Radical Love: A Grounding Practice for ARC-Southeast

Posted on | by ARC-Southeast

When talking about our organization’s values, the intentional love we share is at the core.

 

What Radical Love Means to ARC-Southeast

 

“Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

 

At ARC-Southeast we believe that without radical love, there is no liberation. Radical love is an intentional and consistent practice of non-judgmental, holistic, and revolutionary care and support. We unapologetically meet you where you are regardless of who you are, working with you, bringing our whole selves. We are intertwined, rooted together with our communities and the Reproductive Justice movement.

 

We say Radical Love not as a slogan, but as a core truth shaped by a decade of showing up for people across the South who are fighting for dignity, survival, and joy in the face of systemic harm. Radical love is the foundation of our work, from funding abortions to offering compassionate logistical support, to how we build relationships with staff and community members alike.

 

Radical love is not passive, romantic or polite. And most importantly, is a practice, a daily commitment to mutual care, shared struggle, and transformative justice. As scholar Joy James writes, “Revolutionary Love is difficult to define. Distinct from personal or familial love, it originates from a desire for the greater good that entails radical risk-taking for justice.” We love our people enough to fight with them. We love our people enough to tell the truth. We love our people enough to create networks of care where the state has only offered punishment and abandonment.

 

This means that liberation must be collective, and we cannot separate justice from community, or individual wellness from systemic change. If we are going to build a world where abortion is free, affirming, and accessible to everyone, we must start from a place of love that is uncompromising, radical, and deeply political.

 

 

Radical Love Is Rebellious Care

 

To fund abortion in the South is an act of radical love and rebellious care.

 

When we support our callers throughout the Southeast, over 3,360 in 2024 alone, we are engaging in an act of resistance to the white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and patriarchal violence at the root of abortion bans. By choosing each day to reject the logic that says some people deserve care and others do not, reminding folks that love is a practice and verb, not just a feeling.

 

ARC-Southeast receives calls from people navigating impossible decisions with dignity and strength. Many of them have been dismissed, criminalized, and isolated by healthcare systems. Some are sleeping in their cars, some have children waiting at home, some are survivors of violence, some are queer or undocumented or simply exhausted. Many are students, siblings, and caretakers.

 

We answer those calls with radical love regardless of who’s on the other side of the phone: a warm voice on the line, support for travel, messages with information and affirmation, and valuing them wholly. These are the small pieces that make up the vast network of care that our communities are denied, but desperately need.

 

When you join us in support and solidarity, it means that you, too, believe in the practice of radical love and rebellious care by any means necessary. As Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis puts it: “It’s a radical love. It is not a love for wimps. It’s saying: ‘I’m going to love you, and engage with you whoever you are.’”

 

What Radical Love Looks Like in Practice

 

Our team is made up of organizers, caregivers, cultural workers, and advocates all coming together to provide our neighbors with the fundamental human rights the state denies them. We are not immune to burnout or grief, and are impacted by the same systems our callers navigate. So part of our commitment to radical love means creating space for our staff to rest, to grow, to say no, and to ask for help.

 

We are building internal policies that reflect the same compassion and holistic approach we offer externally, including paid time off, flexible schedules, cultural and emotional-informed support, pay equity, mental health stipends, and opportunities for professional growth and leadership. We see these not as ‘perks’, but as political commitments.

 

We meet people where they are, including our callers, our communities, and each other. Radical love means that our Healthline supports callers of all backgrounds, genres, races, sexualities, religions, disabilities, beliefs—even some who tell us they “don’t believe in” abortion—because we support their right to fundamental human rights. Period.

 

Through Radical Love, ARC-Southeast is expanding our programs, scaling our Healthline, and deepening our grassroots roots across the region. We’re listening to feedback from our callers and communities through surveys, support group insights, and on-the-ground conversations, and we’re using that feedback to evolve. From mutual aid models to political education, we believe that love is a blueprint for how we build power.

 

We’re also always seeking opportunities to help nurture the next generation of reproductive justice  leaders. Young people, Black and brown folks, trans and nonbinary Southerners, parents and grandparents, and immigrants and advocates, religious leaders; we believe all have the capacity to learn and carry the work of abortion justice forward in ways that are innovative, bold, and rooted in joy. In a region that is constantly under attack, this kind of leadership is an act of love, too.

 

By creating a safe environment where on one hand our individual capacities, limits, boundaries, and what we need to pour into ourselves are valued, and on the other hand the needs, wishes, and wellness of our communities is prioritized, we acknowledge the collective, transformative impact that the work of abortion funds have.

 

Staying Rooted in Each Other

 

Radical love is not just our value. It’s our movement strategy.

 

We don’t just ask, What do you need? We also ask: What would it take for you to feel fully free? What does reproductive justice look like for you, and how can we help you achieve it? What’s stopping you from feeling whole in this moment? Would you like to join us in this struggle for reproductive liberation?

 

Because we are intertwined, these are the questions that we center every time we show up for someone with care and without judgment. With a shared future, we don’t just serve individuals. We fight systems for a collective future where abortion is free, care is holistic, access is unrestricted, and no one has to ask permission to make decisions about their own body, their family, or their life.

 

If you believe in radical love, we invite you to join us:

 

 

Because this work doesn’t belong to us alone.

It belongs to everyone who believes a better world is possible.

And radical love is how we build it.