Abortion Gang

As some of you know, lawmakers in Kansas have been attempting to pass an execrable anti-abortion bill that, among other things, would seriously interfere with the private relationship between a woman and her doctor.  The bill, which currently appears to be stalled in the Kansas Senate, would have allowed physicians to deliberately withhold information regarding a woman’s pregnancy if they thought such information might lead the woman to choose abortion.  In addition, it would have required abortion providers to tell their patients that abortion is linked to breast cancer, although that theory has been debunked by multiple scientists and organizations, including the National Cancer Institute.

As egregious as this is, it is not the topic of my post.  Instead, I would like to focus on an email I got from Planned Parenthood about the bill.  I truly appreciate the work Planned Parenthood does.  I contribute money to them (as well as to smaller reproductive rights organizations, including local abortion funds) and often call my legislators when prompted by their informative emails.  But this part of the email gave me pause:

Our allies need to stop using language that reinforces the false dichotomy of “Good Abortions” and “Bad Abortions.”  By creating a separate “class” of women needing abortions (in this case, those who are victims of rape or incest; but women who have health problems or have non-viable pregnancies are often similarly singled out for “exceptional” status), Planned Parenthood is unintentionally validating a deeply-ingrained societal belief that some abortions are more justified, more necessary, even better than others.  The final effect is to strengthen the stigma and shame attached to abortion for all women.

The bottom line: there is never any medical reason to lie to a patient, regardless of her circumstances.  That message by itself is powerful and strong, no exceptions required.

This posts starts with a story – the story of a quote I found one day that became the story of how I concluded that not only is adoption really hard and complicated as a process, but that the ways we have of conceiving of and talking about adoption and the process of adoption are in and of themselves problematic.

The other day I found what I felt was one of the most inspiring, moving stories I have ever read. It’s about Mariska Hargitay, star of “Law and Order: SVU.” Go with me on this.

Ms. Hargitay has two children, both of whom are adopted. However, in this article, she speaks about the adoption process and the early pain she experienced when trying to bring a child home. During their first adoption attempt, she and her husband brought a child home, and named them, clearly considered them a part of their family and were ready to settle in to a life together – when the mother of the child changed her mind.

When we brought my cousins home from the hospital, we had the whole extended family together, aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, and that moment of becoming a family was so special. If someone had come back and taken that child away from us, I can’t help but feel like it would left a hole that might never have been filled. It would have been so indescribably painful. And in the long-term, I wouldn’t have my cousins, and I cannot imagine that life.

But this is what Ms. Hargitay, who is now one of my role models, had to say about the experience of having the person who gave birth come back to reclaim the child she was ready to raise as her own:

“But … this is what I’ve come to understand about life: It was probably the greatest, happiest ending. I mean, it was so painful for us, but it was deeply joyful and deeply right for her.”

I think Ms. Hargitay is absolutely right. For the mother to ultimately be able to make the decision that raising her own child was the best thing for both of them is “both deeply joyful and deeply right.” I am of the (possibly permanently) childless variety that thinks having a child and/or raising a child is always an act of untold bravery. But I also think it’s valid to discuss the ways in which this decision caused pain for the couple trying to adopt. The fact that the decision caused Ms. Hargitay and her husband pain does not make the decision any less the mother’s decision to make. It doesn’t make it wrong or bad in any way. But it was obviously difficult and hurtful, painful enough for Ms. Hargitay to describe it and remember it years later. I can still remember and describe the exact process of adopting my cousins as well. Bringing them into the family was an emotional investment, and it involved a series of ups and downs. We were told one of the adoptions wouldn’t go through, then that it would, then that it wouldn’t – and then, finally, we brought my cousin home. I think it is good and right to conceive of a child you are bringing into the family as your daughter, your son, your niece or nephew, your grandchild – but it is incredibly emotionally stressful to then be told that no, maybe not. Maybe. Maybe not. Invest emotionally – oh no, don’t do that. You’re waiting for another child. This one is not yours.

This situation highlights something that, in terms of reproductive choice, gets a lot less play than prevention and abortion: adoption is really, really hard. Lately, as anti-choice rhetoric filters through our culture, you see ladies in the media who get pregnant and have “two choices”: keep the baby or give it up for adoption. Really, that’s it. Examples of this now-pervasive notion that “choice” means only the choice between keeping the baby or giving it up for adoption, with abortion never even getting a mention, include: most episodes of “Sixteen and Pregnant” (there was recently a beautiful and poignant episode highlighting the challenges of abortion, but we were excited to watch it because it’s so damn rare), all conversations about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, anything on the ABC family channel, including “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” and recently, most especially, ABC’s “Once Upon a Time,” which has incredibly problematic portrayals of motherhood, choice, and adoption all-around. All of these fervent claims that adoption is a primary option for pregnant people who cannot parent or do not want to parent obscure the reality of the process. And while pro-choice advocates often mention that the world is overcrowded and adoption is an expensive, raced and classed process to which not everyone has access, which leaves many children world-wide without homes, there are so many more dimensions to this decision.

Carrying a child and giving birth are no joke. While there are certainly situations such as that of the oft-critiqued Juno in which someone knows that carrying a baby to term and giving it to a loving family is exactly the right choice for them, more often the process is fraught with a range of less easily packaged emotions. Many people who give a child up for adoption want to raise them, but simply feel they can’t. When they want to raise their child but cannot offer them what they believe they need or deserve, it can be wrenching, and can certainly lead to feelings of inadequacy and resentment. Ultimately, what they are giving is an incredible gift, and more and more adoptions are very open, allowing them contact with their biological child as it grows up. But someone else parents that child, provides them with a home, attends school functions, spends holidays with them, and has a life with them. And that is an intense decision to make. Were I to ever get pregnant, my options are abortion or parenting. Adoption is off the table. That is not something I could ever go through, and not a decision my large extended family, whom I love very much, would be alright with. It wouldn’t be their decision, but I am close to my family, and in a decision so big, what they want does matter to me.

In writing this post, I ran into a number of difficulties. One of our abortion gangsters objects to the term “birth mother.” I use it because I personally think it’s a sign of respect. I believe that parenting makes you a parent, and gendering the process of parenting makes you a “mother” or father” – I believe that giving birth makes you someone that has given birth. But if someone has been pregnant or given birth and thus conceives of themselves as a mother, I would certainly be the last person to tell them that they’re wrong. I don’t really get to decide who’s a mother, or what makes a mother – but I do have to make decisions about how I will discuss these things from my own perspective, or we cannot open up these conversations. And then, for me, even using the term “mother,” in any of these contexts, is problematic, and I would prefer “birth parent,” since I don’t know how the person in question identifies. They may not prefer those gender pronouns.

What I am saying here, then, is that the process of writing this post demonstrated to me the extremely problematic nature of the discursive framework of adoption and the adoption process. And while all of the issues raised with my drafts of this post, and, I am sure, whatever issues are raised in the comments, were valid and had their own reasoning, I found many of them problematic as well, mostly because I feel like the discursive framework within which we’re working is problematic.

As a member of a family in which other members are adopted, passionately hate the qualifier “adopted.” I absolutely hate when people refer to someone’s child as their “adopted child,” their sister as their “adopted sister,” etc. No disclaimer or qualifier is needed. The word “adopted” is a way of making that relation other, different. As someone who has that relation, let me please tell you, IT IS NOT OTHER OR DIFFERENT. IT IS THE EXACT SAME. It doesn’t matter how someone became family, once they’re in, they’re in. In a way, I find the relationship between my biological family members and adopted family members even more significant and beautiful, because we chose and found one another.

This assertion raised yet another issue with the post – that being adopted is different. Let me clarify. I don’t believe there is a “normal” family, or a normal or regular way of creating a family, so I don’t believe that qualifiers of this kind, when discussing familiar relations, are ever necessary, unless someone requests them. Many of my friends refer to people as parents who are not their biological parents, and they require neither the words “adopted” nor “step.” If they prefer them, I’m happy to use them, but I continue to go qualifier-free until otherwise requested. This is not to invisibilize adoption or the other processes that go into making biological and non-biological, “normative” and “non-normative” family units – it is to instead suggest that all family units are non-normative, and each process of creating and living within them different and unique in ways visible and invisible, requiring its own set of challenges and negotiations. I keeping with my general concerns about the discursive framework, I believe the net-terms of “adopted,” “biological,” and “step,” when used as qualifiers in these contexts, may mask they many differences contained within these constructed categories, and lead to a false set of assumptions or understandings about what is always, contained therein, a universe of individual differences, samenesses, and experiences.

Another of our gangsters pointed out to me that in earlier versions of this post I used the phrase “keep the baby” as opposed to “continue the pregnancy” and “choose to parent.” I think these corrections were totally spot on. She also pointed out that I used the phrase “give up for adoption” when “choose adoption” might be better. There, my feelings are more complicated. Yes, “choose adoption” is absolutely a less loaded, and even, given the context, less judgmental phrase than “give up for adoption,” and for that reason, I infinitely prefer it. I am judging no one here. I think choosing to adopt is brave, choosing to parent is brave, choosing not to parent is brave, choosing to discuss birth control options with your partner so you don’t get pregnant is brave. In short, I believe learning about your options as a reproducing human being of any gender and making conscious decisions regarding those options is a brave and admirable undertaking. But I also believe that putting a child up for adoption is giving up the idea of parenting that child, and choosing instead not to parent, choosing that someone else should parent instead.

I believe, when it works out, that adoption is one of the most beautiful, amazing ways to make a family, but it is not foolproof. As it stands, to decide to give a child up for adoption, and to decide to adopt, are flipsides of the same very challenging coin, and not everyone can do it. That is why I believe a holistic approach to reproductive justice is so very necessary. It is so important that people be made to understand that they have many choices to prevent pregnancy, and then they must be educated about them, and given access to them. Then, if they do get pregnant, whether intended or unintended, they must understand their choices, and again, have access to them. And then, all of these decisions have to be acknowledged as taking place within already-problematic, raced, classed, and gendered structures of power, and those frameworks need to be constantly challenged and examined. We must move towards a framework in which all of the “choices” are structured with the ultimate goal in mind of creating loving family units, however traditionally or non-traditionally, however normative or non-normative those “units” might be. It sounds utopian, but really, how wild and crazy is it to want people to be able to make families?

You may recall my previous writing on Prince Edward Island, the only Canadian province where there are absolutely no abortion services, and currently no bus service going off the island. Women in PEI are having a really difficult time accessing abortion right now – and in Canada, abortion is something we all have a right to under the Canada Health Act. The difference in access across this country is a prime example of why it isn’t enough to fight for our right to reproductive healthcare; we must also push for equality in access, or we don’t truly have choice.

Inspired by the PEI Reproductive Rights Organization’s co-founder, Kandace Hagen, and her recent tie for first in the Atlantic Council for International Cooperation’s Active-8 youth campaign, I am launching a little campaign of my own to match the prize money ($1000, of which Kandace received half) to put towards PRRO’s work helping PEI women access abortion, and lobbying for abortion services on the island.

I started the campaign on March 9, hoping (ambitiously?) that we could raise the thousand dollars in a month. Just over a week in, we already have 45% of our goal – but I need your help to boost the signal!

PRRO is a real grassroots organization; their mandate is to bring PEI up to the standards outlined in the Canada Health Act and align the province with the rest of Canada. The Maritimes is a politically conservative, economically depressed region that struggles to support youth initiatives; Maritime activists make it happen for themselves. These folks are awesome, inspiring people, with jobs and families and lives outside of this work. They are working tirelessly to make sure PEI residents have the bare minimum of reproductive health care.

If everyone reading this gives a couple bucks, we can reach our goal in no time. If you can’t give, please consider sharing the link with your networks. If you have fundraising ideas, or do not want to donate over PayPal, feel free to contact me at pedgehog [at] gmail [dot] com.

I am confident we can raise $1000 for PRRO – it’s such a small amount, but it will go a long way towards helping PEI women access the health care they need.

The Catholic Church, through its Bishops, is currently fighting tooth and nail to deny women access to contraceptives- birth control. The Catholic Church believes that contraceptives are immoral, and that women should never ever use them. With the new concept of no-copay birth control, the Catholic Church wants the right to refuse to provide women with access to this basic healthcare- and they want to extend this ability to refuse to any business. This is a dangerous situation for women all across the United States.

There are many arguments against the Catholic Bishop’s position. I’m sure you’ll hear them all over the feminist blogsphere. But I think there’s one idea you will not here shared everywhere: The Catholic Bishop’s position on denying women access to birth control shows that they don’t trust God.

If you’re a Christian, you believe that God is all powerful. He is capable of anything, and He can change our world however He wants to. If the Bishops truly believed this, why would they be so worried about birth control?

If God willed for a specific woman to have a child, then no earthly measures could prevent that (this might sound terrifying for some people, but for Christians it’s usually combated with “God has the best of intentions”). Birth control can fail, even when taken correctly. This wouldn’t be God interfering with free will, but interfering with biological reproduction- just like He did when Mary became pregnant with Jesus, even though she never had any sperm in her
uterus/fallopian tubes, ever. Some methods of birth control may, possibly, somehow, sometimes make it slightly more difficult for a zygote to implant in the uterus (the science on this is still being questioned and debated). Even if this is true, more difficult isn’t impossible- God could ensure a zygote burrows happily into the lining of the uterus without a problem. The same is true for emergency contraceptive, which works by preventing ovulation. If God absolutely wants a specific woman to have a child, He could just ensure she ovulates before she has sex. Again, this is control over biological functions.

If a woman does become pregnant, despite using birth control, the choice of whether or not to carry the pregnancy is then between her and her God — and again, we must trust that the all powerful, all loving God will lead her on the path that He has planned for her, having brought her to this point.

Knowing that God is all powerful, and His will can’t be stopped by using birth control pills, I have to wonder why the Bishops are so worried about including access to birth control. Do they not trust God? Do they not believe He is powerful enough to overcome birth control if He wants to? Do they believe God’s Will can so easily be avoided just by swallowing a daily pill?

I trust in God’s ability. There is absolutely no reason for the Bishops to deny women access to contraceptive. Matthew 18:15-17 says that if someone sins, you should tell them alone, then with some friends, then tell the church- if he still refuses to listen, treat him as a person who does not believe in God or a tax collector. It does not say, “refuse him access to whatever he used to sin.” So if the Bishops think birth control is a sin, they should treat people using it as non-Catholics- still human beings- and not deny them access.

If the Bishops believe in the power of God, they should allow women access to contraceptives, because God’s will is stronger than anything on Earth. However, if they do not believe in God’s power- if they cannot trust God to do what is right, then perhaps they should continue taking this issue into their own hands.

You may have learned recently that Michelle Duggar was pregnant for the 20th time. You may have also learned that she recently miscarried a baby girl at 19 weeks who the family has named Jubilee Shalom Duggar. You may have read about the funeral service that they held for Jubilee, or you may have seen these photos (trigger warning: fetus photos) of little Jubilee’s hands and feet being held, gently and carefully, by Michelle.

The Duggar family, specifically Michelle and her daughters, get a lot of flack for the lifestyle choices they’ve made (or, in the case of her daughters, will make) from the general populous. Michelle is derogatorily referred to as “Clown-Car-Uterus” (I kid you not, see the comments here, but only if you feel like losing your faith in humanity), and other people feel content to interpret Michelle’s recent miscarriage as a “sign from God” that the Duggars need to stop having children (contrary to Michelle’s belief that “God giveth, so he shall also taketh away”).

While I, personally, had a negative, visceral reaction to the photos that the family displayed at the funeral service, I don’t want to diminish their grieving. If these photos had not been sold to a tabloid (really, TMZ? shame on you), then no one outside of family and friends would have seen them. They would have remained mementos to mark the passing of a sibling and daughter. And how can anyone disrespect their choice of how to grieve? What I find to be unconscionable was that someone close to the family made money off of their misfortune by selling these to a tabloid.

And I fear how these photos will be used going forward. Anti-choice propaganda is rife with these sorts of images. Some, caring and gentle, like Michelle’s memorial photos, others, bloody and violent. I fear that these photos will go viral and will be used to further a message that I find to be so damaging to women in our society. I fear that someone, somewhere is going to see these triggering images, and feel pain or shame or guilt over her own miscarriage or abortion. I fear the a woman who is looking at her life and considering her choices is going to feel shamed into a choice she doesn’t want to make by these images. I worry about the harm that this image can, and likely will, do.

As someone who has suffered a miscarriage, I can empathize with Michelle and the Duggars need to grieve. I also feel that, as a pro-choice population, we need to support Michelle’s right to choose to continue to get pregnant.

But we can also be cognizant of how the Duggars narrative affects the pro-choice narrative, skewing it in one direction. Michelle is likable and accessible, and she makes the Duggars, as a whole, an easier sell. She discusses her faith and her choices in a very non-defensive, calm manner. She carefully chooses her words and her actions, and she sets a very high standard for other Christian women. And all of this would be well and good if it was reflective of the reality of Christian women. Sadly, the reality for other women can differ drastically from the world the Duggars live in. Not all Christian families can afford, both literally and figuratively, for “God to bless them” so frequently. Jim Bob, Michelle’s husband, is a successful realtor and investor, and they supplement their income with royalties from their reality show (which is not acknowledged by the Duggar family on their website). When questioned about money, they reply that they live frugally. While that is likely true, it doesn’t provide a full picture. Similarly, when asked about her pregnancy difficulties, Michelle replies that, while practice certainly helps, her recent weight loss of 40 lbs has been the most helpful thing. No mention of her struggles with preeclampsia with Josie, born at 25 weeks, and certainly no mention of her most recent miscarriage. And finally, the narrative of the Quiverfull Christian is significantly downplayed on the show. They rarely discuss the dangers of multiparity to Michelle’s health, but when forced to respond, Michelle easily answers by saying that she would give her life for her not-yet-born child. And this may seem like the obvious answer to anti-choice people, but what if a mother wants to be alive to parent her other children? What if the father figure is no longer present? What happens to those already-born children if their mother dies for her pregnancy? The Duggars are lucky enough to have Jim Bob, and the support of their community, family and friends. Not all Christian women are so lucky.

Simply put, the Duggars are not reflective of a typical Christian family, nor are their choices reflective of the options available to most women. However, their choice to have more children is theirs and theirs alone. We can stop supporting tabloids that buy these images; we can stop watching the Duggars show; but we cannot tell Michelle and Jim Bob how and when to reproduce.

I generally don’t acknowledge the haters, the violent threats, and anger in emails and responses to the pro-choice articles and blog posts I have written over the years, but today I feel compelled to respond with a reminder to everyone in the movement, sympathizers and the anti-choice readers: abortion saves lives. Furthermore, threats over email, in comment threads, or to my face won’t make me back down. Pro-choice advocacy isn’t going anywhere, not now, not after so many battles have been won and lost.

A friend of mine just informed me that she and her husband have decided to begin trying for a baby. How amazing for them, and such a happy time, too, because they have both chosen the time that’s right for their family to have a child. Their decision has come after much deliberation, planning, and consideration- probably how it should be for all parents. But as we all know, this isn’t how many children come into this world.

Many pregnancies are unplanned, mine was, and I know first hand the internal and external struggle to make my (emphasis on that word, readers) choice: abortion, adoption, or parent. Ultimately, I chose to stay pregnant and now have the most wonderful seven year old boy. But what if I had another child between his birth and now? Would I still be in college? What would our standard of living be? Do I want to travel? Birth control and abortion have allowed me not to fret about those very real questions. My life is better and consequently, so is my son’s, because I have the option to pursue my goals, dreams, aspirations, and express myself sexually (if I so choose) without having to fear becoming pregnant, and knowing that if by some stroke of bad luck, I became pregnant I would not have to remain if I did not so choose.

That’s the beauty of reproductive freedom: we women don’t have to have our uteri and fallopian tubes chained up in anti-choicer’s dogma. And I think ultimately that’s what drives a lot of the anti-choice vitriol. Because we women dare to imagine a world where our bodies are ours alone, where the organs inside of us don’t dictate what decisions we can make in our lives, where morality is not universal and based upon that same organ.

My life today, the ability to sit here and type this post is a direct result of the advances made by pro-choice advocates throughout the years – before and after Roe v. Wade. Some may say the rights of the cells that could potentially implant themselves inside an organ I was born with but did not ask for are more important than my own, I say no they’re not. Some may feel that because our morals and beliefs do not align I am evil, a murderer, or some other vile thing, I say the work I do and those on this site saves lives of women.

Too many lives are at stake, women’s freedom and quality of life are at risk. And it is that very fact that means this movement, our cause, despite threats will not go away.

Cross-posted from RH Reality Check, by both Steph Herold and Susan Yanow.

Last week, a 20-year-old woman in New York City was arrested on charges of “self-induced abortion” and faces first-degree misdemeanor charges.  Initial news reports indicate that she intentionally caused the miscarriage/abortion of her 24-week fetus.  The woman disposed of the fetus in what was probably the only way she could think of: wrapped in plastic bags and placed in the trash receptacle of her apartment building.

The prosecution of this woman echoes similar cases in Idaho, Massachusetts and South Carolina.  In spite of ever-increasing restrictions, abortion is legal through the second-trimester throughout the United States, although it is inaccessible to many women.  Yet if women safely end their pregnancies without medical supervision, they face criminal penalties.

The key word here is “safely.” There are many misconceptions about what happens during a non-surgical abortion.  In fact, abortion with medications (such as misoprostol alone or in combination with mifepristone) causes a miscarriage.  The symptoms of abortion with medicines in the first trimester are exactly the same as a miscarriage, and as safe.  Rarely do women who have a miscarriage need medical attention; the same is true for women having a medication abortion.

In the second trimester, the risks of a complication after a miscarriage, whether occurring spontaneously or provoked by medicines, is somewhat higher.  However, it is notable that the woman in New York City, like the women prosecuted in three other states, was in the second trimester and did not require any kind of medical intervention after her abortion.  We have to ask then – is the outcry when women choose to self-induce truly driven by the need to protect the health and safety of the woman?  Or is this another example of over-regulation because of the politics of abortion?

The choice to self-induce an abortion in New York City raises important questions.  The most recent prosecution of a woman for making this choice was in Idaho, in the spring of this year.  Jeanne McCormack was between 20 and 24 weeks pregnant, obtained medicines over the Internet and ended her pregnancy.  She was charged under an Idaho law that forbids abortions unless performed by an Idaho physician, and the original charges carried a possible five-year prison term.  Ms. McCormack, a low-income mother of three, said she ordered the medicines because the closest abortion provider was in Utah, and she had no money for travel or for the procedure.

Women in New York City have much better access to abortion care than Ms. McCormack did.  New York State allows state Medicaid funds to cover abortion services, and there are a number of clinics in New York City that provide abortion care through 24 weeks.  New York also does not have the restrictions, such as waiting periods and parental consent, that are insurmountable barriers for women in many other states.  So why would a woman in New York City decide to end her pregnancy by herself?

We don’t have details about why this particular woman chose this method.  Is it possible that the relentless headlines about new abortion restrictions across most states have confused some women, who may think that these laws are national?  Or is the (successful) effort by anti-abortion forces to stigmatize abortion effective enough that some women feel too much shame and fear to seek medical care when faced with an unwanted pregnancy? Or did this woman have no trusted health care provider who could direct her to a clinic?

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what her reasons were for self-inducing an abortion. Not every woman wants clinicians involved in her health care, especially if she feels that she can take care of it herself. We each have different ways of dealing with our bodies, our sexuality, and our health care.

We do not have enough information to guess whether or not this woman fell through the gaps in the social support and health net, or made a conscious choice to end her pregnancy in a way that she felt most comfortable.  But why is self-treating an unwanted pregnancy a crime?

We certainly should do everything possible to provide excellent information to women about services and fight to keep abortion care widely available and accessible.  But if a woman decides that the best thing for her to do is to self-induce an abortion, she should have access to the best information available on how to do this safely (ie with medicines, NOT herbs) and know where to go in case of a complication.  Criminalizing her choices does not protect her health. If we believe that women have the right to control their fertility, then we must also trust women with the right to choose the methods that make the most sense for them.

Endnote: There are no scientific studies that identify any herbs as effective for ending a pregnancy, and some herbs are dangerous.  There are numerous studies documenting the efficacy and safety of mifepristone plus misoprostol, and misoprostol alone, for ending a pregnancy.

For more information on self-induction, see these studies:

- Self-induction of abortion among women in the United States

- How commonly do US abortion patients report attempts to self-induce?

- Re-emergence of self-induced abortions

- Misoprostol and attempted self-induction of abortion

- The knowledge, acceptability, and use of misoprostol for self-induced medical abortion in an urban US population  

I had the privilege of being asked to read and review a Life Choices: The Teachings of Abortion by abortion care pioneer Linda Weber. As someone who’s worked in abortion care myself, I was curious to hear what someone who’s worked in the field for decades had to say about the future of abortion care and how we can improve it. Instead of telling you how fantastic the book is (it is!), below is a glimpse into Weber’s beliefs and experiences first hand. In bold are the questions I asked her, followed by her thoughtful answers.

Your book revolves around your 40 years of experience as a counselor in an abortion clinic. You share the stories of many of your patients as well as your reflections on what these stories taught you. Can you share some of your self-care strategies? What kept you in abortion care work for 40 years?

I am a private psychotherapist, spiritual counselor, and women’s vision quest guide. I was in direct abortion services from 1970 to 1972 in New York City and from 1973 to 1987 in Boulder, Colorado. As you see, the forty years of counseling work has taken different forms. This keeps it interesting and stimulating to say the least. As a psychotherapist I hear all kinds of stories. Some of these are “gut-wrenching,” but mostly for the client. Part of the skill of a good counselor is to know how to receive people’s stories; in other words, how to listen correctly and reflect back to the person telling the story what it is I think I’m hearing along with insights into the importance of her story.

Care for myself is essential to be able to stay strong, centered, and receptive. In the early years of my work, I was occasionally overwhelmed by the intensity of what I was observing in my patients. As I matured and became more experienced, that kind of reaction to the work subsided. My self-care includes meditation, time in nature, journal writing, and making music, as well as regular down time. These things help me to maintain my perspective, which includes the understanding that whatever someone is going through holds the possibility for self-understanding and self-acceptance. As long as I am energized by the work I do, I will continue to do it.

You frequently discuss how “legal, freely chosen abortion” can lead to “authentic empowerment and autonomy for women.” Why do you frame abortion in this way? What role do you think women who’ve had abortions should play in the abortion rights movement? How can the abortion rights movement empower women who’ve had abortions without giving them the burden of speaking out about their experiences?

Illegal abortion is a truly horrible thing. It is not empowering; it is dangerous and traumatizing. Legal abortion is the opposite. While it can be difficult for women, it represents an expansion of the freedom to choose the direction of our lives. Reproductive choice making recognizes the individuality of a woman and her power to bring life through her body or not. The or not is of course the issue. Legal abortion raises profound issues about the role of women in society. This role has been determined for centuries by patriarchal law, which keeps women in limited roles defined primarily by marriage and motherhood. It is not coincidental that we are seeing significant societal changes at the same time that abortion has been legalized. It seems clear that we as a species have moved into a time of history when it is no longer necessary to be focused so exclusively on reproduction. As for individual psychology, I have witnessed life-changing growth for women when they courageously confront internal pain and conflicts about abortion. I have seen them step into their essence and life purpose with increased self-awareness that came directly from their willingness to address all the issues in their lives that were raised by their experience of abortion. Some of those stories are in the book.

As for political activism, that is up to the individual. There is no should with regard to women who have had abortions. With regard to empowering women, I think the pro-choice movement does that just by its existence and commitment to staying strong in the political arena. It can do more by embracing the full range of sensibilities among women. An organization that leads the way with this is Exhale, a post-abortion hotline out of Oakland, California. They describe themselves as pro-voice. It’s a good way to think about it.

You mention that working in abortion care lead you to see the lines blur between “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” It seems like most people identify somewhere in between those labels. How can the pro-choice movement both keep this in mind and continue to fight for abortion rights? Is there a way to change our messaging to better reflect the experience of women who’ve had abortions?

Most women making a decision about pregnancy are concerned about and feel responsible for life. This is as it should be given that pregnancy by definition is the channeling of life through the body. The attacks on women by the so-called pro-life movement make some women feel that somehow they are against life by choosing to have an abortion. In fact, the opposite is true. The choice of abortion is an active exercise of women’s role throughout history of making judgments about if, when, and where to bring life through. Abortion is just as pro-life as having a baby.

The pro-choice movement has to reclaim the word life. One way to do this is to talk about real life and to orient towards a perspective that embraces the way of life on Earth, which includes death (what I call taking life back into itself) as part of the flow. I think the recent “personhood” vote in Mississippi shows that most people whether they consider themselves pro-choice or pro-life, understand how real life works and will vote accordingly. So, I am suggesting that the best way to counter narrow ideological arguments is to broaden and deepen our own thinking.

You mention a medical model of abortion care, which isn’t sensitive to the emotional or spiritual needs of women seeking abortions. What do you propose as an alternative model? Some people say that having separate clinics that only perform abortions, for example, may further stigmatize abortion instead of incorporating the procedure into general medical practice. How do you negotiate both the need for feminist women’s health centers and the fact that they may further stigmatize abortion?

Women’s health clinics arose out of the women’s health movement, which was part of the women’s liberation movement. They filled a gap in care and emphasized education and empowerment. The movement was represented by the classic book, Our Bodies, Ourselves, now celebrating its 40th anniversary, and the feminist lobbying organization, the National Women’s Health Network (since 1975). Some abortion clinics follow this feminist model. Others are more like hospitals and follow traditional western medicine. Some are creative combinations of philosophies.

The medical model organizes care around the condition or disease, instead of centered in the person needing care. It recognizes the doctor as supreme. The alternative is to create forms that address medical needs in the context of people’s lives and that respect the narrative of those lives. It incorporates psychological and spiritual needs as intrinsic parts of treatment. Professionals act as a team and the patient has a central role in what happens. This would apply to all health care, not just women’s health. It’s a very large subject that I can’t go into depth about here.

The reason for separate services for abortion is mainly political. Abortion services have been ostracized in many communities. Many medical schools don’t even train physicians to perform abortions. I’ve heard that this is getting worse with the increase in the virulence of the fundamentalist religious influence on political discourse and the election of right wing legislators. I don’t think that having separate feminist health clinics stigmatizes abortion. I think that quite the opposite is true. Abortion is stigmatized because society is not yet able to fully embrace it as a legitimate part of life and a necessary and good health service. It is still in the shadow of social consciousness. Feminist health clinics lift abortion out of the shadow and into the light of legitimate experience. Just like safehouses and rape crisis teams, we look forward to a day when all women’s health services are incorporated as part of complete care.

Linda’s book is published by Sentient Publications. This post is part of a blog tour for her book. The next post will be at Feminists for Choice and the previous post was at Women’s Glib. If you’re interested in hearing Linda speak about her book, she’s going on a book tour on the West Coast of the US in February. 

“Choose life” is a favorite slogan among those who, of course, focus only on the “life” part while ignoring the “choice.” For those women who do choose life, the vast majority are also choosing parenting. Yet, for those women who are pregnant but don’t want to parent, anti-choicers offer one seemingly simple solution: adoption.

But it’s not simple, not even close. Historically, adoption in the United States was built on stigma, shame, and frequently coercion. When faced with unplanned pregnancy, young women had no good options. Single, nonmarital motherhood was shamed to the point of invisibility – it virtually did not exist among White, middle-class women. Women who wanted to have and raise their children were ostracized from their families and communities, and were told their children would be taunted on the playground as a “bastard,” and were denied information about public services that might have helped them establish greater self-sufficiency and venture out on their own – a feat which would have been an anomaly, with or without children. Women could also choose to have an illegal abortion, if they knew where to find one and were willing to take a serious risk with their health and safety. And finally, there was adoption, which before Roe v. Wade was the most common response. (At least among White women; black women almost always raised their children. Single motherhood has a longer history of acceptance in Black communities, and there was no market for Black children, and thus no financial incentive for the adoption industry to reach out to Black women.)

Adoption before Roe v. Wade was predicated on emotional and financial coercion. I have interviewed many women who were funneled into maternity homes where they wished and begged for better options, where they were shamed and ridiculed by those purporting to “help” them, and where they were promised they would walk away after giving birth and soon forget about their child.

I spoke with these women nearly half a century after their adoptions, and they were still traumatized.

These abuses are anti-choice, and today’s adoptions have evolved from this anti-choice history. In some places, at some agencies, adoption has evolved far more than in others. But there are still many, many fundamental problems with the way the adoption industry is set up. (Please note that I am specifically discussing voluntary domestic adoption here – international adoption has further complications, and foster care adoptions are a whole different story. Because adoption is so complicated and good discussion of it requires such nuance, I’m limiting the scope of my discussion to be able to do it some amount of justice.)

So, what does pro-choice adoption look like?

1. Pro-choice adoption is not-for-profit. Yes, adoptions will always cost money – there are legal fees, medical fees (if the mother is uninsured), and travel costs that the agency, and consequently the adoptive parents, usually cover. And the level of post-adoption services that birth parents and adoptive parents deserve will require skilled professionals to administer them. This is not about making adoption inexpensive; it’s about removing any potential for profit-motive from the adoption system. (Yes, there are still for-profit agencies and private lawyers. How will this influence their ability to present young women with whom they’re working with all the available options?)

2. Pro-choice adoption should be open. Open adoptions, where there is ongoing contact between birth family and adoptive family after the adoption placement, are essential to improved outcomes among all members of the adoption triad. Openness is not just for the benefit of the birth parent – it also helps the child know where they came from (which all adopted people hope to know), and can increase the stability of the adoptive family by building trust and opening lines of communication. Openness is not easy. It requires a lot of emotional (as well as logistical) work. It requires trust where society presumes there should be conflict. And it requires a new idea of what a family should be – not a nuclear, isolated core, but a group of people bonded by different degrees of biology, legality, and emotional connectedness.

To achieve openness, adoption agencies must recognize that when the child is placed, their work is only beginning. They need to provide professional support in navigating and negotiating openness, in keeping lines of communication open, and helping resolve conflicts if and when they do emerge.

What about the women who would choose a closed adoption? I acknowledge that there must be some birth mothers out there who prefer closed adoptions, but I have met and interviewed many, many birth mothers over the years, and I have never met one. Futhermore, among those who were initially interested in a closed adoption but were encouraged (either by the agency they were working with, or by the adoptive parents they chose) to have a more open adoption, they welcomed and appreciated the openness after the adoption was finalized. Perhaps most tellingly, none of the women I’ve interviewed have wanted less contact with their child after the adoption. We should respect a woman’s desire for a closed adoption, but we should also recognize that it is easier to have periods of limited contact in an open adoption than it is to open up a closed adoption – working towards greater openness preserves more options for women throughout the course of their lives, as they live out the adoption.

Finally, there should be some legally enforceable degree of openness. Some states allow this; some do not. This prevents either party (though it’s usually the adoptive family) from completely ceasing communication with the other, especially without legitimate concern for the child’s safety or well-being. (Please remember that no adoptive parent would be forced to actively include an abusive or seriously unstable birth parent in their child’s lives; enforceability would simply require that they – at minimum – maintain some level of contact with their child’s birth parents.)

Openness is not easy, and it will not solve all of adoption’s problems. But it is a necessary first step.

3. Pro-choice adoption recognizes the problems with adoption’s past and present and seeks to fix them; specifically, it advocates for open records and against child-trafficking.

Currently in many states, adult adopted people who were raised in closed adoptions do not have access to their own original birth certificates. This denies them access to their own legal records and to their own original identity. Those in support of keeping records closed say that birth parents where promised anonymity – this is fundamentally untrue. In fact, most birth parents were never promised anything (other than, of course, that they would forget) and were forced to make the promise that they would never search for their child. In my experience, most birth parents want to be reunited with the (now adult) children they placed for adoption. In states where records are open, birth parents are allowed to place a hold on the records if they wish to maintain the secrecy around their adoption; less than 2% have done this.

Regarding child-trafficking, there is much to say that goes beyond the scope of this post. I will simply state the manipulative adoptions, child stealing, and baby selling are not solely in our past (particularly in international adoption), and that advocating for their investigation and prohibition is absolutely necessary to a pro-choice concept of adoption.

4. Pro-choice adoption supports unbiased counseling. This one is pretty intuitive, but adoption counseling should not be solely within the realm of anti-choice advocates working out of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (the modern-day equivalent of the maternity home). If a counselor doesn’t feel comfortable providing a woman with accurate information about abortion and parenting, that counselor has no business talking to a woman about adoption.

5. Pro-choice adoption does not glamorize or create a martyr out of the birth parent. Birth parents are simply people trying to make the best out of an incredibly difficult situation. Narratives that present them as especially selfless, as “giving their child something better” makes, by inverse, the mothers that choose to parent selfish or even irresponsible. While it’s true that many birth parents do choose adoption because they want their child to have a different life than the one they can provide, this usually (but not always) boils down to two things: having two, married parents and money. If we consistently frame two parents as always better than one, we’re stigmatizing single mothers. And if we’re framing more money as always better than less – well, then should we all just be transferring our children to a family with more means? All of these narratives create martyrs of birth parents in a way that also highlights their inevitable shortcomings and denies them of any capability.

There are other, more specific policies and practices that can go in to building a better, more pro-choice adoption industry. I’ve refrained from discussing all of them because I’ve already said a lot that I hope you’ll think about, and because there’s less consensus (within the birth parent community) over those specific ideas than those that I have chosen to discuss. For example, pre-birth matching: some birth parents find it coercive to have to select adoptive parents before the child is born, it can create an obligation which they must fulfill and denies them the room to freely make a choice once the baby arrives; other birth parents find it necessary to select adoptive parents while they’re still pregnant in order to feel in control of the situation and be able to make a long-term plan and discuss what the adoption will look like. This one example highlights how diverse birth parents are – they are not a homogenous group, and they certainly do not agree on everything. This is just another reason why we must focus more on listening to their experiences, not just within the context of adoption, but in speaking to a larger, reproductive justice framework.

I wanted to reiterate that there are some agencies out there that are actively working towards pro-choice adoption, but adoption still has not been embraced as a core issue by the larger choice community. This National Adoption Month I encourage you to consider the ways in which your concept of choice is accountable to women who choose adoption, and how we can work to build a better model of a respectful, safe, accessible, pro-choice adoption system.

My last post on breastfeeding, and finding ways to support both nursing moms and formula-feeding moms, seemed to make few people happy.  It’s likely my fault – it wasn’t my debate to enter.  However, I felt that, as someone who works as both a birth-rights activist and a strong supporter of breastfeeding and as an abortion-rights activist and a strong supporter of choice that I could somehow contribute to the discussion.  I learned a lot from the response: don’t use the word “jerk” in the title of a blog post, even in the abstract; it alienates people.  Don’t go for brevity over nuance when the topic requires that nuance.  And, at the end of the day, recognize when the people who disagree with you on the details are ultimately on your side.

The most startling feedback I received, however, were comments to the effect of (and I’m paraphrasing, but not exaggerating): “Feminism doesn’t support breastfeeding and motherhood because it requires women to stay home for longer after giving birth and recognizes biological differences between men and women.”

I was shocked and disappointed that someone could think this, and that they could use something I’d written as an example of this.  At first I dismissed it as an extreme response, but similar sentiments kept cropping up: feminists parents do seem to feel marginalized from the rest of the feminist blogosphere. This post on The Mamafesto yesterday drove home the point for me, and I really encourage you to read it.

The thing is, my idea of feminism is absolutely contingent upon the acceptance of motherhood, of birth, of breastfeeding, of parenting, of stay-at-home moms.  In fact, this is where my feminism began, with a focus on motherhood not only as a source of personal fulfillment, but of public activism.  Many women are empowered by motherhood, not only for themselves, but also out of the desire to create a better world for their children.  Much of my daily research and work focuses on not only the rights of parents (breastfeeding support initiatives, healthcare reform, paid maternity leave, paid sick days, affordable childcare) and soon-to-be parents (adoption reform, infertility insurance coverage, birth advocacy, childbirth education, labor support), but the rights of those parents on the margins that are frequently told by society that they should never, never parent: young (teen) parents, very low-income families that receive public benefits, undocumented immigrants, etc.  These issues are not superficial or tangential to my feminist belief structure: they are the crux, the very heart of the issue.

The thing is, I know I’m not the exception.  I suspect most feminists, even young feminists, even feminists who aren’t parents or don’t want to be parents, feel this way, too.  But for some reason, we’re not doing a good job of communicating that and making our conversations inclusive of feminists who are parenting.

I am very sincerely discouraged that feminist parent bloggers feel they’re excluded or marginalized because of the form their feminism takes, and I’m even more disappointed if my earlier post contributed to that in any way. I am going to take it upon myself to more actively try to include discussions of motherhood in my writing, and I encourage others to do the same.  While I stand by the points I made in my earlier post – that we should support new mothers who breastfeed as well as those who formula feed – the primary point I was hoping to make was that we should ultimately support women and trust them to make the best decisions for themselves.  These beliefs are what unite us as feminists, and remembering what bring us together is always more important that arguing over the smaller things that may divide.