Not Oprah’s Book Club: Abortion & Life

Many of you undoubtedly saw Jennifer Baumgardner and Gillian Aldrich’s awesome documentary film, Speak Out: I Had an Abortion. I am a huge fan and have written about it in the past.
Well, now Jen has taken her radical work from the screen to the page, with lots of additional analysis and framing. Abortion & Life, written by Jen and containing gorgeous photographs by Tara Todras-Whitehill, just came out on Akashic Books. In it, Jen sets the scene of the contemporary abortion debate, not just between pro-lifers and pro-choicers, but between feminists of different generations and perspectives, women and men, mothers and daughters, and all of the other complex subgroups that struggle with the abortion issue ever day. As she writes, “The majority of Americans don’t want abortion to be recriminalized but are uncomfortable talking about and even facing the realities of the procedure.”
Jen soothes that discomfort with personal stories–stories that are as diverse as women’s abortion experiences, all inciting empathy and a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which reproductive justice policy influences every day lives. But she does even more than that here; she also gives a brand new frame within which we can understand these stories. She authors a thorough history of abortion rights and then she writes honestly and entertainingly about the reoccurring question: “Can you be a feminist and prolife?” She also flips the old scripts, tracing the recent rise of the provoice movement where women’s authentic experiences, not just their political ideologies, are brought to bear on the future of the movement.
Add to all of this a vast resource guide and a reprint of Rebecca Hyman’s fantastic Bitch Mag article on the topic, and you’ve got yourself one of the most innovative, contemporary, and inclusive conversations about abortion that exists today, right on the page. I leave you with Jen’s own words:

Some of what I write might be seen as turning away from the radical history of abortion rights in search of a compromised “middle ground.” But I would argue, however, that the cornerstones of a new feminist theory of abortion rights will be created by those whom unplanned pregnancy most urgently affects–women born post-Roe. Still, as in the past, abortion is a part of life–just as sex and death are.