Carmen Winant, The Last Safe Abortion, 2024

Focusing on the nearly fifty-year period when abortion was legal in the United States (1973-2022), The Last Safe Abortion acknowledges the care, advocacy, and community-building of abortion providers. Artist Carmen Winant drew from over a dozen personal, organisational and institutional archives across the Midwest, in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Kentucky, North Dakota and Ohio. The photographs themselves are surprisingly regular: women answer phones, sterilise medical equipment, organise birthday parties for staff, offer workshops and make appointments. By focusing on the tender, everyday, routine acts that inform this healthcare work, Winant works to counter the way anti-choice activists have weaponized photography, proposing a visuality that addresses abortion care. The Last Safe Abortion presents a selection from this vast collection of photographs, accompanied by a text by Winant.