Abortion storytelling is crucial.
“Remarkably Normal,” a play by Jessi Blue Gormezano, is an artistic manifestation of the reality of abortion. The play presents a series of first-hand abortion stories which depict the incredibly common and relatable, yet varied, experiences of individual women. These stories echo the ones I hear on the ground every day as an organizer with the 1 in 3 campaign. They resonate not just because the stories themselves are those of real women, but because abortion is itself a common medical procedure that 1 in 3 women will have in their lifetime.
These stories are especially important considering that women’s access to abortion care is currently under increasing threat in the United States. Despite their apparent opposition to it, it seems nobody is more obsessed with sex, uteri, and abortion than a large number of this nation’s legislators — specifically, they’re obsession with controlling both. Over the course of the millennial generation’s lifetime alone, legislators have enacted hundreds of anti-abortion laws.
This reality is particularly dire in Texas, which has effectively been ground zero for abortion restrictions. Ineffective sex education laws, gutted reproductive healthcare funding, and extreme anti-abortion laws, have plagued access to reproductive healthcare in Texas for years. Instead of focusing on crucial issues like raising the minimum wage or improving race and class disparities in education, these legislators instead dedicate their time to trying to force their constituents to keep unintended and unwanted pregnancies.
Texan legislators have been chipping away at sex education, access to contraception, and the right to safe, legal abortion care for years. Their last major blow was in 2013 when they passed HB2, a notorious bill that forced over half of the abortion clinics in Texas to close and has left thousands of people in the state without access to safe and legal abortion care. In addition to few clinics, this law also enforced a 24-hour waiting period, which means getting an abortion in Texas can require over three days of medically unnecessary pre-abortion clinic time and can cost more than $1,000, especially when extensive travel is required. That’s more time and money than most people have — especially those who are working paycheck-to-paycheck or have multiple jobs to make ends meet.
The results are dire: Women are forced to cross state lines and legal boundaries to obtain an otherwise safe medical procedure to which they are legally entitled. In fact, as many as 240,000 women have resorted to self-induced abortions because they couldn’t access a safe, legal abortion otherwise. Countless others have likely been forced to become mothers against their desire or better judgment.
But women are pushing back. For example, it didn’t take Texas women long to mobilize and pick up the pieces after HB2 was passed. Abortion funds began popping up to grant money to women seeking travel, lodging, or procedural financial aid for abortion care as a result of the state’s anti-abortion laws.
Perhaps most notably, a group of abortion providers called Whole Woman’s Health filed a lawsuit against HB2 — Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt — that claims the law places an undue burden on women seeking abortions. The case will be decided by the Supreme Court this month, which means the fate of Texan women’s bodies currently lies in the hands of mostly old, straight, white, Christian men (with the obvious exception of our queens of Justice RBG and Sonia Sotomayor).
This context is exactly why we need to change the conversation around abortion. Performing personal stories, and giving voice to women who have experienced obstacles like restrictive abortion laws, aims to do just that: We believe we can move beyond political rhetoric and attacks and provide an entry point to advance the conversation.
And a conversation is necessary. In the Rio Grande Valley, where I live, few people are willing to talk about (or admit to) getting condoms, let alone talk about their abortion experience. In fact, I wasn’t inspired to stand up and take action, and didn’t realize the power of sharing personal experiences, until I saw Wendy Davis read women’s personal abortion stories aloud during her historic filibuster. Witnessing that helped me realize that we can make what is often framed as a stigmatized, political issue, personal and reclaim the discussion.
Ultimately, I’m tired of old, white men dominating the current abortion conversation by obsessively telling women what to do with our bodies. We should all be able to choose what directions our lives go in without the fear of being policed, shamed, or dehumanized for those choices.
Sharing abortion stories – whether our own personal stories or those collected by the 1 in 3 Campaign – is a good place to start advocating for that right. We need to humanize the issue and show people how remarkably normal and common it is. It’s time to stand up and tell legislators that they don’t control our bodies and remind women that they its their right to control their own.
