A student actor onstage at the University of Montana reads the hate mail that arrived after she spoke publicly of her abortion.

“If I see you, I will do what you did to your unborn baby,” the letter threatens. “You deserve to die for bragging about your abortion.”

College students in Texas and Montana this week are staging “Out of Silence,” a play meant to destigmatize abortion. University of Montana senior Bronte Burnette said the letter is included in a series of vignettes meant to illustrate how and why women decide to end their pregnancies, and the aftermath some women face.

The idea, Burnette told Rewire, is to shift the conversation about abortion away from “politics and the moral arguments about it, to focus on the women and the women’s lives it is affecting.”

Nearly three in ten women will choose to end a pregnancy by age 45. Some advocates contend that lawmakers and abortion rights foes have hijacked the discourse around abortion, turning a deeply personal decision into a political football.

Julia Reticker-Flynn, with the Washington, D.C.-based Advocates for Youth, said the play is an offshoot of an awareness campaign started four years ago to counter anti-choice attacks with a positive message. More than 800 participants have posted stories and videos about their abortion experiences at 1in3campaign.org.

Fifteen plays are now scheduled this fall across the country, with more planned in the spring. The plays are free to the public.

“We’re trying to build really a culture of empathy and support,” Reticker-Flynn, director of the 1 in 3 Campaign, which is a project of Advocates for Youth, said in an interview with Rewire.

Republican-led state legislatures have closed abortion clinics in Texas, Indiana, Mississippi, and elsewhere. On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments against sweeping restrictions on abortion providers enacted by the GOP-majority Texas legislature, measures that the American Medical Association and others argue are not medically necessary.

Reticker-Flynn said research suggests that people who know someone who has had an abortion are more likely to be supportive of abortion access. Viral online campaigns like #ShoutYourAbortion have also sought to elevate women’s stories and erase the stigma.

The idea, she said, is to promote dialogue. After the play, audience members are invited to share their stories.

“The silence around people’s experience has allowed [opponents] to paint a picture of what abortion is and really dehumanized who has an abortion,” Reticker-Flynn noted.