Experiencing Abortion: A Weaving of Women's Words (Haworth Innovations in Feminist Studies) [Hardcover]

Eve Kushner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 11, 1997 | ISBN-10: 1560239026 | ISBN-13: 978-1560239024 | Edition: 1

If you’ve had an abortion and are feeling isolated and vulnerable, Experiencing Abortion will remind you that you are not alone and that you must feel your emotions in order to accept your choice and heal. Each woman responds to abortion in her own way, yet, as this sensitive, insightful book shows, there are many similarities among women’s post-abortion emotions. Sharing in the firsthand, personal experiences of other women who speak for themselves in this book will help you come to terms with anguish, stress, grief, anger, or any other overwhelming emotions you might be feeling. Don’t go on ignoring or blocking out your feelings. Learn to incorporate your experience into your sense of self in a healthy way.

By reading Experiencing Abortion, you will learn about the multiple feelings and reactions abortion can trigger, the process of accepting an abortion, and the struggle to control fertility without treating your body as an enemy. Offering you a safe, honest, and supportive environment in which to explore your feelings about your abortion, this book discusses many important topics, including:

• the way moods can overtake you after abortion
• how avoiding your experience can defer acceptance, which in turn leads to denial and guilt
• how pregnancy, abortion, and subsequent bleeding can affect your perception of your body
• the struggle to enjoy sex after your abortion
• your heightened awareness of gender after an abortion
• how your intimate relationships may change after an abortion
• the psychological reasons you may sometimes forgo birth control
• accepting yourself after a second abortion
  
  Experiencing Abortion will help women who have had an abortion understand that it is a complex physical and emotional experience that doesn’t necessarily end after a week or a month or a year. It will also help professionals in abortion facilities and therapists who offer pre- and post-abortion counseling understand how abortion affects each individual differently and how they might help women work through their feelings both before and after abortion. Partners, friends, and families will find this book helpful and informative as they try to help their loved one get through this sometimes difficult, even traumatic, experience.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This collection of women's tales of abortion will certainly be useful as a textbook, but a lack of in-depth analysis makes it a bit of a drag as a read. Portions of the various interviews are arranged under headings such as "Moving Through Moodiness" and "Making Peace with Our Bodies" that constitute the bulk of the book's little analysis. Stripped of most personal information, and beginning almost inevitably with the woman's age, name and ethnic background (i.e., "Donna, who is white and 42," "Olivia, a 46-year-old African American"), the interviews tend to run together. Kushner uses a collective narrative voice, and often states the obvious, such as "If we have had a birth control failure, we may fear sex after an abortion." Much of this material is presented as if it were a radical departure from accepted wisdom, for example the segment about Fritzi, a white 21-year-old who, Kushner claims, forces us to re-examine stereotypes about women who may need abortions. "Can that group include farm-fresh women like Fritzi?" Some of the most interesting considerations here come from women who feel political pressure from both pro-choice and anti-choice factions. "I felt like if in any way I was unhappy, then I was just fueling the antichoice fires," one 25-year-old recalls while explaining why she focused her grief in other ways. In another segment, a 22-year-old recounts how quickly an accidental pregnancy during her third year of college altered her born-again Christian, pro-life views, and that she never confided in her fellow Christians about the procedure.

Copyright 1997 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Good spectrum of women’s experiences related in a nonjudgmental manner." -- Canadian Family Physician

Beautifully written and very insightful... An excellent and sorely needed resource. I will recommend it to both clients and colleagues. -- Prepublication review, Kim Kluger-Bell, MFCC, Psychotherapist in Berkeley, Calif.

Even as a very experienced psychotherapist, I gained many new insights about abortion from Kushner's wise, compassionate, and comprehensive book. -- Prepublication review, Audrey McCollum, MSW, Psychotherapist, Etna, NH

Frank, open and well written.... A valuable addition to the libraries of those specializing in women's studies, psychotherapy and counselling. -- Journal of Biosocial Science, vol. 33

Kushner compassionately and insightfully orchestrates a rich chorus of women's voices in a groundbreaking experiential study.... A wonderful resource book. -- Prepublication Review, Carol Becker, Professor of Human Development, California State University, Hayward

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 362 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (June 11, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560239026
• ISBN-13: 978-1560239024
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,598,161 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Eve Kushner is a writer in Berkeley, California. In addition to placing 315 articles in 35 markets, she has published two books. Both are in their second printings. You can find out all about her and her work at www.evekushner.com. For reviews of her books and for interviews in various media, see the Press Coverage page (http://www.evekushner.com/writing/press-coverage).

Eve is now focusing exclusively on kanji, the most complicated script used in Japanese writing. In December 2011 she launched Joy o' Kanji (www.joyokanji.com), a lifelong project. She aims to write one essay about each of the Joyo kanji, the characters used in daily life in Japan. Readers can download these essays in PDF format for an extremely low price. With comprehensive information about every aspect of a character, as well as photos of kanji in real-life uses, these essays reveal the personalities of each kanji (the character of the characters!) as nothing ever has. The site also features photo albums of kanji in action, as well as plenty of free essays (particularly about radicals).

As you can tell from the title of her 2009 work "Crazy for Kanji: A Student's Guide to the Wonderful World of Japanese Characters" (Stone Bridge Press), Eve has a boundless passion for kanji. She has spoken about this several times on "The World in Words," a radio program by PRI, which is an NPR affiliate.

From 2007 through 2010, she wrote "Kanji Curiosity" essays for JapanesePod101.com (http://blogs.japanesepod101.com/blog/category/kanji-curiosity), a language-learning site based in Tokyo. The "Japan Times" praised these essays as "informative and entertaining."

With all of her writing about the Japanese language, Eve has tried to show that kanji can be charming, poetic, and fun, not the source of fear and loathing that people often make these characters out to be.

Although her focus is now monomaniacal, she spent years writing about architecture, books, food, local events, and people with unusual passions. She began her career with "Experiencing Abortion: A Weaving of Women's Words" (Harrington Park Press, now Taylor and Francis, 1997). Because of this book and because of a prominent article she wrote about abortion issues in Hollywood movies, she has been featured in "Newsweek" and on TVO, a Canadian public television program (http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?videoid%3F654099689001).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and Moving resource on women's experiences., October 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Experiencing Abortion: A Weaving of Women's Words (Haworth Innovations in Feminist Studies) (Hardcover)

This book is a wonderful, touching and powerful look at what women go through during the abortion process from making a choice, to support (or lack therof) from friends and family and coworkers, and the actual proceedure and aftercare of the woman during abortion. I'd reccomend this book if you are looking for the woman's point of view on the issue.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for all women, June 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Experiencing Abortion: A Weaving of Women's Words (Paperback)

I found this book to be a great resource for a woman who has gone through abortion. It is true to it's title and uses women's stories as a way to help women deal with all the feelings of PAS. Even if you feel that noone on earth could feel like you do, read this book and I'm sure that there is at least one woman that went through what you are going through. Talks about women that have dealt with one and multiple abortions. It made me feel that somewhere a woman that had an abortion had felt the way I feel and that I wasn't alone or weird.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book to help you start healing, April 30, 2005

By 

Lulu - See all my reviews

This review is from: Experiencing Abortion: A Weaving of Women's Words (Paperback)

If you want to explore your own abortion or find out more about womens' abortion experiences, you should buy "Experiencing Abortion."  The political fight over a woman's right to have an abortion rarely speaks to the actual experience women have when confronted with an unplanned pregnancy.  In "Experiencing Abortion," Eve Kushner finally makes visible the women who decide abortion is their only choice. 

Unlike many abortion books, "Experiencing Abortion" is not just story after story of women who have had abortions.  Rather, it is organized in an almost therapy-like way.  Kushner pulls out the many different themes behind abortions from emotions women feel after an abortion to accepting their decision, from looking at the relationships the women were in during the abortion to finally finding peace with the decision.  This is a good book for anyone who has used denial as a main way of coping with difficult experiences.  This format can help one to move forward with her own healing.  With each theme, the reader can incorporate her own feelings one at a time together with other women's perspectives.  Reading this book was a bit like being in group therapy only much less vulnerable and I believe "Experiencing Abortion" helped get me into therapy, which has changed my life in many important ways. 

If you too want to finally start to deal with your own abortion, or you want to help other do so, you should buy this book.