We are currently (as of May 18th) in mifepristone-mail purgatory, since SCOTUS has put off making a decision about it again. We can still mail mifepristone for now, but that shouldn’t be something we’re arguing about in the first place, because abortion medication is safe and this whole thing is based on nonsense.
This week, let’s talk about growing an abortion consciousness.
The first conversation about abortion I remember having about abortion wasn’t actually a conversation. It was a question from my mother: “Do you think people should be allowed to have abortions?” I said yes. I don’t remember how old I was, just that we were at the kitchen table. Somehow, I had figured out what abortion was, probably from Judy Blume. (Writing this now makes me realize my mother never gave me an indication as to what she thought either way, and we never talked about it again.)
In high school, I spent freshman year Ancient Civilizations class arguing about abortion with a friend, passing a yellow legal pad back and forth. Her stance was that abortion was not okay, a stance that, to my knowledge, hasn’t changed. We were exasperated by each other, our teacher was probably exasperated by us, and that yellow legal pad became infamous and is likely the reason I was voted Class Feminist when we graduated.
Talking about abortion as a very young person meant that I understood very little about it. I didn’t know how abortion was outside of the concept of being able to get unpregnant, which I thought was important (the childfree adult was lurking in me even then). The abortion conversations were always hypothetical. I didn’t need an abortion in high school, and I didn’t know anyone who needed one - or rather, I didn’t know that I knew anyone. I went to high school in a wealthy town in a state where abortion was and is relatively easy to access, especially for those with money, but I wouldn’t piece that all together until much later.
In a sense, I learned about abortion many times - once about the fact of its existence, and then about its intricacies and realities, as well as how things I didn’t think I learned, but rather imbibed by virtue of being a person in the world, were impacting me and how I saw abortion.
The point is, we should be letting our abortion narratives grow. We should be accumulating both more information and the ability to hold multiple truths at once. In the context of abortion stigma, that means sorting through the narrow thinking that probably makes us feel secure, but doesn’t actually benefit us, or anyone else.
Action item: How did you learn about abortion? What did that mean for the way you thought about it? What did the road look for you in regard to growing an abortion consciousness?
Next time: TBD