As I wrote a few days ago, as part of a nationwide effort called Breaking Our Silence, I will be reading a story by a woman who had an abortion and neither regrets it nor feel ashamed about it. More details of the event to be held tomorrow at Beachland Ballroom, 15711 Waterloo Road, Cleveland, OH 44110 from 6:00-8:00 pm. and is free and open to the public can be found at the above link.
This action is necessary because we are in a period where there has been a rise in the efforts to reduce women’s access to abortion by placing such onerous restrictions on the operation of clinics that many of them are forced to shut down. This graphic from the Guttmacher Institute shows the extent of the problem.
As part of this effort to remove the stigma surrounding abortion, actors are lending their voices t it. Here Elizabeth Banks reads one such story.
You can view the stories read by other actors here.
I don’t like kids.
Actually, I don’t like humans, much.
I think promoting abortion is a great thing.
That, and women’s body autonomy. Nobody should be forced to carry someone else’s STDs or parasites; kids are just a special case of those.
I’ve had two brushes with abortion in my life.
I was adopted when I was a month old and I will never know who my biological parents are. But I was born after Roe vs. Wade so I know at least one thing: whatever her circumstances, my birth mother had a choice about whether to have me or not. When I think about stories like Rebecca’s that means something.
The second time I had a brush with abortion was when a friend had a medical issue. There was no chance of a viable pregnancy and she was in pain, yet the doctor kept us waiting for several hours for no apparent reason and lectured her about unwed mothers and using birth control (she had) before finally admitting she needed an abortion to avoid dying.
That doctor and people like him need to hear stories like this.
Marcus Ranum@1,
Your feelings are your own business, but I have a hunch that associating the pro-choice cause with misanthropy and dislike of children is not particularly helpful in the defence of women’s bodily autonomy.