Six months after our daughter's birth, I'm sitting in a community center on Chicago's South Side, speaking to a room full of women. Some are just starting their fertility journey. Others are considering whether to leave their home states for reproductive care. A few are like me—refugees who found new homes and new purpose.
The panel is called "Reproductive Justice: Building Families Beyond Borders," and it's part of a growing movement I've helped organize through my work with Womb Service. What started as a student-run program has grown into a national network supporting reproductive refugees and fighting back against discriminatory laws.
But you already know this story, don't you? How crisis breeds innovation. How persecution creates diaspora. How the excluded build their own systems when the official ones fail them.
"Alabama tried to make our future embryos into criminals," I tell the audience, my voice steady and strong. "They tried to turn our dreams into legal liabilities. But they couldn't criminalize love. They couldn't criminalize hope. And they definitely couldn't stop us from building the family we dreamed of."
In the front row, Marcus holds our daughter—Amadi, free-born—who's sleeping peacefully despite the applause. Beside him sit three other couples, families who've relocated to Chicago after hearing our story, seeking the reproductive freedom their home states denied them.
After my talk, a young woman approaches. She's maybe twenty-five, nervousness written across her face like a map of all the places fear has taken her.
"I'm from Texas," she says quietly. "The laws there are getting worse. My husband and I... we're just starting to try, but I'm scared. How did you know when it was time to leave?"
I think about that question—about the moment we realized staying meant surrendering our future. "When the law made it illegal to hope," I tell her. "But leaving isn't the only answer. Fighting back is too. Building networks is too."
I hand her my card, which now reads: Aisha Thompson, Reproductive Justice Advocate, Womb Service Chicago.
"Email me," I say. "Whether you decide to stay and fight or relocate for care, you don't have to do it alone. None of us do anymore."
She nods, clutching the card like it's a lifeline. Which, in a way, it is. That's what we've built—lifelines disguised as business cards, networks disguised as friendships, revolution disguised as reproductive care.
Later that evening, Marcus and I walk through our neighborhood—the one that started feeling like home the day Amadi was born. We pass the fertility clinic where she was conceived, the community center where I found my voice, the apartment where we first dared to hope again.
"Do you ever think about going back?" Marcus asks. "To Alabama?"
I consider the question seriously. "Sometimes. But not to stay. Maybe to help others leave. Or to fight the laws that chased us out. Or to document what's happening there—the families still trapped, the clinics still empty."
Amadi stirs in her stroller, makes a small sound, settles back into sleep. Free-born. Legally created. Allowed to exist.
"I think about the women still trapped there," I continue. "The ones who can't afford to leave, who don't have family in free states. This isn't just about us anymore. It never was."
Marcus nods. "Our story became bigger than we expected."
"All stories do, if you let them. If you connect them to the networks that are building the future."
We walk in comfortable silence, three lives built from the ashes of what Alabama tried to destroy. Amadi will grow up in a state that protected her right to exist. She'll know the story of how her parents fought for her before she was even conceived. She'll know the infrastructure that made her possible—the loans and networks and underground railways that carry hope across state lines.
But more than that, she'll know that when injustice threatens your family, you have choices. You can run, you can fight, you can build, or you can do all three.
We chose all three.
You think this ends with us? Look around. Count the families crossing borders with coolers full of frozen hope. Count the networks forming in community centers and online forums. Count the ways people create the future when the present fails them.
This is how change happens—not in legislatures or courtrooms, though those matter too. It happens in the spaces between, in the networks we build while the official systems collapse. It happens when the excluded refuse to stay excluded.
And in the end, love doesn't just win. Love builds. Love networks. Love becomes infrastructure.
Amadi will inherit that world—the one we're building now, connection by connection, choice by choice. The cyborg future where bodies and technology and community merge into something stronger than any law can break.
That's the real victory. Not just having a baby, but building the world where all babies can be born free.