Hope is not passive—it needs action

The dog days of August have given way to a brat summer or a demure summer, depending on your point of view, with Kamala Harris’s spectacular entrance into the US presidential campaign. Even more striking was its delivery of a healthy dose of hope: hope for unity amid divisive politics and fractured communities in many countries, including the UK, where hateful far right riots have proved destabilising at a time when global solidarity—like hope—is needed more than ever (doi:10.1136/bmj.q1809).1Hopefulness isn’t a neutral position, as the musician Nick Cave said in a recent talk show interview that’s gone viral2—it is adversarial. Unlike cynicism, hope is hard earned and makes demands on us, he said. Hope requires action.In the US, action to recover women’s reproductive rights couldn’t be more urgent. The removal in 2022 of abortion access by the Dobbs ruling has caused lethal harms to women and children, say Terry McGovern…
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