This story is published at Instagram.
Between February 2014 and October 2017, I received four legal abortions through Planned Parenthood in Merriville, Indiana; Kalamazoo, Michigan; and Indianapolis, Indiana respectively.
I know a thing or two (or four) about the current discourse.
Political systems (as well as some radicalized interpretations of religion) are condensing the complexity of s•x, pregnancy, and abortion into a rigid duality that serves only their stakes in the exhausting debate.
A polarized approach from either end is harmful because it bears absolutely no equity in representing the limitless realities of individual lived experiences.
My first pregnancy and consequent abortion at the age of nineteen hurdled me onto a path of awakening to the incomprehensible mystery of existence that I have been trying (and failing, naturally) to resolve for almost ten years now.
Abortion is simultaneously everything and nothing offered by opposing forces struggling to define it—where Life “begins” and where Life “ends” merge into a singular phenomenon preserved by impenetrable secrecy.
What I do know is that the only shame I have ever felt about my abortions has been social—never personal or spiritual—and this burden is equally true for most pregnant people seeking (or having sought) abortion healthcare services.
Last Saturday, I hand-painted my “♡ FOUR ♡ ABORTIONS / ZERO REGRETS” sign alone on my living room floor while listening to a randomly curated punk playlist with my beloved cat sleeping nearby on the couch—it was a cathartic, peaceful, and intimate headspace for me to savor.
Eventually it connected me to an epiphany of being divinely protected from the constructs of abortion stigma.
On Monday, I rallied to defend the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in favor of “Jane Roe” (Norma McCorvey) beside my unconditionally supportive family and dozens of comrades who made me feel honored, seen, celebrated, Loved, powerful, brave. . .
This visceral sense of Soul serenity belongs to every one of us who has had three or more abortions.
I am proudly in the fight to secure the safety of being able to declare ourselves autonomously competent beyond all political, theological, and civil rage against us.
I AM PRO-ABORTION because I think critically enough to understand pregnancy (*resulting from consensual s•x) as an act of both free will and fate; and the decisions we make about any and all pregnancies that happen to us are acts of self-governing discretion as much as they are acts of God.