At Dopo, our approach is justice-led, guided by the experiences and voices of those at the intersections of identities experiencing regular and compounding systemic oppressions and marginalisation, including people who are Black or of the global majority, women, trans, working class, disabled and undocumented. Many have either had abortions or provide abortion care, and we are all committed to tackling internal and systemic injustices.

Even with this approach, we know that we cannot guarantee absolute safety. So, when we meet in community, we use the following agreements to guide our journey and ask all who join us to follow them too.

Community agreements

1. Respect confidentiality: This includes not sharing personal identifying information including the name, location, physical description or stories or people in the space, and not taking screenshots or recording calls. We never record our support calls, and will only record our training and workshops if we have received consent from all participants prior.

2. Embrace diversity of experience: All abortion experiences are welcome, without hierarchy or judgement.

3. Use inclusive and expansive language: People of all genders have abortions and we use expansive language when discussing abortion in general to reflect this. Also, we never assume the identity of individuals in our spaces.

4. Come to conflict with accountability and curiosity: Whilst we are all constantly expanding and redefining the best ways to communicate and care for our community, we make mistakes. When this happens we embrace accountability as a reflective and reparative practice and remain curious about how we can continue to show up for ourselves and others.

5. Prioritise self-care: Everyone is encouraged to care for themselves during sessions, if this means you need to eat, grab a drink or leave mid-session, then please do.

6. Honour emotions and authenticity: We welcome emotions, love rambling and are unapologetic about what we feel or who we are in our spaces. We encourage the word ‘sorry’ to be used only when necessary, and never because tears have arrived or we are voicing a new or ‘unfinished’ thought.

You are most welcome here if what you’ve read resonates with your heart and you are also committed to dreaming and building futures that affirm and celebrate us all. If not, then our spaces are definitely not for you and we ask that you keep it moving. We have a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech or violent behaviour including, but not limited to racism, classism, misogyny/misogynoir and LGBTQ+phobia in our spaces.

Our commitment

We are by no means perfect and don’t ask you to be either. However, we are committed to liberation, deconstructing oppression and learning tools to dismantle and revolutionise systems so that we can continue to care for our communities, create spaces for each of us to be our full, authentic selves and protect our peace, Your feedback is not only welcome but encouraged to help keep us accountable and incorporate safer practices into our work.

If you have any comments or questions about our safety statement or work, then please get in touch with the facilitator of your session or contact us.