Editor’s note: This article discusses abortion, sexual assault and mention of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline can be reached at 1-833-246-2632, the National sexual assault hotline can be reached at 1-800-656-4673 and the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline can be reached at 988.

When Charlotte Isenberg took the pills that would end her pregnancy, she was alone. She told no one, not even her boyfriend, for fear that he would be forced to testify against her in court. 

As the pills worked their way through her body, the fears that were in the back of her mind accumulated: Is this normal? Is she bleeding too much? Is she dying? But there was no one she felt safe enough to ask.

“A combination of anti-abortion legislation, harassment and brainwashing made what should have been an intimate, calm few days spent processing with my boyfriend into a political s— show,” Isenberg reflected on her experience in a post on her Substack a year later.  

When Isenberg was just 15, she suffered a miscarriage as a result of sexual abuse from a family member. For a teenager in the middle of a global pandemic, social media provided her with an outlet for the complicated emotions she was struggling to handle alone. 

Amid the fickle and unpredictable algorithms, her posts caught the attention of several high-profile anti-abortion groups, who began courting Isenberg to join their fight.

“I was becoming isolated from literally everyone,” she said. “I had only these adults validating me and telling me that, you know, what happened to me was a very bad thing, that my feelings were valid.”

But soon, she said they started to create a narrative around her story, assigning feelings and ideology that weren’t organic. Suddenly, what started as an attempt to process her grief and trauma became her ticket to years of exploitation. 

For the next few years, Isenberg would be associated with groups like Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, posting about the dangers of abortion online, protesting outside of clinics and being called to share her story in front of millions on the internet.

However, the sense of belonging and camaraderie she felt slowly started to melt away, replaced by a sense that her trauma was being used as a tool to further a cause she felt herself becoming more and more disconnected from. Her activism dwindled, and she eventually cut off contact with PAAU in 2023. 

But Isenberg’s passion would soon reignite; a traumatic experience at the hands of a former PAAU comrade starting her transformation into the reproductive freedom activist she is today.

In 2024, Isenberg, then 20 years old, became pregnant for a second time.

“Of course I wanted to be a mom,” read a post on her Substack. “Of course I wanted to have a baby. I did the math in the weeks leading up to my appointment, over and over, trying to find a way any of it could work.”

But Isenberg’s situation was complicated. She was unemployed, had no driver’s license and was set to start her first semester of college in August. Unable to see a way forward, she made an appointment at her local Planned Parenthood for an initial consultation, which is required by North Carolina law before abortion pills can be prescribed. 

 Unsure of her decision, Isenberg reached out to a close friend and fellow anti-abortion activist for help. 

 “And unbeknownst to me, she actually stalked me and my boyfriend’s social media, his family’s social media, like triangulated where the clinic we were going to had to be based on the address I gave her,” she said.

When she and her then-boyfriend showed up to the consultation, Isenberg’s friend was waiting, begging and pleading with her to change her mind. When that didn’t work, her friend and other activists made a call to 911, alleging that Isenberg was suicidal and a threat to herself and others. 

“They had a magistrate file in order to have me involuntarily psych-evaluated,” Isenberg said.

She recalls two police officers showing up at her boyfriend’s house to take her to the hospital, where she then had to argue for her freedom. 

Despite her immense fear, she said she didn’t allow herself to fall apart, and the hospital staff eventually allowed her to go home. But the damage had been done.

“By the time I had my abortion, I didn’t feel in control of anything,” Isenberg wrote last summer.

The experience of almost being involuntarily institutionalized shattered Isenberg’s sense of security, and the fear drove her again into isolation. Instead of terminating her pregnancy in a clinic surrounded by professionals and loved ones, Isenberg was on her own.

Now the senior App State English major has started a collective to provide the emotional support and education she lacked during her own self-managed abortion.

After finishing her internship with Collective Power for Reproductive Justice last summer, Isenberg said she noticed the stark lack of abortion care for those on App State’s campus. 

There is currently no specialty abortion provider in Boone, and with the nearest Planned Parenthood about an hour and 45 minutes away, options for those who are seeking to terminate their pregnancy are limited. 

Isenberg said the creation of the collective was inspired by other public colleges in states like California and Massachusetts, which are required by law to develop abortion-readiness programs for their students, in conjunction with the Department of Public Health.

When the collective first formed last fall, Isenberg chose to be the only non-anonymous member due to the threats, harassment and stalking she endured after speaking publicly about her abortion in 2024.

Isenberg explained that she would rather “take the heat” than expose someone who has little experience navigating the potential consequences of being a public figure on the internet.

But as the collective’s online presence continues to grow, there are a few members who are making themselves known, including sophomore theatre arts major Alexis Carr, who will be taking over leadership next semester. 

Instagram is the collective’s social media base of operations; its tiles are filled with colorful calls to action with phrases like “Abortion is Appalachian” and “Shout Your Abortion.” Far from simple photos and plain text, the posts are presented as eclectic collages, encouraging students to reach out with questions or concerns about self-managed abortions to the collective’s Signal account. 

One post features Isenberg against a backdrop of text, eyes closed and mouth open, a photoshopped pill dangling from her fingers as if she’s about to swallow it. The text provides information about mifepristone, one of the most common kinds of medication abortion in the United States. Mifepristone blocks progesterone, the hormone needed to support a pregnancy, and is taken in conjunction with misoprostol. 

The image was a response to an incident an hour prior in which the collective alleges Instagram had suspended the account briefly and removed their most recent post. 

According to the collective, the post that was removed shared information about Plan C, an organization that directs people to sources that can provide medication abortion through the mail.

 In the response post, the collective claims the censor accused them of selling prescription drugs.

 “This post would not have been taken down if we were holding Viagra, another prescription medication that’s often virtually prescribed,” the post read. 

Isenberg stressed that the members of the collective are not medical professionals, although each member undergoes training with third-party organizations such as Advocates for Youth and outsources medical questions to the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline. 

“While I don’t provide abortion pills, I absolutely can drop off a bag of pads, tea, granola bars, you know, that sort of thing,” Isenberg said. 

In recent months, the collective has moved from being mostly a social-media-based organization to one with a physical presence on campus. 

On April 2, the collective made an appearance on Sanford Mall during an event that was part of the “Pick Up the Mic” initiative, which is hosted by Turning Point USA and aims to encourage free speech and debate at college campuses, according to their website. TPUSA members held signs that read “abortion is murder” and “abolish gay marriage,” encouraging students to come up and “prove me wrong.” 

Across the mall, Isenberg and other members of the collective stood behind a table covered in condoms, menstrual products and the emergency contraceptive, Plan-B. Isenberg held her own sign that read, “Free Plan-B!! Abortion Doula, Ask Me Anything.”

Although she braced for conflict, Isenberg said she was pleased with the positive reception they received from students. The next day, the collective posted to Instagram, announcing they had distributed 100 units of Plan-B, over 20 pregnancy tests and “more condoms than we could count.”

However, recent legislation introduced by Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley may make it nearly impossible to obtain mifepristone, which could make it difficult for the collective to continue operating. 

On March 11, Hawley unveiled a bill that, if passed, would remove the Food and Drug Administration’s approval for the use of mifepristone to end pregnancies. Mifeprex was first approved in 2000, and the generic form, mifepristone, received approval in 2019. 

According to research from the Guttmacher Institute, medicated abortions accounted for 63% of all U.S. abortions in 2023, but because the studies did not account for self-managed abortions, the percentage could be much higher. 

When asked how the collective would operate if the proposed bill did pass, Isenberg was not deterred.

 “If prescribing mifepristone for abortions becomes illegal and students begin having issues with ordering medications from the United States, we’ll figure something else out,” she wrote in an email. “That’s something our government has predictably failed to learn: people will keep having the abortions they need, no matter what.”