Welcome to Litsy!

Much thanks to the author for writing this book. These conversations are vital; we must have them! Some of the stories also touch on the arguments that the anti-choice side makes—honing in the immense personal nature and how these situations are familiar to so many of us. All respect to the contributors who shared not only their stories, but their names.

I see Jesus being outrageously gracious, forgiving. If he were here today, he‘d say, “I‘m sad that anyone has to have an abortion; that that has to be a choice. But you‘ve been created as human beings…you‘ll make mistakes. I value life and babies, but I don‘t use babies for punishment; you‘ve had a lot born not taken care of well. Find homes for those battered, abused. Get these people off the streets. Take care of what you‘ve already got.” 💙

I can‘t get any of these Bible-thumping anti-abortion people to show me any place in all Scripture where Jesus ever says, “You made your bed, now lie in it. Too bad. Tough.” I don‘t think Jesus is going to say, “Yep, mother took cocaine. Tough. Let this baby be born. Let it suffer for three weeks unbearably, and then die.”

Empathy. Matters.

I believe that as Christians, we are called to usher in the kingdom of God. We do that by insisting that these issues be addressed. Choice has to be connected to that. Life for a Christian is more than breathing in and out. Clearly, giving a woman the right to abortion is a compassionate stand, and any time compassion rules over judgment, we see the kingdom of God. Reverend Christine Grimbol

While I was living with that family, I experienced an incestuous relationship with a male relative, initiated when I was six and going on until I was eleven...intercourse when I was about nine years old. I never thought of myself as a victim of my father or my relative because they blamed ~me~. It wasn‘t their fault; it was my fault. That meant I couldn‘t let the secrets out because then everybody would know what a terrible person I was. 😩

In my religious tradition, birth was never seen as anything but a gift, miraculous, marvelous surprise present—of God and a woman stranger. To speak of being born as a right is to jar the sensibilities and strain the moral syntax of existence. We are born of human intentions at the cost of real physical pain and the nourishing love of a woman which ought never to be forced, compelled, or mandated by another person or the State. -Rev Howard Moody

According to Jewish law, a child is considered a “person” only when it has “come into the world.” The fetus in the womb is not a person until it is born. The rabbinical principle is lay nefesh hi—“It is not a living soul.” —Rabbi Balfour Brickner

I mean, if people think the opposite of having an abortion is having a wonderful child and a lovely life, that‘s ridiculous.

Exactly. It‘s not wonderful and lovely for everyone.

I cried. The tears were from a lot of guilt, Catholic guilt. I never felt loved or cared for by that religion – I never felt like I‘d been taken under its wing or protected. So I reasoned that those thoughts I was having about Catholic guilt really had nothing to do with me and who I was in my life. The part of my mind and heart that saw this decision as taking care of my life, loving me, took over.

Amen sister!

I don‘t think I was ever really Catholic. I went to church and did all that, and I certainly believed in God, but I never felt like I got what they were talking about or believed it. And the things I had in my mind were never the comforting part of religion; they were always the things that scared me.

Religion sustains itself through fear.

When Senator Helms or any other people want to interfere with your family, and they represent the law, then you have to fight the law. I suppose that‘s how revolutions start.

The abortion was not a traumatic experience. It was an end to a traumatic experience. Look, I‘m only the father of the daughter, but how would you like to live with the constant reminder of what had happened on such and such a day, such and such a number of years ago, which represented the very depths of despair and horror and fright? It doesn‘t seem to me that God intended that a child should remind a mother of horror, fear.

#metoo 18 years ago

These senators who have no knowledge or understanding of what they‘re talking about and who vote in committee to abolish abortions for poor people, even in cases of rape and incest, I don‘t think they have any morality. They‘re not seeing anything except some batty feeling that the only thing that matters is the unborn. They have no concern for the born—that is, my daughter, her mother, me.

We never raised the questions that all the right to life ethicists raise. The fetus didn‘t mean anything to me. I have no love for something that was brought about by horror, terror, and attack.

It makes me mad when I see all the pro-life people on TV. They do not understand – there‘s just no way they could because they‘re not in everybody else‘s shoes. They‘re talking about killing things, but it‘s got to be a certain number of months before all the organs are formed, before it becomes a life. The pro-life people don‘t have their facts straight, or they‘re ignoring the rest of it.

Pictured: Lying Lila Rose, who votes against all womxn

As feminists, we need to speak from our seemingly private experience toward a social and political agenda. I‘m suggesting we lift the veil of privacy and professionalism to explore issues of healthcare, abortion, and the right to choose death, as well as life, for our genetically disabled fetuses. If XYLO‘s story has helped to make this a compelling issue for more than one couple, his five short months of fetal life will have been a great gift.

When you‘re choosing how you want to be in the world, being able to choose abortion is just as much a part of that as being able to choose if, where, when, and how you will have a baby. It‘s all intertwined. For us, as African-American women who came up through slavery and were forced to breed, we can‘t ever give away the opportunity to make those decisions for ourselves.

YES!!!👊🏾

Poor women have been the victims. There is no federal funding for poor women‘s abortions. Because of that, and because of the severe shortage of providers, poor women are the ones who end up having abortions later in their pregnancies, or who can‘t get abortions at all and must raise a child they cannot afford. Their options are being more and more reduced.

Pictured: Henry Hyde, responsible for the Hyde Amendment in 1976🖕🏻🤬🙄

The no-choice people are only concerned about potential life, and I think the reasoning behind that whole movement is based on a lot of racism. If they were not racist, they would be looking at black infant mortality, homelessness, the conditions of oppressed people in this country, but there‘s never any mention of that. Racism is also manifest in that movement in that they‘re talking about ~white~ babies, not black.

⬆️This!

I personally believe that abortion is the taking of a ~potential~ life; that potential life does not become an actual life until it is born and breathing on its own. Women know full well what they‘re doing—a potential life is not as important as an actual life, and sometimes women have to make that choice.

Preach!!!

Well, when mine was over, I was hysterical with laughter. I just couldn‘t stop laughing. I think it was anxiety. You know how you yawn when you‘re anxious? That was the form of relief for me…it was relief. —Byllye Avery

To lose safe and legal abortion would mean incredible devastation for families, women, children. It would mean reducing women to childbearing vessels again; turning our backs on the technology we have and refusing to take the responsibility to use it. It would say to me that, twenty years after Roe, we still don‘t value women as independent human beings. By taking away abortion, the real message is: you don‘t have a right to decide.

It was at the Catholic hospital that I found out I was pregnant. In fact, I worked there for at least a year and a half while I was with Clergy Consultation. The hospital didn‘t know about my involvement, and I had to be very careful. —Judy Widdicombe

Even people in the county sheriff‘s office were calling for help. I mean, an unwanted pregnancy can happen to anybody, anytime.

Even with birth control, condoms, tubal ligation and vasectomy.

I saw the privileged who could pay for it, who were educated and determined enough to make the system work for them, getting abortions. The women I saw in the hospital beds, post-abortion, were the ones who couldn‘t do that. Many women died from peritonitis and septicemia. Women were pressured to give the names, but would either die or go home without telling.

We won‘t go back to this.

People would say, “Oh you did that?” And I‘d say, “Yeah. But you liked me up until five minutes ago before you heard that, so obviously it didn‘t make me a nasty, horrible person, did it?” —Whoopi Goldberg

#youknowme 💙

Women will always get abortions—black community, white community, Chicano community, Puerto Rican community; that will never stop. The issue is: why can‘t they be safe and clean? What are you going to do, drag the woman to jail for sixty years for having an abortion?

Preach it!!!

The other thing too, what would make it sort of a little bit easier, is if you could get some of these black and Puerto Rican and Chicano babies adopted. Nobody adopts them. They all want little white babies, cute with blond hair and blue eyes. Why bring a child in that you know is going to spend its life in a fucking institution? What are those peoples‘ alternatives to ~that~?

Preach!!!

It‘s hard to be a mother; it‘s harder even when you‘re a kid. The bottom line is that if someone does not want to have a child, they should not be forced into it.

I have a lot of trouble with people who accuse other people of abusing abortion as a means of birth control. If abortion was something I was going to use as a method of birth control, then I would probably see a shrink. —Whoopi Goldberg

Preach it girl!

Women who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy will do anything in order to make themselves whole again. I don‘t think people understand the power of that force, of that drive to be whole. Think about that. I knew when I walked up those steps to her apartment that something might happen, and I might not walk back down. I knew that. But I also knew that was the only choice I had.

Never had any regrets, I knew it was right. I probably would have self-aborted with a coat hanger before I would‘ve had that child. You have to want them, love them, be ready for them. If you believe that man is a spirit, as I do, better the spirit of the child should wait and find another body, one that really wants the child to be there. It is better that children come into the world with some strength around them. -Anne Archer

If there is a sin, it is the sin that we adults perpetrate on the children of the earth who truly are innocent and defenseless by bringing those children into the world, when they will not be cared for.

With a child comes the must of wanting and loving that child.

I don‘t see that choice as any different from the choice that families and doctors always have to make in difficult childbirth when they can only save the mother or save the fetus: You go for the life that is.

Yes! I know my husband would want me to live; I want to live, too...please let me! Trust womxn!

Having the legal abortion was so totally different from having the illegal one. It was inexpensive. It was done in a clinic, a Planned Parenthood clinic, under sterile circumstances, with counseling, and I was not made to feel worse than I already felt. I was helped in grieving my loss.

Thank you Planned Parenthood! We love you! 💙

I think one of the things that makes me as angry as the shame and the pain I had to go through for the illegal abortion, is the lack of sex ed in the home/church/school, all those places that didn‘t give me any info that got me into that place. The same people who don‘t want you to have an abortion don‘t want you to have sex ed; there is no question where this ignorance leads. Anyone who thinks that outlawing abortion makes it go away is a fool.

That Friday night came, and my roommate and I were there. I had on a long, red, cuddly velvet robe that had been a Christmas gift from my parents. I had on underneath it my underwear and my nightgown, and I had on my socks and my bunny-fur house shoes—like a little kid about to have her tonsils out. And I was terrified.

When I escort patients wearing pj‘s into the clinic, I smile to myself. Now, I‘ll be thinking about this red velvet bathrobe!

He had me stand in his office, and he yelled at me. He yelled not just about what a slut I was, but on and on about how this proved why women shouldn‘t work because I should have been home having babies to begin with and not taking a job from some man—now, mind you, this man had hired me—and this was just what you‘d expect from sluts who worked.

What the fuck? Bitch slap and a spit is in order here.

I think laws forcing kids to notify the parents are horrible. It‘s hard, but we know too many stories about rape and incest and alcoholic parents and violent parents to be comfortable saying that a girl has to tell. I am absolutely willing to risk not knowing in order to protect the girls who would suffer in the telling.

YES!!!

I must say I have always believed and still do that at that moment it is not a baby. When I was twenty-three and pregnant with my daughter, I still believed that. I was happy and anticipating the birth of a child because I was married and ready to have a baby, but I didn‘t regard her as a child until she was there as a child.

I agree 💯 %!

We are not going back to the Dark Ages. We are not going to let anybody in this country have that kind of power over any girl or woman. There are great powers, outside the government and in it, trying to legislate the return of darkness. We are not great powers. But we are the light. Nobody can put us out. May we shine very bright and steady, today and always.

💙🌞

What was wrong was not knowing how to prevent getting pregnant. What was wrong was my ignorance. To legislate that ignorance, that‘s the crime. I am ashamed, she thought, for letting bigots keep me ignorant.

Priests, ya‘ll mofos can SHOVE IT. Don‘t you just love this condom wrapper?! 🤣🖕🏻

If any birth is better than no birth, and more births are better than fewer births, as the “Right-to-Life” people insist, then they should approve of my abortion, which resulted in three babies instead of one. Preservation of life seems to be rather a slogan than a genuine goal of the anti-abortion forces; what they want is control. Over behavior: power over women. Anti-choice women share in male power over women, by denying their own womanhood.

As for the children I would have had, the worst punishment for any offspring would have been to be the child of me. At that age, I was very unbalanced. If I had had a baby, I would have been the worst mother in the world, and I would have raised a very, very disturbed child because I was obviously barely ready to deal with my own self, my own feelings , who I was. It would have been the end of my life and the end of this child‘s life.

To withhold birth control is only going to get them pregnant.

And yet, anti-choicers scream at you, ‘use birth control!‘ And yet, their fake clinics are against contraception and tell you that sex is wrong, and that contraception is evil. 🙄🖕🏻

Some of us have access to the pill; some of us know enough about diaphragms and condoms. But a lot of us still don‘t and probably never will as long as Catholicism reigns supreme, as long as there‘s an image of a bad girl, and as long as sexuality is considered something dirty, particularly for girls.

Sex is not wrong, nor contraception, nor a natural, sexual nature. What‘s wrong is the endless shaming!

More than anything else, what scared me about getting pregnant was shame of being found out as a bad girl/person. I realize that a lot of that bad girl business has pursued me throughout much of my life. That was a big part of my psychotherapy. I went to therapy when I was about 21, and I had to deal in the most profound way. To this day I have to watch/remind myself I‘m a good person. It all goes back to the whole sexual Catholic guilt business.

I was raised a typical Catholic. I had to go to catechism, have my communion, go to confession, the whole business… And there was ~loads~ of guilt, by the pound.

I feel angry that guys were raised to believe that the most important thing was to get some girl in bed, girls were raised to believe that the most important thing was ~not~ to do it, and this conditioning created so much torture and hell for everybody, for boys as well as girls.

Sex ed also includes respect for all genders! And the end of sexual shaming.

To give you an idea of how things were then, my first job in the drugstore was to wrap Kotex boxes in brown paper… Kotex boxes were always wrapped in brown paper, always always.

Period shaming has to stop. It‘s called a vagina, and yes, blood comes out of it. It‘s just blood; get over it.