I’ve had four abortions. That’s the first time I’ve shared that out loud to anyone other than those close to me. And in fact, even then, it’s only been to a very few. Why is that, I wonder? It doesn’t take me long to scratch up the reason: the sense of shame, embarrassment, an overwhelming what’s-wrong-with-me judgment that soaks me even as I write the words here. And naturally that’s exactly what those who oppose women having autonomy over their bodies count on. They use the power of our own self-silencing to smother us. Obviously humans of all gender identifiers have shame around something their body carries and expresses because that is a part of living and listening to those quiet, still (or shouty, agitated) inner voices. But for the purposes of this piece of writing, I’m talking about my experiences with abortion and the oversized luggage of emotion that choice has carried. I’ve tried to check that baggage hoping it would get lost in transit, go round and round my inner carousel until it dropped off forgotten in the corner. But yet…

These experiences are in the fabric of my life. The dark colors in the quilt around my edges. Four corners. Top left, California when I was in college and a few years away from legal drinking age; top right, just back from my first trip to Europe; bottom left, New York City early-adulthood; bottom right, NYC mid-career. Naturally my fingers hover over the keyboard tempted to explain how it happened, to make a case for me not being irresponsible or lazy in marshalling my reproductive system. A need that you don’t judge me. But, no, I can’t control anyone’s reading of this, nor do I need to explain. It’s not the reason I’m writing about it. My reason is to try and peel off the shame and acknowledge what lies beneath. How in order to stare down the bullies who rely on our shame to keep us cowed and quiet, I need to unbury my stories and own them so I can fully join (proverbial or actual) hands with every other human who has had the experience of making themselves small because they were told they were nasty, sinners, lost causes, nothings.

I’ve marched countless times since the late 80s in support of Roe V. Wade, screamed with many for our collective right to choose but when it came to telling my stories, I whispered them into the wind and they blew away without anyone really hearing them. A lot of folkx were whispering, sometimes they stuck in songs and stories and actions. In the nineties, during the thick of my music journalism days, the community of musicians I cared about often considered themselves feminists—no matter whether they identified as male or female. The bizness overall was still misogynistic AF. But bands I knew like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Sonic Youth, and many more were shouting about many human rights issues including a woman’s right to an abortion as Roe V. Wade had guaranteed. But honestly, no one ever felt the 1973 ruling was secure, hence the ongoing reminders in marchs and rallies to leave it the fuck alone. Sometimes a movement can be a box to check. That’s not a dismissal of the power in a group, but the necessity of taking some time to investigate what motivates the noise is also important. When I was swept along with the crowd, I shouted “Hands Off My Uterus” and it was a mighty roar. When I said my stories…well, I didn’t really say my stories except to myself. But now…time to make the quiet part loud.

Personal and powerful. (We Testify.) Not easy. I once sat on a tour bus in Gronigen, Netherlands, March 1992 with E.Vedder and said a couple of my abortion stories out loud mainly because I felt safe. That’s the ticket, really, when you know someone is listening openly without judgment. As he got off the bus and onto the stage, I waited to feel regret around the telling, wondered how the conversation had landed. For the rest of that tour, the topic never came up again. (You can see this post-converstion performance here. It’s incredibly surreal to glimpse the ghost of me past against the far wall on the right. Ginormous humid hair frizz is the giveaway.) A few months later, Pearl Jam filmed an MTV Unplugged and during the last song, “Porch,” he inked Pro*Choice up his arm (weirdly a figurine was made of it). He said later our conversation had stayed with him and although that meant a lot, it did not move me to set those stories to sail more often.

I want to think about why there is still shame in the telling. Self-isolation. During my last pregnancy, realizing this would most likely be close to my final chance to have a child biologically, I checked again to make sure I hadn’t changed my mind around having kids. I still came up with the same answer: no. And lord, if that wasn’t an emotionally complicated decision. Truthfully, I’d never felt during any of my pregnancies that I was in a place where I could support a child financially or emotionally. I wanted to be able to write and travel. I could barely afford health care for myself. This country doesn’t even pretend to make it possible health-care, child-care, maternity/paternity-care-wise for a woman, whether single or otherwise, to bring a child into this world unless they are privileged or driven and committed or some combination of those. I was none of them. I also never felt the passion&pull to have a child.

Yet still, when I made the appointment at Planned Parenthood, I felt the familiar panic, shame, and embarrassment. I was a woman in her late thirties, had been through a fair amount of therapy and felt fairly self-actualized, yet there I was still hiding this very important, extremely universal experience from even my closest female friends. Not totally misplaced since sharing hadn’t always brought wide-open arms. So there we are again. Expand, shrink, rinse and repeat. During my last, I opted for a home experience. RU-486 (mifepristone). It was a wholly different emotional rollercoaster. Rather than make (brief) eye contact in a waiting room with another woman who is processing her experience while I try to keep my big emotions in check, I went solo in my apartment and processed my moment of loss with a lot of wide-open space to mourn loudly and openly and sometimes terrifyingly.

If I’d known of the places to read or hear of other women’s abortion experiences, I would have pricked up my ears, opened my heart and probably my mouth. (Maybe I didn’t look hard enough, but they needn’t be so hidden.) And as with all things rooted in personal stories, would have wrapped the words around me like a comforter, or maybe strung them below as a net, peppered the conversation with strings of consonants and vowels of my own.

The actions of a rabid minority losing control are always blind, dangerous, at-all-costs committed, and it’s not as if we didn’t see this body politic coming, waving its cane trying to beat us all into silence, but yet… let’s not let them.

Screw the shame. Lay pearls before the swine who want to grind us into quiet. Share the hashtag howls, lift up to the light all the moments that make us who and why we are. I’m burning with it. Not shame but the pure flame of anger. I want that torch to illuminate every individual choice a woman makes around her body with pride, no matter how complicated or hard-won that pride is, because no one else can know that path but the woman who is walking it.

A couple of pieces for further in-the-now reading:

The Cut: Ways to support.

The Atlantic: The Future of Abortion in a Post-Roe America: Inside the covert network preparing to circumvent restrictions