SS: We go to the address, find what looks like an empty building, go upstairs, and see waiting rooms packed with women from all over Spain trying to get an abortion. These Argentinian communist women were running it. We explained what was going on and we set up this system where they would send groups of women on the train and someone (often me) would stand at the French station with a feminist magazine, which was the code. They would stay with different people in the town and get abortions and then we’d send them back with diaphragms from pharmacies in France. It was very potent, I came home and two weeks later was the Hyde amendment. I went to a protest and joined CARASA [the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse]. In ‘82 I was arrested for disrupting the anti-abortion congressional meeting you mentioned. A year later, CARASA had a lesbian purge, so all the lesbians were kicked out.

AR: Was that your first experience with activism?

SS: Oh, no. My mother was a social worker and belonged to the social worker’s union. The war in Vietnam was on and the union would rent busses to go to anti-war protests and she would take me with her. 

I grew up in a Holocaust family. I knew about it from a very early age — what I heard from my relatives was that their neighbors stood by and allowed them to be victimized. I still believe that bystanders are the most dangerous force on earth. An ethical person stands up because people — whether they’re gay or living with HIV or being gentrified out of their neighborhood, or Palestinians — whoever you’re talking about, they can’t beat it themselves. They’re dependent on third party intervention, and that’s why we’re responsible for getting involved, but most people won’t do that.