A report on what women who do not regret their abortions are doing to get the word out.
Some excerpts from the article, followed by my reactions:
When she researched what was already out there before launching the site, Beninato found only anti-choice counseling outfits like afterabortion.com and Rachel's Vineyard ministry, which offer misleading medical information and propaganda from women who describe being coerced into abortion by controlling older boyfriends and Planned Parenthood "salespeople."
Propaganda? When did a woman sharing her own experience become propaganda? Using this emotionally loaded, condemnatory word to describe women sharing their stories is such an overreaction. What's that all about?
It's also quite unfair to both of the organizations she mentions. Where on the Rachel's Vineyard website is there any medical information, much less misleading medical information?
And the website at afterabortion.com can hardly be described as "an anti-choice outfit". Why? In the first place, as that website says always and everywhere, it is politically neutral. In the second place, the woman who runs it is herself pro-choice and she doesn't try to hide that about herself.
It's time to tap into the well of women who have had abortions and don't regret it. Moved by Beninato's phrase, I have been working on a campaign to recast the Roe anniversary, January 22, as I'm Not Sorry Day. The campaign consists of three elements: a film directed by Gillian Aldrich documenting women's experiences with abortion, T-shirts that read I Had an Abortion and a postcard that lists such resources as unbiased post-abortion counseling and the National Network of Abortion Funds. The message of the day is that women might have complex, or even painful, experiences with abortion, but they are still confident they made the right decision and adamant that it had to be their decision to make.
It would be a wonderful thing if fans of abortion would start to admit the reality that women have "painful" experiences with abortion. If they do, though, it's because they've been dragged there kicking and screaming by women standing up to be Silent No More. It's because fans of abortion are starting to recognize that they'll lose their credibility if they continue to deny that women experience "pain" after abortion.
And let me go out on a limb...the idea that women are going to buy those "I had an abortion" t-shirts?
It's not gonna happen.