Theresa May Cut a Deal with an Anti-Abortion, Anti-Gay Marriage Party

The DUP is a political party with deeply entrenched anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage views, and hardline conservative policies. Its leader Arlene Foster has consistently blocked any reform to the country's despicable ban on abortion, despite a High Court ruling that the ban contravenes human rights law. It doesn't stop there—according to the Telegraph, DUP members have also described homosexuality as an "abomination," have questionable beliefs on climate change (they once appointed a climate change denier as environment minister), and called for the return of the death penalty. Some of its senior members even believe in creationism.

Outraged women are now mobilizing online to contact Conservative MPs and urging them not to consent to any deal with the DUP. It's a situation reminiscent of the thousands of Americans who jammed senators' phone lines seeking to halt the confirmation of Trump picks like Betsy DeVos and Jeff Sessions.

Amy Bottrill, 26, emailed her local Tory MP as soon as she saw potential talk of a Conservative and DUP alliance. She later uploaded her email message as a public Google Doc template, calling on other people in Tory constituencies to adapt it for their own MP. It has since been retweeted almost 800 times.

"I'm quite worked up about it!" Bottrill told Broadly. "It sounds dramatic, but I think a lot of the DUP policies are medieval. Their stance on the death penalty, outlawing abortion, their views on LGBT rights… But I feel that it's important to engage in activism and resist in small ways, even when it seems that the outcome of this election will not be a good one for us."

Bottrill wants her fellow citizens to lobby their MPs to challenge a Tory-DUP coalition. "MPs can seem like people sitting in ivory towers, not in tune with what's going on in their community. But your MP still represents you, even if you didn't vote for them."

University student Helen Clegg, 21, says that she has emailed and repeatedly called her Conservative MP in her hometown of Darwen. "As a gay woman I do not feel safe having a Tory/DUP coalition," she told Broadly. "I've emailed him to call for him to oppose this decision—his office phone was busy, I tried literally 20 times."

Leena Normington, 27, has been crowdsourcing the contact details of new and incoming MPs to help mobilize young people. "Time is of the essence and I know that millennials on their phones have a track record of being better than middle aged people," she explains. "The response has been amazing. Within an hour or so we've had 70 constituencies accounted for [out of 650 total]. Hundreds of young people have been working on it and providing templates explaining what to say when you contact your MPs."

For women's rights advocates, any prospective Conservative-DUP alliance is a terrifying prospect, especially when it comes to abortion access. Abortion is illegal in Northern Ireland, but tentative strides have been made recently towards relaxing the law in limited cases. Although the Northern Irish government retains responsibility over abortion access, the DUP's increased power in Westminster could spell an end to Northern Irish activists' hope that they may one day gain their basic reproductive rights.

"The DUP are anti-LGBT and anti-women," says Emma Campbell of Northern Irish group Alliance for Choice. "They have party members who are 'close personal friends' with the clinic protestors, they frequently call women who have abortions murderers, and yet they're happy to introduce welfare reforms that make it harder and harder to support children."

**Watch: **The Unstoppable Wendy Davis on the Fight for Abortion Rights

There is, however, a small but nonetheless positive outcome to come out of this: The dire situation for Northern Irish women, so often overlooked by the rest of the country, may now finally attract the attention it deserves.

"We pay into the NHS same as everyone else, but we're abandoned by the system at the worst moment of our lives," explains Carla*, a 45-year-old Belfast resident.

When she needed an abortion due to fatal fetal abnormality, she was forced to travel—like 833 Northern Irish women in 2015—to the UK for treatment. "At least now, media and everyone else in Britain may actually take an interest."

While there's speculation that another election may be called later this year to deliver a government with a stronger mandate, there is only one option now for anybody who supports women's rights: resist.

"Those of us who support a women's right to choose need to make sure our voices remain loud and clear for the duration, however long or short, of this parliament," explains Clare Murphy of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.