When silence sets in

Today, I met with a bridge builder in the US. She didn't want her face in the picture. It was a very powerful experience.

She works with women's rights, but not directly with the issue of abortion. She faces fierce opposition. Even her father threw a chair at her in the middle of a discussion.

Families are divided, she tells us when we meet at a café. She is gorgeous. Insanely sharp rhetorically and incredibly committed. She has a long education and runs a large company with her father.

She devotes all her waking hours to issues such as women's rights, childcare, maternity leave regulations, and equal access to education. Her eyes well up when I ask her how much volunteer work she does alongside her job. "My children think I work all the time," she says.

She does not want to call herself an activist because she believes the word is tainted.

She calls herself a bridge builder, as she works with both Republicans and Democrats. In fact, she has helped candidates from both parties. As long as they are willing to speak up for women's rights, she will stand right behind them.

However, she never talks about pro-life or pro-choice, as it is called in the US. She believes that these words demonise and divide Americans. She wants to bring people together. In her experience, this has become an almost impossible task since 2015.

People who believe a lie don't really believe anything, she says, and in one breath contradicts a series of public lies about women.

"But I'll keep going!" she says with such strength in her voice that I don't doubt her for a second. But the reality is, as I also tell her, that human rights and civil liberties are being restricted in pretty much every country in the world.

It will take decades just in the US to rectify this, she concludes.

I meet many people on my travels, but rarely do people introduce themselves as bridge builders. Her experiences are familiar to me, as she recounts how many people actively oppose dialogue on both sides of the political spectrum.

I commend her for her courage. "But I can't be the face of all the work I do, because the price would be too high. I promised my family that," she says without elaborating.

Suddenly, we are sitting there—in the middle of a book café, in the world's most free country, and we fall silent—together.

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