I have to confess, I'm jealous of Carole Joffe. Not just because she gets to teach and live in Northern California, and not just because she gets to travel around the country interviewing experts in the reproductive rights movement. I'm jealous because her new book, Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us is well-written and informative and makes me worry that my book about the pro-choice movement, which could potentially be seen as a kind of companion to hers (well, I think it could!), won't be half as informative or inspiring.
As the title indicates, Carole is focused on the toll that anti-choice activity has taken on the pro-choice movement. "Activity" is too polite a word, actually, when you're talking about arson, anthrax threats, and punitive legislation - and, of course, the murder of Dr. Tiller, which occurred as this book was in its final stages. I defy anyone to read about the trials and tribulations of a clinic which suffered an arson attack and not choke up, both at the bravery of the staff and the generous nature of the community, which turned out in force to support the rebuilding. Acts like this pepper the book, though not all are as dramatic; but they all speak to one of the ideas running through the pages, that individual connections mean so much more than rhetoric and sound bites.
That idea has particular resonance for me, and is what inspired my book, Generation Roe. I haven't spent as much time in the trenches of the abortion wars as Carole, but my experience in direct patient services has shown me that individuals relate much more strongly to personal experience than anything else. There is such a stigma attached to abortion, far more so than should be attached to any medical procedure, but when the actual reasons that women choose abortion are made clear, it's that much harder to dismiss the procedure as one done out of convenience or on a whim. As one of the founding members of the D.C. Abortion Fund pointed out to me when I interviewed her, "Women's stories will always carry the day." And she's right, but the stories of the people who choose to undertake this work need to be told, too. These stories help us all understand the larger context in which abortion rights reside: the contexts of healthy families, economic stability, attaining educational goals, and safeguarding personal health.
There's another reason I'm so fond of story-telling: because almost forty years after Roe, states are still introducing restrictive legislation, doctors and clinicians are threatened, and the issue is just as divisive as ever. So why not try and shift the public discourse from the political to the personal? As a member of Medical Students of Choice who grew up in a conservative community observed, while the pro-choice community is talking about choices, the anti-choices forces are talking about murder. Which is a brilliant P.R. stroke, if nothing else, and evidence of the pro-choice movement's failure to truly recognize the emotional component of this issue. I'm not suggesting that we pander to their side and bring out the violins and tissue and only tell the "right" stories of abortion, the rape victims and fetal anomalies and married women. There is no right story, just as there is no wrong story, and we need to tell and share them all.
Okay, enough of my soapbox. Bottom line is, go read Dispatches from the Abortion Wars. Get angry, and get inspired, and tell the world why you're pro-choice, too.
