Secular Woman is celebrating its one-year anniversary with a month-long series of posts about abortion.
#ShameLESS, a Campaign to Help End Abortion Stigma
Secular Woman, through its latest project @AbortTheocracy, is launching a new month-long campaign aimed at reducing abortion stigma and encouraging women to talk openly, shamelessly, about their abortion experiences. The campaign is, appropriately, called #ShameLESS. And, in July, we will be sharing your stories about abortion through memes which you can share via social media, as well as articles on abortion and reproductive health and rights throughout the month.
This campaign is a response to the fact that even though approximately one in three women will have an abortion in their lifetime, many women are silent and ashamed about their abortion. When we are silent we are alone. It is possible that the women sitting next to you has had an abortion and never told their sister, mother, best friend, or anyone – this collective silence disempowers and isolates us. Just as domestic abuse victims were alone and isolated in the 1970s before talking about abuse became more acceptable. When women find their voice and use it to tell their lived experiences they change our lives, the lives of future women, and society.
Abortion is a medical procedure, and, like other medical procedures, a woman and her doctor should be making the decision without interference or intervention from religious groups or any governmental legislative body. One of our goals for this year is to “advocate for women’s bodily autonomy and sovereignty”; this campaign is an integral part of that.
This campaign will launch with a story from the co-founder, Kim Rippere who says, “I am Shameless and I’m ready to tell my story.” Storytelling is a powerful force for change, with each story told this month another woman will find her voice and other women will be empowered to be #ShameLESS and unafraid.
The campgaign started yesterday with its first story, “Without Regret“.
Do you have your own abortion story to share, to help free others from unreasonable shame? Contact Secular Woman or write it up yourself and tweet it on the #ShameLESS hashtag.
Heard last night from a friend who has to have an abortion tomorrow, because she wasn’t aware that certain rare but powerful meds she’s taking would make her BC ineffective (because it’s hard to do studies on those rare meds’ interactions; no one’s fault), and also badly affect early development of the fetus.
So even though she and her partner want a child in the long term, she has no choice but to abort what could have been a happy accident. And it’s a horrible situation for all of them: she has to do something she doesn’t want, they both lose the chance of a child they would have been happy to raise. No one did anything wrong, and everyone’s hurting.
There’s no piece of that that isn’t made worse by also making it very difficult for her to have an abortion, long before the pretty-much inevitable miscarriage she’s now headed for (and if she doesn’t, the child has a very strong chance of being anencephalic). It’s brutal, heavy-handed power and control over the bodies of people with uteri, and it’s immoral.
Forgive me that I don’t tweet it, but I don’t have a Twitter account, nor a phone to use one from (and yes,before anyone explains to me, I know it can be used from a computer, I just don’t really have much personal interest in a 140-character world, thanks).
Thanks for writing about this.
Just this year, the abortion status of Elizabeth Colbert _____ (Stephen Colbert’s sister) was used against her politically when she ran for office in S. Carolina. (Did she run against the guy who scampered off to Argentina?)