Bawdy Autonomy Comedy Night set for Saturday at Northern

The Hi-Line Women’s Coalition is hosting Montana comedian Sarah Aswell for the Bawdy Autonomy Comedy Night at 7 p.m. Saturday at Montana State University-Northern’s Little Theatre, a fundraiser for the organization which advocates for women’s bodily autonomy and privacy rights.

Coalition Co-Chair Morgaine Lomayesva said the event will be the first big fundraiser for the organization that formed earlier this year, partially in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, which triggered a wave of state legislation around the country restricting abortion rights.

Aswell has been doing fundraisers around Montana for the past few year advocating for women’s rights and said this morning that she’s been looking for an excuse to get back to Havre for a while now, having done a show here a few years ago.

“I am ready to have fun and tell some jokes,” Aswell said.

Women’s reproductive rights is an issue that she said is very important to her having made use of such services, changing her life for the better in the process.

She said she had an abortion when she was in her early 20s and having the ability to do that allowed her to go to graduate school, establish herself and get well into a career before she found a partner and had children.

She said if she hadn’t had access to an abortion, her life would have changed for the worse having to take care of a child that she was absolutely not ready for, a child that wouldn’t have had the benefit of a stable, finically secure environment.

This is something that isn’t exclusive to women, she said, because men will also find themselves in these circumstances as well, having a child that they are not able to properly provide for.

Aswell said she also believes that women’s right to bodily autonomy is closely linked to practically all other human rights, including the rights of LGBTQ people and the right to free speech, which is incredibly important to her profession as a comedian.

She said the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, an event that led to the founding of the Hi-Line Women’s Coalition, was a heartbreaking step backward for her.

Thankfully, she said, abortion rights are explicitly protected under the Montana Constitution’s privacy protections so they will be harder to take away, but, even then, access is still a big issue in the state, which has relatively few clinics, necessitating people, especially in rural areas like much of the Hi-Line, make very long trips and pay a lot of money to have the procedure done.

Aswell said she supports the cause of women’s rights in a number of ways, but comedy remains the thing she’s most talented at, and using that to help organizations like the Hi-Line Women’s Coalition is something she’s happy to do.

“It’s an issue that’s very important to me,” she said. “ … If I can tell jokes to support the cause, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Lomayesva said they invited Aswell to perform because she is a talented Montana-based comedian whose style and subject matter have a femenist perspective, and the group is excited to have her in Havre.

She said the event will have live music and drinks and will also feature a panel of local nurses to talk about some current issues relevant to the group’s activities.

The Hi-Line Women’s Coalition, she said, has spent the last few months putting together education about reproductive and privacy rights in Montana and they hope this event will give them enough money to distribute some of that material to voters.

Lomayesva said while this event will be their first big fundraiser, it is not their first public event, with the group entering a float in the Festival Days Parade earlier this month.

The float featured members of the coalition in garb similar to that of the suffragettes of the early 20th century, and they held signs advocating for maintaining women’s right to privacy in Montana.

Lomayesva said many at the event were happy to see them, but they did receive some moments of stoney silence.

“Nothing outright hostile, but some were definitely happier to see us than others,” she said.

She said the group is still busy with some administrative work, but will continue voter outreach in preparation for the coming election in November.

Tickets for tonight’s event are $15.