The Supreme Court just made it clear that no woman should bear an undue burden when she needs to access an abortion. Supporters of abortion rights are celebrating a much-needed victory, but it is unlikely that their opponents will go quietly into the night. If the last 43 years since Roe vs. Wade have taught America anything, it’s that the fight over abortion will not be won with a single, decisive ruling.
The problem is, despite all the fighting, our country has never really talked about the personal experience of abortion. It’s time we start.
For a long time, abortion was an open secret — illegal yet relatively safe, and something everyone knew existed even if it wasn’t discussed. When legal cases started making the news in the 1960s, the topic came out of the closet.
But it wasn’t the voices and experiences of women who were having abortions that were making the front page. It was most often stories about providers and local efforts to crack down on the procedure. New regulations on abortion care weren’t motivated by health and safety concerns for the woman, or her fetus, but were a political power play from male physicians seeking to put midwives out of business.
Sound familiar?
Whole Women’s Health vs. Hellerstedt challenged the authority of Texas lawmakers who made up special rules to target abortion clinics with the goal of shutting as many providers down as they could. For no good reason, every abortion had to be performed in ambulatory surgical centers with expensive, largely unnecessary equipment. And every clinic had to be within 30 miles of a hospital.
Texas took its restrictions right out of the old playbook. But a big difference in this case was a new effort from abortion advocates to include women’s personal stories in the case, a legal strategy pioneered by anti-abortion advocates. While 45 amicus briefs were filed to oppose the abortion restrictions on a host of scientific, constitutional and economic grounds, four featured the voices and stories of women who’d had abortions.
Political leaders like Wendy Davis, celebrities such as Amy Brenneman and more than 100 lawyers contributed. Organizations like Advocates for Youth and the social movement #shoutyourabortion all played a role in lifting up new stories as well.
This is new. Since the 1980s, pro-life groups have submitted to the court, and publicized far and wide, stories of women who regret their abortions to lawmakers and the courts in an attempt to show abortion as harmful to women. This time, pro-choice groups helped balance the ledger.
On the one hand, it’s crucial that these types of legal decisions take into account the lived experiences people have with abortion. No decision of this magnitude should be made in a vacuum without understanding its impact on people’s real lives.
On the other hand, when important stories like these are shared in the context of a legal and political fight, it’s easy to disregard the ones told by opponents. And there’s no room for personal stories that fall outside ideological lines. There was no amicus brief from people who were not so certain about the rightness or wrongness of their abortions.
And therein lies the rub. One of the most powerful things about sharing a personal story about something taboo like abortion is that it does what politics and the law often cannot: forge powerful human connections.
If you ask anyone who has shared publicly about their abortion, it’s very likely that they will talk about how many other people have shared a story back to them. Stigma and shame isolate people from one another and hide their stories making it easier to create myths and stereotypes – or laws – about the people you can’t see. When storytelling is at its most powerful it helps people to find each so that they can build the community and the power needed to make change.
That’s how I started over 15 years ago. After an abortion, I started to talk about my mixed emotions and the need I had for non-judgmental emotional support. Telling my story helped me find people who had a similar experience and who wanted to be part of creating solutions. We started the nation’s first after-abortion talkline in 2002 and we have been listening to people’s stories ever since.
At the time, there was no visible constituency of “people who had abortions.” Talking about stigma, stories and culture change were ideas frowned upon by institutional leaders as weak and irrelevant.
Call by call, volunteer by volunteer, our community wouldn’t be ignored.
Now, more women then ever are sharing their experiences, eroding stigma and old taboo’s about what can be openly discussed. The challenge now is to create a culture that doesn’t fall into typical ideological patterns and instead works hard to resist the “enemy” and “us vs. them” thinking that plagues our nation and world.
Sharing stories can help us fundamentally shift the way we address abortion in our nation – away from clashing ideologies and towards more cultural integration of our differences. Sharing our stories helps us build the community and the power we need to make a future rooted in respect and support for our unique experiences.
Baker is the author of “Pro-voice: How to Keep Listening When the World Wants a Fight” and the founder and executive director of Exhale.
