Call for Submissions for anthology about abortion

The week before I left for vacation for the Outer Banks, the General Assembly of Virginia was working hard considering bills which I found anathema.  Four particularly horrible ones were as follows:

The "Personhood" bill would give all the rights of a viable human being who was already alive to a fertilized egg at the moment of conception, thus defining personhood.  I'm not sure the delegates and senators considered all of the ramifications of this bill when they first read it, but it could cause problems in such situations as ectopic pregnancies.  That is when the zygote is implanted in the woman's fallopian tube.  The tube cannot expand to house the developing baby, and she could easily die if the pregnancy were allowed to continue.  If the Personhood bill were passed, the doctor would be committing murder and/or be accessory to a murder if he counseled the woman to end the pregnancy in order to save her life.  The zygote in this case would be completely unviable - the pregnancy could NOT come to term.  That's just one of the potential problems. 

The "Vaginal Probe" bill would require a woman who was planning to have an abortion to have a sonogram as part of her counseling process pre-abortion.  She would be required to look at the pictures, and the pictures would become part of her medical records.  She would not be able to refuse to have the sonogram.  The only kind of sonogram which would show the fetus before 12 weeks of pregnancy is a vaginal probe, an uncomfortable, invasive instrument.  Because the procedure is not medically indicated, insurance would not pay for it, thus adding between $500 and $2400 to the cost of an abortion.  Women who were raped or who experienced incest would not be excepted from the law, forcing them to undergo another violation of their vaginas without their permission.

Another law would give adoption agencies the right to not allow certain people to adopt if their values were against those people (i.e. gays).

And the 4th heinous bill would make it so that the state would no longer be allowed to fund or help fund abortions for poor women when the fetuses were either severely handicapped or would not be able to live once outside the womb.  Last year the state spent $7000 on such abortions.  I believe there were 11 of them.  Not a big expenditure.  I am guessing that the cost of those women giving birth and raising the children (when they lived at all) would greatly exceed the cost of the abortions.  Presumably, this is a way to make sure the state does not have anything to do with supporting abortion in any way.  Our governor, Bob McDonnell, is a strong proponent of anti-choice.

Thousands of people raised their voices in protest.  Here's a link to one of the Facebook sites which is being used to organize resistance.  One day we all rallied at the General Assembly, in silence, to ask our legislators to please not pass these bills.  Over 1100 people were there: women, men, children, nuns, women in burqas.  It was a completely civil protest.  Afterwards we went to our senators' and delegates' offices to state our opinions.  The aides were very courteous and took our opinions down to share with their bosses.  Such protests continued all week, with folks filling the GA gallery, wearing their red armbands to indicate their affiliation and desires.

I followed the happenings on FB and online as the GA passed the Vaginal Probe bill.  It was modified to indicated that an abdominal sonogram could be used (completely useless medically) and that women who were raped or who suffered incest could forgo it.  but it passed.  The governor, who is potentially under consideration as a VP candidate, signed it into law.

The Personhood bill did not pass.  It was passed over until next session.

The bill to keep low income women from having a state-funded abortion died in the State Finance Committee.

I don't know the fate of the abortion bill.

Here's a link to a terrific article outlining more than I've written if you're interested.

All these bills and the threat they offer to our hard won rights as women have turned me into an activist.  I feel personally threatened and enraged as a woman even though my childbearing years have passed.  I want my daughter and granddaughters and nieces and everyone else to have the right to make their own choices about their own bodies.  It's a horrible choice to have to make to terminate a pregnancy, but it is none of my business what another woman decides.  How can I possibly think I have the right to legislate her choice?  Adding shame and public humiliation to the mix is just not helpful.  It does not improve society or community, and it certainly won't stop people from having sex.

OK, enough rant.

Here's what I'm doing about it:  a couple of friends and I have decided to compile an anthology of personal stories about abortion.  Below I will paste the letter we sent out asking folks to submit their stories about abortion if they feel so moved.  Please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might be interested.  We are also interested in stories from people who chose NOT to have abortions, who had their children or who gave them up for adoption.  This is an exceedingly complex issue, and we want the book to hold that complexity with gentleness and honor. 

Dear Friends,

The current explosion of political and media attention on the subject of abortion and reproductive rights has prompted much thought, discussion and activism among us. Clearly, there are many outspoken proponents of a woman’s right to choose and the unborn’s right to life. However, while the statistics say 3 in 10 women have had an abortion in her lifetime, these women and their experiences are faceless and obscure. There seems to be a predominant veil of silence about a woman’s experience sometimes even among close friends. We’ve noticed little to no attention has been given to the implications for and affects on women who have chosen to have an abortion in our modern day culture.

Given this fact we are inspired to gather and share the real stories of women who have made the choice to terminate a pregnancy or who have chosen to continue with an unwanted pregnancy and to raise the child or to give it up for adoption. We have decided to compile an anthology of women’s stories of their experiences with this challenging choice. We are contacting friends like you to see if you have a story that you would like to share. Or if you know someone who would be interested in sharing his or her story,please pass this letter on to him or her. We hope to include a broad range of experiences and perspectives. Along those lines, we are also open to submissions from partners or loved ones of a woman who has had an abortion.

If you have a story you want to share, here are the submission details:

^·          Notify us of your intention to submit your story by March 30, 2012.  Write us at facesofabortion@hotmail.com

·         2-12 pages, personal essay, prose or poetry submitted by June 1, 2012 to facesofabortion@hotmail.com.  We welcome receiving them earlier as we are trying to get the book done in record time!

·         Submit in Word

·         This will be one-time rights

·         We intend to notify you by August 1, 2012 if your piece will be included in the anthology.

·         Compensation for chosen submissions has not been finalized.

We hope to have the book finished and ready to go by Oct 1, 2012 in the hopes it can have an impact on the political races this Fall.  We are still looking for a publisher, so if you have contacts to agents or publishers, please let us know.

Thank you for your willingness to share your story.  This is in service to all humanity.

Sincerely,

Susan Singer, Joan Maher, Leslie Lytle

Lasting Impressions IV

Since everyone else has shared, I guess it's only fair that I share things people said to me which left lasting impressions as well.

I was raised by a dad who was as loving as a man can be, but he definitely had a prejudice against fat (probably because he was inordinately skinny himself).  He told me frequently as a child to hold my stomach in or I would end up with an ugly belly.  In high school I got into the routine of doing 100, up to 200, sit ups a night to try to flatten my stomach.  I realize that my stomach will never, ever be flat, no matter what I do.  God did not make me that way, any more than he gave me black hair or purple skin.

My siblings were both very thin by nature and are younger than I am, so to goad me when we were kids, they'd sing to me: "Fatty, fatty, two by four, can't get through the bathroom door."  I had the perception that I was fat even though, from looking at pictures, I can see that I wasn't.  I was a normal sized child with a somewhat protruding belly.  I was flattened by their teasing though.  I wish I'd had the self-assurance to get right back in their faces and tell them to shut up - or whatever other childish epithet might have worked!  Instead, I carried the belief that I was overweight into my 20's or 30's.  The reality was that I was 5'6" and weighed 118 most of that time.
 

When I was pregnant, I was embarrassed to be seen by my dad because my stomach was so fat.  Somehow I didn't think that he'd know the difference between pregnant and fat.  The first artwork I did was of pregnant women.  I think it was an attempt for me to come to terms with my pregnant body and to claim its beauty and sensuality, to love that overly huge belly with its extraordinary life-giving capability.

Later dad told me that once women have babies, they get fat, so I'd better do whatever I could to not let that happen to me.  I did because his opinion mattered so much to me.  Six weeks after my oldest child was born, I started doing aerobics 3 times/week and continued until 3 days before my second child was born.  A bit immoderate, if I do say so myself.

In high school, one of my friends, a boy, told me, "Martin, [his nickname for me], you sure do have a cute butt!"  Ever since then, I've felt cute and sassy as I walk, knowing my butt is cute!

As a young woman of 23, I was entering into the world of mothering and childbirth as my older women friends became mothers.  The husband of one of them was flirting with me in a way that was uncomfortable to me - I didn't like the way he leered at me - but one thing this man said to me stuck with me in a good way - he told me my hips are perfect for birthing babies.  Before that I had felt a bit uncomfortable with the size of my hips which are womanly, so for him to say that put things into a completely different perspective.  It led me to feel positive and hopeful about giving birth, empowered that I would be great at it.  That expectation and affirmation proved true.  I'm grateful for his comment - that one, at least!

A friend of mine told me she hates big aureoles then pointed out that I have very big ones.  Until that moment I hadn't particularly known what aureoles were or that mine were larger than anyone else's.

Mostly I was raised to be pretty oblivious to things of the flesh - I didn't wear a lot of makeup or worry much about how I looked or obsess about pimples or flat feet or whatever - thunder thighs, a fat ass, tiny breasts, too-long fingers, crooked nose - thankfully I didn't get a lot of messages about things that were wrong - or right - about me.  I felt pretty most of the time and believed that my beauty came from within.  I felt beautiful when I smiled and still believe that's true.

It wasn't until a few years ago that I started thinking much about how I look because I started gaining weight.  I have put on 15 pounds in the last 10 years, and I don't feel good about it.  My doctor told me that "women of a certain age" start putting on weight and there's very little that can be done about it.  I'm not yet willing to accept that, nor the inevitable decline into pudginess and invisibility which seems to happen to many 50+ women.  I've spent a couple of several-month-long stints at the gym and am about to start another one.  I like building up my strength and feeling more muscles, but it doesn't help me lose weight.  My stomach now has a roll of fat above it below my breasts.  I am not impressed.  I don't like it.  I guess I'll see if I can whittle it down a bit again.  (Why?  Because I feel bad about getting "fat", no matter how aware I am, no matter how many affirmations I say, no matter what, I am judging myself for how I look, much to my chagrin!)

Of course all of the above are some of the myriad reasons that I'm passionate about women's body image.  I'm trying to heal the negative messages I've gotten, and I'd love to help people become more aware of what they're saying so other people don't get hurt by insensitive, unconscious statements much less by consciously cruel comments.  I think if I had been more secure about how I looked/look, I would have been impervious to what others said about me (though perhaps not my family's comments - who can be immune to those?)  If I had realized that I am not my appearance, none of it would have mattered anyway.  But those are difficult things to become aware of as a teenager.  Heck, they're hard to realize and KNOW as an adult.  I'm still working hard to stay ahead of my own self-judgments and to feel consistently good about myself.

It's a lifelong journey.  I guess I'll just keep on keeping on til I'm there...  Thanks for joining  me for at least this segment of it.

After I finished Valley's Folds yesterday, I realized I still had a lot of time to play in the studio, so I looked through scores of images to pick another one which would be good to do in pastels.  I found one I've loved for about 18 years since I took it.  I used to photograph my friends when they were pregnant as their gift from me to them and their family.  This is one of those pictures.  The woman in it was in my Women's Group.  She taught Pregnancy Yoga and taught me so much about being in my body and being pregnant.  She was quite intuitive and compassionate.  She was studying to be a midwife and attended many, many births with the local midwife, including the birth of my youngest child.  She moved from Richmond some years ago, and I've lost track of her.  It's quite a loss.  I dearly loved having her in my life.  Perhaps she'll see this image and get in touch again.  That would be so lovely.

I don't think it's obvious when looking at this image, but my friend is pregnant in it, waiting for the birth of her third daughter.  I have several images from our photo shoot that day I'd like to draw.  Such a beautiful woman, so full of soul.  I hope she is happy and prospering wherever she may be...