ColumnThere is no shame in abortion. ABORTION. Say it with me. You don’t need to speak in hushed tones: your abortion stories, my abortion story – they’re the stories of our lives. And they’re as normal as normal can be.

According to Katha Pollitt, author of the wonderful and important new book, “PRO: Reclaiming Abortion Rights,” abortion is a social good. Pollitt, a longtime contributor to “The Nation” makes an excellent argument about why women need to stand up for reproductive rights not just by fighting in the streets and halls of congress – but in our everyday relationship to the abortions we’ve had or might have. We need to talk about our abortions with ease — and often.

Three in ten women will have had an abortion by the time they’re 45-years-old. That’s a lot of women – that’s you, or your mother, or your sister, or your friends. That’s  most of us.

Since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, the zealots of the anti-abortion movement have taken women and their bodies down a rabbit hole-like rightwing agenda built on so-called Christian values. The people leading this movement aren’t simply religious nuts; they’re deeply misogynistic in every possible way. Pollitt’s book shows that states where the status of women is lowest are also the ones where there are the most restrictions on abortion. Bottom line: the assault on abortion is an assault on women – on human rights. Full stop. These are the folks who don’t believe in birth control, that think women should not work, and are bound to perform their “wifely duties.” But we don’t often hear from them unless we attend their sermons or traffic their (truly scary) websites.

What we do hear about, almost every day, is the result of the work they’ve done over the last 40 years of careful public relations planning. They’ve patiently constructed a long-term agenda to chip away at reproductive rights. They employ radical ideas that most Americans disagree with, but they’ve been smart and strategic, and that’s why we should be scared – because right now —  they’re winning.

Here’s what not radical: talking about abortion without shame. But we’ve been worn down by decades of Operation Rescue talking points – and we sometimes end up inadvertently speaking their language. Even those of us who’ve had more than one abortion out of pure necessity – not being ready for a child, not wanting to have a child with a particular father, not wanting to be a single mother – sometimes speak of our abortions in terms of “good” and “bad.” “Good” abortions, in the parlance of those who believe abortion should remain “legal and rare” are those that are of medical necessity, rape or incest. “Bad” abortions are the ones we have because we chose to have sex, got pregnant and then decided that it wasn’t time to have a kid.

There are no good abortions and bad abortions. There are just abortions. Pollitt doesn’t want us to be defensive about our abortions simply because our opponents have managed to own the conversation. She wants us to reconvene the conversation on our own terms, as each of us share our abortion stories.

This isn’t to say that all abortions are free of emotion. Some friends have had abortions, and went on to have several children – and then had another abortion. Some people have one easy abortion, and then another problematic one, perhaps because of a complicated relationship problem. But the rhetoric of the anti-choicers – that all abortions are heavy, dark, difficult regret-laden errors in judgment, is patently false. They say it over and over again and this idea seeps into the culture so deeply that some women believe it to be true, and perhaps feel sadder about their abortions than they would have. If our movies and TV shows and our politicians tell us that abortion is sad, it’s no wonder some of us feel sadness when we have the procedure. That’s part of the strategy, of course.

My own abortions have not been terribly fraught, but that doesn’t mean I was flippant about them. I live in a blue state with a life of relative privilege – I didn’t have to worry about access for a moment, even though I encountered rosary-bead wearing, angry people with signs that said I was going to hell. Good luck with that, I thought — I’m Jewish so you’re really not scaring me. But those signs, and those people — culled from the same herd that don’t think there’s anything wrong with shooting doctors that provide abortions — those people are scary.

I was 20 when I had my first abortion, and even though I had support from my then-boyfriend, from my friends — I was still too ashamed to talk about it in any public way. Even though I wasn’t sad or regretful, because the idea of a baby was remote and abstract, I understood that a nice Jewish girl like me had made a huge mistake. And sure, getting accidentally pregnant is a mistake of sorts — but I’d been drilled with the idea that I should be embarrassed, ashamed. And even though I was defiantly pro-choice — and cut my first political teeth as a teenager on the abortion front — I carried shame. Even though I made signs and marched on Washington for reproductive rights, my own experience was somehow walled off and separate.

This is precisely why Pollitt tells us that we need to unequivocally take back the conversation.

Let’s not confuse the issue by calling abortion anything that it isn’t: it’s a medical procedure to terminate a pregnancy. It’s not something that should cause a shame spiral. I don’t have numbers on this, but I’d argue that the vast majority of women have gone on to think of their abortions like dental procedures – something they’d rather not do, but must, in order to continue to live a healthy life.

Even recent indie films have treated abortion in hushed tones, and lead characters only became heroes by rejecting the option to terminate, or not even thinking about it in the first place. Since the 1990s, movies about pregnancy have been a far cry from the legal, safe abortion depicted in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” “Knocked Up” and “Juno” gave us seemingly modern women who basically didn’t even consider the idea of abortion as a possibility. Finally, this year we were delivered the brilliant “Obvious Child,” a film that treats a woman’s abortion story as it should be treated.

Since 2010, 205 anti-abortion laws have been passed across the country. It’s time for those of us who are proudly pro-choice to stop chasing the conversation that the anti-choice zealots are leading. The situation is dire, especially with a brand new crop of anti-choicers in charge of both houses of Congress as of Tuesday.

Sixty-one percent of women that have abortions are already mothers. That’s why I love Pollitt’s “pro-choice, pro-mother ” mantra. Motherhood is fetishized in our culture, but it is not valued, certainly not by the people who would take away our legal right to abortion. Once a fetus is “protected,” they quickly move on to their next clump of cells, calling it a “life”. Helping women to actually raise the children that they’re forced to bear is not on their agenda.

When it comes to access to abortion, all politics is local. This week, in the bloodbath of the midterm elections, choice was protected in some small ways, but it was also dealt serious blows in races all over the country. Wendy Davis lost her race in Texas. A personhood referendum was defeated for the third time in Colorado, yet they elected a pro-personhood senator in the same state. North Dakota also defeated a personhood amendment. Yet in Tennessee, one of the last Southern states to retain some access to abortion, the news is very bad.

Let’s keep abortion safe, legal, and out in the open. I don’t care much about whether it’s rare – that’s not the issue. Tell your abortion stories without shame, and ask your sisters, mothers, cousins, and Facebook friends to tell theirs.

Here are some great organizations working hard to protect your reproductive rights. Send them money and volunteer for them.

The Abortion Care Network

Center for Reproductive Rights

Planned Parenthood

Emily’s List

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

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Image: tipstimes

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VideoIf you can’t say it, don’t legislate it.

As the War on Women rages on, anti-woman forces – primarily a cadre of ultra-conservative men – continue to beef up their offensive troops. They now have Paul Ryan “a no abortions ever” kind of guy, teaming up with Mitt “I’ve always been pro-life” Romney, and together, they’ve created a party platform that represents the biggest threat to Roe v Wade we’ve seen thus far.

New to the frontline, we’ve been introduced to the rogue soldier, Representative Todd Akin, a Missouri candidate for the U.S. Senate. In a recent interview, Rep. Akin was seen munching on a tasty foot in his mouth as he expressed his belief that in most cases of “legitimate” rape, “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” thereby preventing pregnancy. Sadly, he isn’t the only politician who actually believes this absurd theory, nor does he stand alone in his justification for excluding rape-induced pregnancies in legislation that would restrict abortion funding.

Though our battles have escalated in the 2012 presidential campaign, women have long been besieged by fundamentalist religious groups, a male-dominated government, and society at large. It wasn’t until the 19^th Amendment was ratified in 1920, that women were granted the right to vote. Finally, we were allowed to raise our political voices, even if we would not be spared continuing efforts to silence us. We’re now all too aware that a strong declaration of opinion can lead to consequences. The duality of our political system was clearly exposed when Michigan’s State Rep. Lisa Brown, was censured for using the word “vagina” during a debate on abortion rights. Politicizing the word “vagina” helped mobilize many of us who had grown a little too accustomed to minding our manners.

If you can say it, display it.

Women have continued to say “vagina.”

Some even seek to destigmatize other descriptive terms for female genitalia, speaking – what may still be to many – the unspeakable. Others, the more demonstrative among us, are showing their vaginas (or vaginae…) to the world in a no-skirt-lifting fashion, through various forms of artistic expression. Vagina art may not be a new concept, but it is a window to society’s changing regard for women throughout history – from divine worship to oppression and repression.

Instead of conforming to expectations of “good girl” behavior, we’re seeing an emergence of newly empowered and emboldened women who have set up their easels, raided granny’s baskets of crochet hooks, knitting needles, embroidery kits, and hauled the sewing machines down from the attic. The results, as seen in the examples we’ve collected, evoke a broad range of emotions. Laughter. Anger. Sadness. Pride. Each creative effort celebrates the artistry of the individual as well as our collective identity. All have been inspired by “the sacred source of life” –the vagina.

Slideshow Music Courtesy JSP Records “Mama Don’t Allow It” by Julia Lee & Her Boyfriends; Images: Not Your Average Hooker, Hypgnosis, Shine Maverick Jewelry, Hypgnosis, Johnny B Wilde,  Expired Goods, Scarlet Tentacle, Purple Hippo Stitches, I Wear Party Hats, spidercamp, Irma Diaz/SourOctopus, TheVaginaZine, The Tie Dye Bohemian, Alex Florschutz, Adrien Art, Tina Casebeer/wikit626, ©Carrie Reichardt, Alex Florschutz, Woman In Bloom, thepixelrat, The Voting Box , VJazzle, Bridesmaids, Wedding Dress, Protest/CODEPINK, ©Ursula Kölle, Cupcakes, Body Parts Poster, Pink Flannel by Daria, Graffiti, Stenciled Tees/#waronwomen, ampule, the moss girl, ©Lydia Shalanko, Protest/CODEPINK, Scarlet Tentacle, Pochos Cosas, Vulva Love Lovely, Sinful Soap Favors, Family Tree Glass, Delicious Accessories

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Three mothers tell their own tale of how abortion changed their lives…for the better.

Lucy was 18 when she had an abortion.

“It was the ‘bad’ kind,” she says. “The kind you have because you just don’t want to have children, or because you were irresponsible. You know, the slutty kind.” She got on with her life and thought about it every now and then, occasionally wondering if she had made the right decision. Last July, Lucy, who now lives in Norfolk and is 31, gave birth to a little a boy, Ezra. In becoming a mother, she says, she finally laid to rest those sporadic demons. “Since having my son, having gone through that process of pregnancy and childbirth and child care, I have never been so absolutely certain that what I did all those years ago was right.”

Lucy is not alone. Despite a rising anti-choice sentiment across the UK, where this story is being reported, there are a number of women for whom parenthood only strengthens their resolve that access to abortion must be safe, legal and guilt-free.

Emily lives in Devon with her partner and two daughters, aged three and one. She has a third daughter, Ivy, whom she painfully chose to abort at 23 weeks when she was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. The prognosis was poor. Assuming Ivy survived birth, she would have had open heart surgery in the first week of life. Assuming she survived that, she would have needed surgery again at six months, and if she survived that, then again at three, and so on.

Emily says: “Ivy was a baby. She was perfect in every way, down to her tiny fingernails and her eyelashes. She had my partner’s feet in miniature. When she was born, she tried to breathe. We held her till she went still and told her we loved her, and that we would make the most of this life and never forget her. That was my choice.”

Nadine Dorries debates plans to bar abortion providers from giving advice to pregnant women

Not long after Emily returned to work after losing her daughter, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, who has repeatedly tried to limit access to abortion services during her time as a politician, tabled an amendment to the 1967 Abortion Act that would strip abortion providers of the right to counsel women. The loosely worded bill threatened to land the role of counselor in the hands of religious or anti-choice groups.

Emily says: “I was driving home listening to the radio and was so furious I had to pull over and cry angry tears. I could not believe that there were people out there who dared to feel they had the right to take that choice out of anyone’s hands. ”

Thirty-year-old Julie had a very strict Catholic upbringing. These days she is an atheist, pro-choice, and married with a son (8 months) and a daughter (3). When she was at university she got pregnant by accident and miscarried at six weeks. During the two weeks she knew about the pregnancy she was terrified of having the baby but also realized very quickly that she was unable to have an abortion.

She says: “I felt like I would be killing a baby, and I just couldn’t consider it as an option. But I believe that a mother’s job is to do what’s best for her family, especially the child she’s carrying, sometimes the best thing is a termination and the mother should have that option.”

Abortion services are under attack in the UK like never before. The conservative majority of the coalition government are pushing through Nadine Dorries’ amendment regardless of it being defeated in parliament, and aggressive American anti-choice group 40 Days for Life have shipped their brand of campaigning to a new shore and began picketing abortion clinics at the beginning of Lent, filming women going in and out and handing out wildly inaccurate information.

While those who genuinely believe abortion is murder and those who believe it is unfortunate but sometimes necessary are never going to agree, the popular discourse on abortion misses the fact that the stories carry on long after a woman leaves the clinic, and that terminating a pregnancy can be a foundation stone for building stronger, happier, more together lives.

Emily refuses to dress her experiences up in any coy language.

“I did kill my baby,” she says. “I chose to have Ivy at 23 weeks and to watch her die in my arms because for me, that was preferable to continuing with the pregnancy. She would have had a life, just not the life I wanted for her, or for me, or for my partner, or at that time, for the possible future brothers or sisters she might have.”

And if she had chosen to continue with the pregnancy, chances are she would have lost a baby or a child at a later date than she did, something she considers to be considerably harder than losing a baby pre-birth. She doubts very much she and her partner would still be together, or that they would be living in their dream house in the idyllic Devon countryside, or that they would have the two daughters they have now.

“It’s too crazy to think about,” she says. “I’d not be me. I say that was the hardest choice I ever had to make but really, in the moment, it was one of the easiest. I knew as soon as we had the full facts that there was no way that I would put my baby through the treatment. I’ve never doubted that we made the right choice, not for a second. And that is the truth.”

Lucy says she had always considered her abortion a selfish act. At the time, she was rarely able to make it through the day without having an alcoholic drink, she was using drugs regularly and was “indescribably miserable and confused.” When she found out she was pregnant, she went to the pub, drank a double vodka, smoked half a pack of cigarettes and stayed out all night taking speed. In retrospect she thinks that perhaps she wasn’t so selfish after all. She knew she wouldn’t be able to stop drinking or using drugs throughout the pregnancy.

“So I had a choice,” she says. “I could bring a child in to the world – a very unwanted child – who would start life physically damaged because of my inability to care for it in the womb, and would move through life emotionally damaged because of my inability to care for it when it arrived. Or I could choose something else, to end the pregnancy, get myself straight, go to university, get a masters degree, fall in love, buy a house, have a child who is so adored that some days I feel like the love flows out of me in giant waves. If I had continued with that pregnancy when I was 18 it would have destroyed many lives.”

Julie’s first pregnancy was exactly the opposite experience. Even though she didn’t want a child, she was unable to drink or smoke, do anything that might harm the fetus in anyway and still holds with her a guilt that she miscarried because she didn’t want to keep it. When she fell pregnant with what would become her eldest child she obsessively researched the phases of gestation and fell in love “with a child, not a potential child” and began to believe that the 24 week time limit on is horrific. Yet during her third pregnancy, the one that would produce her second child, she planned to attend a pro-choice rally.

“To me I was exactly the right person to be there, saying ‘look at me, I’m pregnant, I love my children but I’m still pro-choice.’ The conservative right and the Catholics like to paint women who terminate pregnancies as morally, emotionally and intellectually weak. I could never have terminated a pregnancy myself, but I believe I should have the right to, and I will publicly stand with women who have had to make that decision. I will also stand against anyone, politician or religious zealot, or both, who thinks that religious dogma is an appropriate basis for lawmaking,” she says.

Lucy says that if she could have gotten to the same point in her life in a less awful way then of course she would choose that.

“But I did what I did and I’m fine with that. No one is pro-abortion, no one wants to actually do it, but sometimes it is the best option. I’ve spent a lot of time mired in existential crises and trying to rationalize it and eventually realized that we decide who lives and dies all the time. We make conscious decisions to have a baby; that someone knew should not exist. We send people to war to die. The death penalty sends innocent people to their graves every year. We have people die from famine or drought or brutal regimes and we allow that to happen. We decide that our grandma or uncle or best friend has reached such a point in their illness that their quality of life is too diminished and we quietly ask the doctor if they can up the morphine dosage. It’s just part of the way stuff works. We can call upon Fate or God and be a victim of circumstance, or we can engage with it, choose our lives, the course of events that are best for ourselves and our families. If you don’t like it, so be it, but no one has the right to interfere with those choices. I now consider my first true act as a mother was realizing that I was in no position to become a mother. In a sense I am proud of that and it gives me confidence that I am making the right choices for my family now.”

Image: The Guardian, zeevveez, Medill DC, Elvert Barnes

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Does abortion cause psychological trauma? No, but judging might.

The imagined link between abortion and psychosis is just that: imaginary. But just in case we weren’t sure, last month, the New England Journal of Medicine published a Danish study showing definitively that abortion does not put a woman at increased risk for subsequent psychiatric disorders.

This isn’t even news, but try saying that at the picket line. Last year’s UCSF-Guttmacher Institute study found no relationship between abortion and later mental health problems. In 2008, Johns Hopkins did a meta-analysis of studies and came to the same conclusion. The American Psychological Association’s official position is that abortion does not lead to increased risk of mental health problems, a position the association has held since 2008.

But why stop saying something just because it happens to not be true? Despite the evidence from reputable health authorities, the battle goes on. And that’s just the way the anti-choice movement likes it.

In the late ’80s, the anti-abortion movement realized that screeching about Jesus was not winning them many fans, and that most people, pro-lifers included, tended to support things like individual liberty and protecting women’s health. So instead of putting all the focus on the fetus, they added a softer, gentler, more insidious tactic: claiming that abortion hurts women. They turned the debate from one about sticky moral questions like “When does life begin?” into one about objective science and medicine, re-casting women as the vulnerable victims.

Suddenly, abortions were causing breast cancer, subjecting women to dangerous surgery, impairing fertility, and triggering a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder called “post–abortion syndrome.” If you believed the hype, women everywhere were suffering from incapacitating depression, guilt, despair, regret, and suicidal thoughts, even though not one reputable or methodologically sound study has ever supported any of these claims. At any anti-abortion rally today, the signs claiming “I regret my abortion” or “Abortion hurts women,” are likely to outnumber the signs depicting gruesomely dismembered fetuses – because it works.

Despite being medically suspect (and we’re being generous here), the mental health claim has been a successful tactic in chipping away at choice. Even the specter of these claims is enough to allow the anti-choice movement to pass laws requiring that women watch ultrasounds, receive counseling, hear inaccurate medical information, or undergo a state-mandated waiting period before having an abortion, all under the guise of concern for our welfare.

If you think the paternalistic faux concern was limited to Bible-belt senators, think again. In his majority opinion upholding the 2007 partial-birth abortion ban, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy  wrote, “The State has an interest in ensuring so grave a choice is well informed. It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns…what once she did not know.” This is for our own good, you see.

Of course, there’s no right or wrong way to react to an abortion. Research shows that most women report feeling relief, but some women do experience sadness or guilt. A few even experience regret. But studies have repeatedly found that the best predictor of a woman’s mental health after an abortion is her mental health beforehand. Those relatively few women who do experience prolonged grief, anxiety, or depression are more likely to have had mental health problems before the procedure, they are more likely to have less social support for their decision, and they are more likely to have been influenced by anti-choice propaganda or picketers. The stable women who were healthy and happy before they had an abortion tend to be just as healthy and happy afterward.

Choice doesn’t hurt women. Misinformation does.

Image: Joe Szilagyi

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National Super Bowl ads have been universally fun or relatable through the years, making up for their glib materialism with some entertainment value and giving fans of pop culture but not the sport a reason to watch. Cute frogs croaked for beer (“Bud-wei-ser!”) and babies sang off-key (eTrade) in memorable campaigns.

But this year, CBS and the Super Bowl – which drew more than 95 million viewers in 2009 – are kicking up political dust allowing an anti-abortion ad in the national broadcast. The first religious-political ad CBS has approved to air in the entire history of the Super Bowl hails from the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family.

It features Pam Tebow, who recounts her decision to carry a pregnancy to term, against the advice of doctors who feared for her life and recommended an abortion. By her side is thankful son Tim Tebow, Florida Gators quarterback and Heisman trophy winner. The privilege of airing the ad cost Focus on the Family an estimated $2.5 million media buy, plus more to produce it.

Debate has been raging in the blogosphere. Is Tebow too controversial to get drafted now? What’s appropriate for broadcast during the Super Bowl? Should American women have the right to choose? And with teen pregnancy and teen abortions on the rise, shouldn’t we be focused on improving sex education, first?

No matter where you stand on such matters, or whether you’re one of more than 35 million women over the age of 18 likely to watch the Super Bowl this year (according to Nielsen research), it’s hard not to think of the positive human or environmental impact that a couple million dollars could have made, if redirected to help the already-born children of Haiti, for example.

Finally, there’s another question the anti-abortion movement raises, constantly, and again with this ad: should women be encouraged to have kids at all costs, when overpopulation is wreaking havoc in the form of air, water and noise pollution, loss of species and habitat, and a low life expectancy for humans where you find the fastest growing populations?

BASIC READING:

“Although people no longer talk about a catastrophic ‘population bomb,’ world population continues to grow. Unfortunately, the most affected countries are also the ones least able to support more people.” – Interactive feature on the environmental and social costs of over-population at National Geographic

“Do we really want to start seeing anti-abortion”¦messages on Super Bowl Sunday? Do you know what [this sports blogger] doesn’t want to see? “˜Issue-oriented’ ads. It’s Super Bowl Sunday. The only issue I want to deal with is replenishing the queso dip. Are you listening Tim Tebow?” – A blog post by Jeff Schulz for Atlanta Journal Constitution

“Tebow and his mom’s Super Bowl ad”¦will tell America how [Ms. Tebow] was young and not sure she wanted a baby, but then she had Tim who’s now a star about to make gobs and gobs of money… Ergo, you’d be crazy to consider an abortion, ladies, and gents and those not of child-bearing age, don’t even think about supporting a woman’s right to choose, because how could you choose not to gestate and give life to a person as successful and handsome as Tim Tebow?” – A blog post by Elizabeth Gettelman for Mother Jones

FURTHER RESOURCES:

An Associated Press article about Pepsi’s decision not to advertise in the Super Bowl 2010, unrelated to Tebow

A conservative opinion-editorial piece by Jan Crawford for CBS News online about her reaction to the network’s decision to air a pro-life, or anti-choice ad during the Super Bowl 2010

A blog maintained by researcher Richard Heinberg that frequently discusses the impact of overpopulation on the environment and related topics

Overpopulation.org, a website with scientific and historical data on overpopulation, maintained by researchers and activists who seek to improve the environment by curbing overpopulation

A news feature by Nena Carpenter for Helium on the links between various environmental issues and overpopulation

“It appears that Americans have completely forgotten about the profoundly dangerous relationships between overpopulation, resource depletion, environmental degradation, and our standard of living.” – A letter to the editor of Chicago’s Daily Herald by Jim Peterson

This is the latest installment of EcoMeme, a column featuring eco news, trends and tech highlights by Lora Kolodny.

Image: Landshark Stadium, where Superbowl 2010 will be played, by Chris Acuña

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