“Don’t just vote. Run.”
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,” Jesus said from the cross.
American women like Allie Phillips, 28, will be less forgiving of politicians who know not what they do and those who do know and don’t care. Remember, first they come for the women.
In mid-October, the Guardian reported on Phillips’ confrontation early this year with her nonviable pregnancy and Tennessee’s abortion ban.
Allie Phillips thinks of herself as the ordinary neighbor nextdoor. She shops at the Walmart clearance rack. She posts TikTok videos of herself and her six-year-old daughter, Adalie, singing along to Taylor Swift and dancing the Wednesday Addams dance. Up until recently, the most political thing she’d ever done was vote, and only in presidential elections.
That was then. This is now.
Normally I peruse a lot of headlines before something grabs my attention, but this story via a rural organizing list did that first thing this morning. You need to see this story from Kathie C. Reilly at Elle:
Allie Phillips cried into the camera. Her face mask was pushed down around her chin, and tears streamed from her big blue eyes. It was March 7, 2023, and she was speaking to her more than 330,000 TikTok followers from an abortion clinic thousands of miles away from her home state of Tennessee. “I didn’t expect to have this update,” Phillips said into the camera, barely able to get out the words.
Two weeks earlier, at 19 weeks pregnant, doctors discovered that Phillips’ baby, whom she’d named Miley, was suffering from a multitude of fatal health issues and no longer compatible with life. Continuing the pregnancy put Phillips’ own life at risk, but her doctors couldn’t do anything because of Tennessee’s abortion ban. After researching out-of-state options, Phillips booked an appointment in New York City. When she arrived, an ultrasound at the clinic found that Miley had already died, a development that meant Phillips was at risk of going into sepsis, among a host of other serious health risks. Providers scheduled her for an emergency procedure. “It was very traumatic,” she says.
If you want to see her traumatic video, click on “camera” above. Phillips depended on Go Fund Me and her followers’ support to finance her trip to New York.
@.allie.phillips We all have a story to share. This is my story. #mileyrose #mileyslaw #mileyspurpose #allie4tn #clarksvilletn #abortionaccess #reproductivehealthcare #abortionrights #runningforoffice #runforsomething #tennesseehouseofrepresentatives #voteblue #abortionsareawomansright #protectroe #centerforreproductiverights #abortionlawsuit #tennessee ♬ original sound – Allie Phillips
Phillips has a six-year-old daughter, Adalie, who was excited about being a big sister.
Back home in Tennessee, Phillips took off work and stayed in bed “debating if my life was worth living or not,” she says. “It felt like every ounce of happiness I had was ripped away.” Phillips found solace in an unlikely place: the comments section of her TikTok videos. “Knowing that my story was touching so many hearts made me feel like Miley didn’t pass in vain,” she explains.
Six months after going public with her abortion story, Phillips decided to run for the House of Representatives of District 75 in Tennessee. She announced her candidacy, where else, on TikTok. “It’s a way for me to accept what I went through and turn my pain into a purpose for other women,” she says.
Most politicians use TikTok to reach voters, but Phillips is taking her TikTok followers into politics. The 28-year-old is part of a wave of influencers using their personal stories and, well, their influence to run for office. Not only is Phillips a new brand of TikToker-turned-politician, she is also one of the first candidates in the post-Roe era to run for office after being denied an abortion in her home state. And, like any good influencer, she’s taking her followers along for the ride.
Reilly can relate:
It was hard for me to watch Phillips’ abortion videos on TikTok without crying. Her story reminded me of my own from four years ago. At 12 weeks pregnant, my baby boy tested positive for Trisomy 13, a chromosomal abnormality that results in severe physical abnormalities and mental disabilities. Given that my first pregnancy went smoothly, I was oblivious to any other possibility, until I saw him motionless on the ultrasound screen. I underwent a “dilation and curettage” procedure, otherwise known as a D&C, shortly after and spent the following weeks overwhelmed by grief. No pregnancy or loss is the same, but when I watched Phillips crying from the floor of the abortion clinic, I knew how she felt. I also knew she faced many more obstacles than I did.
Just as mine had, Phillips’ whole world crashed down around her after the procedure. It didn’t help that when she came home from New York, strangers online provided unsolicited advice. Some accused her of being a murderer, and still do to this day. Instead of letting it go, Phillips let her followers know about the trollish comments. “I wanted to share what it’s like when you publicly tell a story, what kind of backlash you get, what kind of hate you get, simply because I decided to make a healthcare decision for myself,” she says. “I [share] to make sure [other women] know they’re not alone in this process, that there’s just trolls on the internet and they’re going to come for you if you go public with anything.”
Phillips joined a three-state Center for Reproductive Rights lawsuit against the state of Tennessee. After the story broke about the Ohio 10-year-old who was pregnant after a rape and had to leave the state for an abortion, Phillips decided to run for a state House seat Democrats have not held in over a decade. (Donald Trump won the district by 55% in 2020.) She realized “nobody is going to fight for our kids like us moms will.”
Phillips’ opponent is a “pro-life” Republican is in his first term in a purple state House district because he ran unopposed. Not this time. She announced her candidacy in early October before Kate Cox’s abortion saga in Texas became national news.
The Texas Supreme Court decision that forced Cox to flee Texas to terminate her nonviable pregnancy, CNN reports, “laid bare the political reality facing Republicans as they seek to navigate between their conservative anti-abortion base and a general electorate more supportive of abortion rights. As red states implement a patchwork of new restrictions on the procedure with untested exceptions, real-world events continue to muddle their efforts to stick to and sell to voters an effective message on the issue.”
More of these stories will come to light before voting starts next fall. The axe is going to fall too on a lot of Republicans’ political careers.
Happy Hollandaise, you filthy animals!