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'via Blog this'“My hope is this project will help dispel the fear, lies and hysteria around abortion, and empower women to make educated decisions for their bodies,” explains the site’s creator.
“I don’t want to talk about my abortion in polite company, or impolite company, or any company at all, really,” says an anonymous author at Jezebel in a piece called Why I Won’t Talk About My Abortion, “just as I don’t want to talk about having hemorrhoids or the consistency of my menstrual flow.” And yet, ironically, this woman IS talking about having an abortion, albeit anonymously — just as the woman behind This is my abortion has also chosen to withhold her name. We talk publicly about having had an abortion, anonymously or not, because — unlike hemorrhoids or periods — abortions are a hotly contested political issue. Hemorrhoids aren’t caused by a lack of access to affordable contraception nor can the criminalization or stigmatization of people who have hemorrhoids compel a woman to carry a hemorrhoid for nine months, watch that hemorrhoid turn into a child, and be forced to make the now-difficult decision whether to keep that child or surrender it to adoption… OK, my metaphor has long since broken down but, well, she started it.
Personal experiences shape and inform our political views. Whether they are our own stories or the stories of others with whom we come into contact, first person testimony breathes human life into otherwise abstract statistics, better understanding that follows us into the ballot booth. According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, for example, people who know someone who’s gay are 20 points more likely than others to support gay marriage. This is the reason that women who’ve had abortions speak up: in support of others who can’t, and to protect all of our right to have the choice.
As we all know, there are plenty of people speaking from the opposition, and what they say is sometimes simply not true
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