Jemima Kirke, of HBO’s “Girls” recently shared her abortion story with the Center for Reproductive Rights. Kirke’s story is similar to many women’s abortion stories as it was very difficult for her to afford the procedure. As she said: It wasn’t totally unavailable, and that’s the tricky part — there are many hurdles a woman has to still go through to get this procedure.

She recorded the message to help end the stigma about getting an abortion. Watch the moving video below.

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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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ColumnMarch has been madness when it comes to attacks on reproductive freedom—three states are ignoring the constitution and passing restrictive abortion bans. 

Looking at the political landscape, it’s clear that since I wrote a recap of the attacks on choice exactly two years ago, our ability to make decisions about our bodies and the course of our lives is still on the table. As individual states one-up each other passing over-the-top, unconstitutional bans, Planned Parenthood leader Cecile Richards is concerned that Roe v. Wade may be heading back to the Supreme Court.

In some states, the barriers to access would, essentially, make abortion illegal for anyone lacking the resources to travel, or in some cases pay out-of-pocket for a totally 100 percent legal medical procedure covered by most insurance policies. The fact that a woman may not have the resources to cross state lines but is expected to figure out how to access the prenatal care necessary to have a healthy pregnancy, let alone raise an actual child, doesn’t seem to be part of the conversation in the states where our rights are in the most danger. The top three offenders this month are North Dakota, Virginia and Arkansas.

Let’s start in North Dakota—a state with just one clinic offering abortion services. This month, Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed a bill that, if it goes into effect August 1, would make abortion illegal six weeks after conception. No matter what. Rape? Incest? Not Jack’s problem. He also signed into law two more measures: one that would ban abortions based on genetic defects such as Down syndrome and another requiring any doctor who performs abortions to be a physician with hospital-admitting privileges.

While it might be the least headline-grabbing, it’s the last of the laws that poses the most immediate threat to the women of North Dakota. Here’s why: The six-week ban will be tied up in court for a long time because it undermines the constitutional protections in Roe v. Wade—which guarantees the right to first-trimester abortion services. The even more radical “personhood” amendment, which could ban all abortions if voters approve it on the November 2014 ballot, will face similar legal challenges if it becomes law.

This is by design. Dalrymple doesn’t expect these laws to sail through. In the long term, they’re debates designed to get Roe v. Wade back to the Supreme Court. In the short term, they are red herrings for the real attack: Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers: TRAP laws. These are the laws requiring anyone performing an abortion to be a physician with hospital-admitting privileges. And this law could close the one clinic in North Dakota.

This popular anti-choice tactic is sold to the public as a concern for women’s safety. But this isn’t about keeping women safe. Women’s health clinics are perfectly capable of providing women with safe abortions, and surgical abortion is actually one of the safest types of medical procedures. Complications from having a first-trimester aspiration abortion are considerably less frequent and less serious than those associated with giving birth. Early medical abortion (using medications to end a pregnancy) has a similar safety profile.

In reality, TRAP laws do just what the name implies: They trap clinics by making it illegal for medical professionals to do their jobs. In Fargo, where the Red River Women’s Clinic is located, at least one of the two local hospitals won’t offer those privileges because the quality of care at the clinic is so high that the clinic doesn’t need them, according to RH Reality Check. I get it, but why not step in and offer the privileges to save the clinic from this attack?

The state’s new Democratic US Senator, Heidi Heitkamp, has been a bit cagey about her stance on abortion. While she has said she is against public funding, she hasn’t said much else and doesn’t have a voting record on the issue. Email Senator Heitkamp and let her know that these restrictions are unacceptable and unconstitutional. A recent email to her supporters asks for donations to fight Karl Rove’s efforts to keep three other women out of office. She says she wants strong women in the government, so encourage her to be strong and fight these bans.

In Virginia, Gov. Bob McDonnell is looking to limit access to abortion via health insurance. He introduced an amendment to the state’s health insurance exchange implementation bill that would prevent insurance plans in the new health exchange from covering abortion. While similar bills introduced in other states would allow a woman to buy a policy rider for abortion coverage, McDonnell’s doesn’t make that inclusion.

NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia estimates that this ban will affect the approximately  50,000 women in Virginia who will be using the state-based health benefits exchange. As in North Dakota, this ban would limit access, primarily, to lower income women. Most private insurance covers abortion services. McDonnell, on his monthly call-in to Washington’s WTOP Radio, said this amendment is simply a restatement an existing federal law — the Hyde Amendment — that prohibits use of public funds for abortion, and also a restatement of existing state law. This amendment is dangerous because, as McDonnell himself said, it provides the language to apply to federal exchanges as well.

In Arkansas, the Republican-controlled House and Senate decided they know better than their women constituents, Gov. Mike Beebe and the Supreme Court when they approved an unconstitutional bill to ban abortions after 12 weeks. The Republican-controlled Senate passed The Arkansas Human Heartbeat Protection Act 26-8. We all started hearing about Heartbeat Bills a few years back when, in Ohio, a fetus was called to testify via ultrasound. To make sure you can hear that beat, the Arkansas bill would also require women to undergo a medically unnecessary, invasive vaginal ultrasound. Beebe vetoed the bill saying it, “blatantly contradicts the United States Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court.” Which it does. As does the six-week bill in North Dakota.

These guys aren’t stupid. They know this. So why are they fighting to get these bills passed in their states? Because, since 1992, they can. Planned Parenthood v. Casey upheld a woman’s right to have an abortion, but some shockingly vague language opened the door for all of what we are seeing today. The Court said the government may seek to discourage women from having abortions by requiring waiting periods and other efforts—as long as these restrictions do not pose an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to an abortion. Undue burden was left undefined.

Is it an undue burden to be forced to have a medically unnecessary trans-vaginal ultrasound? To have to travel hundreds of miles for an abortion, only to be told you have to come back in 72 hours because of a waiting period? What about to be forced to pay for a procedure that should be, legally, covered by health insurance?  Yes, I think those are undue burdens.

This death by a thousand cuts approach isn’t new. Republicans have applied it to voting rights, civil rights, gay rights and other social issues for decades. Public opinion on social issues is changing, and the party can’t win national elections with its throwback views. So Republicans attack issues like abortion and gay marriage piece by piece, state by state. But this isn’t just a fight against abortion; it’s a fight against equality. This is a relatively small number of people—with deep pockets and loud voices—who fear that ensuring the freedom of choice to everyone will rob them of their power. And that would be the best possible outcome.  

Image: alexandralee

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