory. For others, it is shaped by hardship: working through pain without time off and/or fearing criminalization if they seek follow-up care. 

Past iterations of the festival have embraced themes like Our Pills, Our Power and The Fight for Self-Managed Abortions Isn’t Over, situating SMA as a site of strength and resistance. Empowerment can certainly be a part of the story—but it doesn’t capture the lived experience of abortion in totality. When we frame abortion only as triumphant or liberatory, we risk flattening people’s lived realities and erasing the ways abortion can also be messy, complicated, and contradictory—and yet still deeply ours.

This year’s SMA Fest theme, Sometimes Messy, Often Meaningful, Always Ours: Honoring the Full Complexity of Self-Managed Abortion, builds on past themes while intentionally broadening the representational frame. By putting the festival in conversation with Rosie Jimenez Day, we honor her life and recognize the hard truths her story exposes: that abortion, while often empowering and meaningful, can also be shaped by struggle, scarcity, and loss. 

SMA Fest Application Details:

Interested applicants should submit a proposal via this application by Friday, October 17.

Accepted content includes (not an exhaustive list): 
✨ TikTok/Instagram reels

✨ YouTube videos

✨ Podcast episodes

✨ Zines

✨ Comics

✨ Instagram graphics

✨ Articles

SMA festival invites creatives, writers, and storytellers to reflect abortion in all its complexity—beyond binaries, beyond stigma, and fully ours.

Applications close Friday, October 17, at 11:59pm PST.

Applicants will be notified by October 27, and accepted content will be due by November 7.

The SMA festival will run from December 2-5.  

In solidarity,

Aleo Pugh (they/she)
Georgia Communications + Cultural Strategies Manager, URGE

PS: To learn more about self-managed abortion, check out
https://abortiononourownterms.org.

You can also see an archive of all the content from last year's SMA Fest for inspiration on URGE’s website. 

URGE: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity
1012 14th Street NW, Suite 305
Washington, DC xxxxxx
United States

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