“How do we start the stories about our own abortions so that we’re telling ‘good abortion stories’”?
This is the question America’s most well-known reproductive health organization asked me about ten years ago. Their board members wanted to share the stories of their own abortions and wanted me to guide them in making it clear they had, you know, one of those “good abortions”. (Such as, I was told, having birth control fail; being a victim of rape; or being in law school.)
“We know the start of the story,” I noted. “A woman got pregnant. Why do we need to qualify her abortion?”
My advice was to heed Kurt Vonnegut and “start the story as late as possible.” My understanding was that they were fighting to keep abortion safe and legal. Not to keep only “good abortion” legal. Retreating to the point of impregnation in their storytelling was ill advised. The woman’s story need not — and should not — be framed at the outset as “good” or “bad”.
They chose not to work with me.
I remembered this experience as four things recently collided:
- The U.S. Supreme Court considered rescinding access to abortion and mandating childbirth for half of American women.
- Jonathan Gotschall published an excerpt from his new book, The Story Paradox: How Our Love of…
