Tell it slant

Emily Dickinson advised, "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant." Tim O'Brien wrote an entire book that might be part fact, part fiction, part ambiguity, but none of it a lie. In my recent quest to speak my truth and speak it from my heart, I realized I was speaking my truth with hyperbole, sarcasm, and humor, but not with my heart.

When I write here, I employ humor to make things easier to me to say and for you to read. I meld my real life with a fake life so that you will know what I am without knowing who I am. I am unequivocally a pro-choice crusader, but my favorite color may or may not be purple.

When I tell client stories, I am well aware that they are not my stories to tell. HIPAA binds me to change details and nuances, and my own ethos binds me to relay the gist without relaying the experience that I may or may not interpret properly anyway.

The stories that clients tell us, anyway, are half truths. I may find out about the abusive boyfriend, and my co-worker may find out about the childhood molestation, and neither of us find out about the past abortion. "I'm fine" can mean both yes and no and maybe. "I'm killing my baby" can be internalized rhetoric or personal conviction or uncertainty about both or neither.

And when I tell clients that they will be OK, I can't guarantee that; I can only hope. When I call them from the waiting room Price is Right-style ("Jane McAbortionpants, come on doooown!"), the silliness covers my annoyance with a long day and my discomfort with clients' discomfort. And then I go home and say that my day was "good" because sometimes that's easier than reliving heartache and frustrations.

Thank you, readers, for hearing our abortion reality, however embellished, or minimized or raw. This is my heart.

Las evidencias hablan por sí solas!

I attended a health conference yesterday and stopped by one of my favorite orgs, Ipas, to score some swag and some abortion news. I saw a small booklet entitled "Ten Facts About Abortion." Hooray! Now, I already knew those facts, could predict exactly what they would say and how they would be described, so I decided to challenge myself. I put it down and picked up "Diez Datos Sobre Aborto." Same info, but in Spanish! So I thought I'd share it with The Abortioneers, and also with our Spanish-speaking audience. It hadn't occurred to me just how much misinformation is out there to confuse and horrify non-English speakers that we simply aren't catching. So I present to any Spanish-speakers out there who are looking for information and not finding it:

Mito: El aborto ocasiona el “síndrome postaborto”.

Dato: El síndrome postaborto no es un diagnóstico psiquiátrico válido.

Mito: El aborto causa cáncer de mama.

Dato: No existe ninguna relación causal entre el aborto (ya sea espontáneo o inducido) y un aumento en el riesgo de que la mujer desarrolle cáncer de mama.

Mito: La anticoncepción de emergencia causa aborto.

Dato: La anticoncepción de emergencia evita el embarazo. Si la mujer ya está embarazada,

la anticoncepción de emergencia no tendrá ningún efecto en el embarazo y no causará un aborto.

Mito: El embarazo es más seguro que el aborto.

Dato: Los procedimientos

de aborto

efectuados por profesionales de la

salud capacitados, en condiciones

higiénicas, son mucho más seguros

que el embarazo y el parto.

Mito: La legalización del aborto no lo hace seguro.

Dato: Cuando las mujeres tienen acceso a servicios de aborto seguro, legal y a precios asequibles, se reducen drásticamente las tasas de muertes y lesiones maternas atribuibles al aborto inseguro.

Mito: Restringir el acceso a los servicios de aborto es la mejor manera de disminuir el índice

de abortos.

Dato: La mejor manera de disminuir el índice de abortos es reducir el número de embarazos no intencionales por medio de educación sexual integral, prevención de la violencia basada en género y acceso a métodos anticonceptivos eficaces centrados en la mujer.

Mito: El aborto con medicamentos es peligroso y puede causar la muerte de las mujeres.

Dato: El aborto con medicamentos

es una opción segura y eficaz para

la interrupción del embarazo en el

primer trimestre.

Mito: Si el aborto es legal, las mujeres lo utilizarán para el control de la natalidad.

Dato: Las mujeres que no tienen información y acceso a métodos anticonceptivos confiables se enfrentan con tasas más altas de embarazo no planeado y posiblemente recurran al aborto para interrumpir el embarazo, sin importar la legalidad del aborto.

Mito: El aborto es exportado por el Occidente imperialista a los países en desarrollo.

Dato: Desde el inicio de la historia documentada, las mujeres en todo el mundo han interrumpido embarazos no deseados. Esta práctica está bien documentada.

Mito: El aborto nunca es necesario para salvar la vida de una mujer.

Dato: El aborto para salvar la vida de una mujer o una niña es médicamente necesario en ciertas circunstancias y es muy aceptado por profesionales e instituciones como la Organización Mundial de la Salud.

The best thing about this resource is that it actually provides SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE (DING DING DING!) to support these FACTS ABOUT ABORTION. Great empowerment for non-English speakers who may feel disenfranchised and under-informed in this country. Clinic workers/counselors/direct service Abortioneers, I encourage you to share this and other Ipas materials. Check their website!

A woman is a living, growing human being

In our sidebar we link to blogs of people who have had an abortion and want to write about their experience. Here's a new (to me) one: My Journey Through Abortion. The post I'm linking begins like this: "I think I am going to talk about what I have learned."

This is a wonderful, fascinating topic. How the abortion was good for me. Not just, How it sucked less than the alternative; not just, How it didn't really suck any more than getting wisdom teeth out sucks and I'm damn glad that both services exist in safe legal settings. Yes, those are interesting too. But those are already part of the public rhetoric about abortion, and the one that people who've never experienced abortion feel most comfortable joining in. It's wonderful and fascinating when a woman who's had an abortion feels able to say out loud that she is a better person after her abortion -- not in spite of it or in opposition to it or in penance for it, but thanks to it.

She is better after her abortion than she was before it. How remarkable! This exists completely outside the discourse where, no matter what else you believe, abortion must be a loss, and a taking-away -- where mathematically, and thus objectively, and thus morally, she is less than when she was pregnant. (You < You+embryo. More is more. Very baroque.) But women know this isn't true, especially when we are at our healthiest: being "good" doesn't mean saying Yes to every request; it doesn't mean taking on more than you can just-because; it does mean being true to yourself.

In the documentary "The Coat Hanger Project," interviewee Jeannie Ludlow says something remarkable that people don't discuss enough. I'll have to paraphrase: In her experience as a clinic counselor, she says, abortion can be a good thing for women; it allows some women to grow in ways that they otherwise would not have had the chance to grow. This doesn't mean, though, that no women feel wistful about their pregnancy, or that no women think of their embryo or fetus. Of course some of them don't; and some of them do but also feel joyous about returning to non-pregnancy, some of them do but also think of themselves or of their born or future children.

A friend told me about her recent experience with abortion and how it is changing her life already -- from a series of crises and dangerous disregard for self, to a new stream of moments where you face the same old decisions and this time you choose life: your life.

~

I'm willing to bet that some of our patients, if they had a blog or a diary, would express something similar to this blogger's words:

"I have learned that I am not really good at pulling the trigger on moving forward. It is like I am sitting in my car, flat tire, spare in the trunk. And I am too damn lazy to get out, open the trunk, get the jack out, and get to work. It is not because the view from the car is spectacular or because there are good tunes on the radio. It is because I am scared to move forward. I am too focused on the fact that I have a flat tire, and I have forgotten that I can FIX THE FLAT."

Especially when talk turns to second-trimester abortion, so many people seem to imagine women as two-dimensional things. If anyone ever asks you "why did she wait so long?" -- remind them of three things:
1) Health care is expensive, abortion isn't covered, and most people aren't rich.
2) Sometimes biology is sneaky and pregnancy isn't discovered quickly.
3) Women are people: sometimes they're unsure what to do, or they freeze, or panic, or they take time to weigh an important decision. Just like you.

Lean on Me

I was fortunate enough to have several friends come to me recently to tell me their abortion stories. I had only mentioned my work in passing and they approached me separately to confide in me. Their abortions weren't particularly recent, but they were still hurting. Some women hurt, some don't, and neither response is wrong. (And for the love of Mike, some fillings hurt, but that's no reason to outlaw them, so can it, antis.) My friends were and are glad they had a choice, they don't regret their decisions, but they were living quietly with their grief. I jumped into counselor mode in the middle of the coffee shop and I listened, offered resources, and suggested healing and coping techniques. And we hugged and I gave them instructions to call or email me whenever they needed an ear.

After I counsel women at work, I give hugs or a pat on the back or a few pamphlets or a souvenir flowchart we developed together that details a plan for healing. And I write my phone number at the clinic on the handouts with my name next to it, and I give the clients the same instructions to call me whenever they need to. Only a handful of women have taken me up on it, and I love hearing from them because even if they're sad, they usually are calling to also say thank you or tell me about the good things going on in their lives, or because they're open to talking. The rest, I think about and send a wish into the universe for their well-being. I don't forget them. And the thing that struck me the most when my friends came to me was the hope that they had a counselor who listened to them and walked with them through their abortion experiences. And I worried that they didn't.

A couple of weeks ago on PostSecret there was a postcard that said something to to the effect of, "To the nurse who held my hand last year as I lost my baby and told me eventually I would be OK: I am. Thank you." I wish I had saved the image, but it came and went like the postcards do every week. I loved that card, though. (And maybe it was about a sick infant or a miscarriage, but the beauty of the site is that it's open to interpretation.) It was like getting to hear the happy ending of every client I've ever wondered about. And I like being a part of the beginning, middle, and end for my friends.


Update - Thanks to a couple of lovely readers who let us know where to find that PostSecret submission! Here it is: