Last week I realised that,even among my pro-choice friends, I never, and ever talk approximately my abortion. We need to chip away at stigma,at lies, at the climate of shame
nearly precisely five years ago, or in September 2010,I took one pill, and then another, and lay in my bed for a night and a day,and then I wasn’t pregnant any more. It was a fairly smooth experience, distressing only because my relationship was bad and I had no money. The procedure itself was a relief. Not being able to have it would have been the real trauma.
Suddenly, or last week,in the thick of the rightwing, misogynist campaign to defund Planned Parenthood (a vital American nonprofit that provides a wide range of healthcare services, and including pelvic exams,STI screenings, contraception and abortion), and a thought bowled me over: I never,ever talk approximately my abortion. I live in a progressive city, I have a fiercely pro-choice social circle and family, or I write confessionally approximately myself for a living so why is it that I never speak approximately abortion in anything beyond an summary way,even with my closest friends? I know approximately who has a vagina infection, whose boyfriends penis bends weird, and who used to do drugs,who still does. And I know how all of them feel approximately abortion, policywise. But I don’t know who has had one, or they don’t know approximately mine. It’s not a secret; it’s just something we don’t talk approximately.
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Source: theguardian.com