Should you 'come out' about your abortion?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/01/abortion-should-you-come-out

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Abortion is one of the most safe and common medical procedures performed in the United States. One out of three American women will end a pregnancy before age 45, and a woman is overwhelmingly more likely to die in childbirth than from abortion complications.

Despite this, abortions are still thought of as dangerous and rare by many Americans; a new poll from Vox shows that most people underestimate how many women get abortions in this country while vastly overestimating the risks that the procedure carries.

These are misconceptions that might be righted if more women talked about their abortion experiences: Vox’s study also showed that if someone knew a person who had an abortion, they were more likely to correctly asses the overall abortion rate and more likely to support abortion rights.

But in a country where a Planned Parenthood was terrorized by a man yelling about “baby parts”, the preferred nomenclature of conservatives for abortion, expecting women to come out about their abortions is a difficult ask. It’s a catch-22 for pro-choicers: we know that women talking about their abortions helps to erase stigma, but the stigma makes it hard for women to talk about their abortions.

Reproductive justice activist Renee Bracey Sherman tells me she doesn’t believe everyone can – or should – share their experiences with abortion. “There are many reasons someone might keep it a secret: fear of violence from a partner or their community, worry about losing a job or other financial stability, or simply because they want it to stay private,” she says.

Still, the stories matter. Bracey Sherman, who wrote a guide for organizations on how to support abortion storytellers, says “when we share our abortion stories, we speak out against the stigma that silences us and refuse to allow anti-choice activists and politicians to spread lies and hateful comments about us”.

“It’s no longer those people over there, that they’re talking about, the politicians are talking about me and other people the listeners love.”

That’s part of the reason why we’ve seen an uptick in women speaking publicly about their abortions - from the 1 in 3 campaign and #ShoutYourAbortion to elected officials speaking out, more and more people are coming forward about having abortions, or supporting others who have.

That humanizing impact of sharing abortion stories is also why over 100 women have filed briefs sharing their experiences with the procedure to the supreme court, where Whole Woman’s Health vs Hellerstedt is being argued this week. The case, the largest abortion rights-case in front of the supreme court in years, has to do with tough restrictions on women’s clinics in Texas – hurdles that one new study says have led to a 42% decrease in the number of doctors providing abortions. That was the point: as the Naral Pro-Choice America president, Ilyse Hogue, wrote this week, “The goal was to close clinics so abortion becomes inaccessible, since they can’t overturn Roe and make abortion illegal.”

While we know that talking about abortion changes hearts and minds, it remains to be seen whether it can affect the courts or policy on a large scale. Some legislators, though, like Ohio congressman Tim Ryan – a Democrat who was once pro-life – have directly credited abortion stories with changing their minds. Ryan came out as pro-choice in an op-ed last year, writing, “I have sat with women from Ohio and across the nation and heard them talk about their varying experiences … each of these women lived through difficult and personal situations with few options and no clear path to take.”

Being pro-choice, however, is not enough. Even those who identified as supportive of abortion rights in the Vox poll believed that abortions were more dangerous than they actually are – 67% of pro-choicers said they thought abortion was just as dangerous as giving birth. Americans need more information, and more conversation, about abortion.

It’s true, we cannot expect women to talk about their abortions for the good of the cause – not in this climate that’s so dangerously hostile to reproductive rights. But we can hope that as those who can speak do – and that there will be more of the kind of changes these conversations bring.