Amelia Bonow

Amelia Bonow Speaker Biography

Reproductive Rights Activist, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Shout Your Abortion, Cultural Strategist, and Abortion Rights Speaker

Amelia Bonow is a nationally recognized reproductive rights activist, cultural strategist, speaker, and Co-founder and Executive Director of Shout Your Abortion (SYA), a movement and organization working to normalize abortion and expand awareness of safe paths to abortion access. In 2015, Bonow publicly shared her own abortion experience without apology or shame. Her disclosure helped ignite the viral #ShoutYourAbortion movement, inspiring an outpouring of personal stories and drawing national and international attention to the role that stigma and silence play in conversations about reproductive healthcare.

What began as a social media hashtag grew into an established organization and cultural movement. Under Bonow’s leadership, Shout Your Abortion has used storytelling, art, media, educational resources, public campaigns, and grassroots organizing to encourage open conversations about abortion and help people participate in supporting abortion access. Today, Bonow brings more than a decade of movement-building experience to audiences interested in reproductive rights, cultural change, storytelling, grassroots activism, and the power individuals have to reshape public conversations.

Keynote Speaker Amelia Bonow at a Glance

• Co-founder and Executive Director of Shout Your Abortion, the influential grassroots organization working to normalize abortion and elevate safe paths to abortion access.
• Reproductive rights activist and cultural strategist whose 2015 abortion disclosure helped spark the viral #ShoutYourAbortion movement and inspired thousands of people to share their own experiences.
• Co-editor of Shout Your Abortion, a collection of personal stories, essays, photography, and creative work documenting the movement and challenging abortion stigma.
• Nationally recognized voice on abortion rights, storytelling, cultural change, and movement building whose work has received widespread attention from major U.S. and international media.

Co-Founder of Shout Your Abortion

In 2015, Bonow’s public disclosure of her own abortion experience helped catalyze a viral outpouring of abortion stories under the hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion. As people across the country began sharing their experiences in their own words, a grassroots movement quickly developed around the idea that people who have abortions should be able to talk about their experiences without being required to express shame, regret, or any other predetermined emotion. Bonow subsequently helped develop Shout Your Abortion into a nonprofit organization and nationwide movement. Since its founding, SYA has created campaigns, media, art, educational materials, live events, and community resources designed to change the cultural conversation surrounding abortion. Its website has also become a significant archive of firsthand experiences, with more than 2,600 abortion stories shared through the platform since 2015. The organization’s impact has extended far beyond social media. SYA has organized storytelling events and tours, public art and billboard campaigns, educational programs, community initiatives, and collaborations in the United States and internationally. In 2017, the Shout Your Abortion website received a Webby Award for activism.

Reproductive Rights, Abortion Access and Cultural Change

Following the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which eliminated the federal constitutional protection for abortion previously recognized under Roe v. Wade, Shout Your Abortion expanded its emphasis on helping communities understand and participate in abortion access. Today, SYA describes its mission as normalizing abortion and elevating safe paths to access regardless of legality. Its work includes resources, campaigns, media, organizing programs, and educational initiatives designed to foster greater participation in abortion access and connect people with organizations and information. Bonow approaches reproductive rights through the lens of culture as well as policy. Her work examines how language, personal narratives, stigma, media, and social expectations shape public perceptions of abortion. She argues that changing the cultural conversation requires making room for the wide range of experiences and emotions people may have surrounding abortion rather than imposing a single narrative.

Storytelling as a Catalyst for Social Change

Storytelling is central to Bonow’s work. Shout Your Abortion grew from the premise that personal narratives can make abstract or polarizing issues more human and understandable by connecting them to the experiences of people within our families, workplaces, and communities. Over the past decade, people have shared thousands of abortion experiences through SYA’s platforms. Bonow has helped extend those stories into public events, art, videos, campaigns, educational projects, and other forms of cultural expression. She also co-edited Shout Your Abortion with Emily Nokes. The book brings together photographs, essays, personal narratives, and creative work inspired by the movement and documents how individuals and communities have used storytelling, art, and organizing to challenge abortion stigma.

Building a Movement Beyond a Hashtag

One of the most compelling aspects of Bonow’s story is the transformation of #ShoutYourAbortion from a spontaneous online response into an organization that has continued its work for more than a decade. SYA’s evolution offers a real-world case study in modern movement building. The organization has moved beyond digital activism through nationwide campaigns, a 44-stop abortion storytelling tour, books, public art, community events, organizing programs, educational resources, and international collaborations. In 2024, SYA launched an organizing program intended to strengthen coordination and mutual support among people working on abortion access. Its Abortion Academy has also developed into an ongoing educational series featuring advocates and experts discussing abortion access, community resilience, reproductive healthcare, and related issues.

Author, Cultural Strategist and Reproductive Rights Advocate

Bonow’s writing has appeared in publications including Salon, The Huffington Post, New York Daily News, and The Stranger. Her work with Shout Your Abortion has also been covered extensively by major media outlets in the United States and internationally. Beyond her writing and organizing, Bonow uses creative projects to make conversations about abortion accessible to different audiences. Her work has included books, public art, campaigns, live programming, and educational projects that explore how deeply established cultural narratives can be challenged and rewritten. This intersection of storytelling, cultural strategy, reproductive healthcare, and grassroots organizing distinguishes Bonow as a speaker. Rather than discussing social movements only in theoretical terms, she draws on firsthand experience taking an unexpected viral moment and helping build it into an enduring organization.

Reproductive Rights and Abortion Rights Speaker

As a keynote speaker, Amelia Bonow addresses reproductive rights, abortion access, storytelling, movement building, cultural change, digital activism, stigma, and grassroots organizing. She shares the story behind #ShoutYourAbortion while examining broader questions about how personal narratives can influence culture and how online movements can evolve into sustained real-world organizations. Her presentations can be especially relevant for women’s leadership events, universities and colleges, healthcare organizations, reproductive health conferences, advocacy organizations, nonprofit associations, and audiences exploring social change and movement building. Bonow brings audiences an insider’s perspective on more than a decade of reproductive rights activism and the evolution of one of the most recognizable abortion storytelling movements in the United States. Her work demonstrates how an individual story can become a shared conversation—and how that conversation can develop into an organized cultural movement.

Amelia Bonow is available to book for keynote speeches, reproductive rights programs, women’s events, university programs, healthcare conferences, and organizational events through Speakers.com.