Reproductive Justice and Abortion

Our guest today is Adrienne van der Valk. She is the creator and host of Feminist Hotdog, a podcast for people of all genders who want to answer this question, “What does it mean to lead a feminist life?” for themselves. She uplifts everyday feminism and feminist heroes and celebrates women and nonbinary people as an act of resistance.

You can learn more at her website: https://www.feministhotdog.com/
and listen to her podcast at: https://www.feministhotdog.com/listen-1

In every episode of this podcast I read a blog post I’ve written and we follow up with a conversation about the topic at hand and what it means for women and their ability to thrive after abortion. Happy listening and as always feel free to send me your reflections and questions.

Important conversations about mental and emotional health after abortion. You don't just have to survive, you can thrive. Hosted by Certified Life Coach Amanda Kingsley this podcast is a series of conversations about abortion with an intention to: LIGHTen the load women carry, LIGHTen the stigma culture has created, help women tap into inner LIGHT and strength, shed some LIGHT where there is darkness, and put a spotLIGHT on an important women's health reality.

Show notes: 

• 5:39
  Guest Intro and “Feminist Hotdog” Back Story

• 7:21
  “...if we only focus on resistance which is what I was doing, you can get worn down very very quickly.”

• 9:57
  Mentioned Links: Mawiyah Patten, SisterSong, Black Women For Wellness

• 10:06
  “Quick & Dirty” version of Reproductive Rights vs. Reproductive Justice

• 17:07
  “Interrogate that statement” not the person saying it…

• 17:32
  “...if we can think about systems, and we can think about structures…” What messages are our institutions sending us about reproductive justice?

• 19:29
  “What does it mean to raise a family and how does that influence our choice to abort?”

• 21:31
  When the conversations we’re having don’t match the realities of the people… this is the foundation of reproductive justice

• 22:57
  ...understanding something you’ve never not had… privilege

• 28:33
  “Often our first response to something is our social conditioning”

• 32:39
  choose what you go all in on

• 33:30
  “There’s no one way to be a feminist.”

A few links Adrienne thought you might enjoy:

https://www.sistersong.net/reproductive-justice

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/reproductive-justice-not-just-rights

https://www.colorlines.com/articles/reproductive-justice-advocates-speak-we-must-fight-future-includes-all-us-op-ed

The post:

I had privilege.
I had access.
I had knowledge.
I had support.

And I still had such a hard time when faced with abortion.

I felt like a puppet on someone else’s strings... flailing, flopping, floundering beneath the magnitude of what was unfolding. To take back the strings of my own puppet show I had to decide that I wanted to be in control again. I wanted to do the work. I wanted to face all the feelings that were swirling inside me. I had to be the watcher of my own experience, and learn how to untangle and manipulate each string in the show. 

I don’t know what it’s like to live in skin that’s not white, to have been raised in a community that’s not safe, to feel alone and afraid in the world. These are things I do not take for granted, and differences that will always set me “apart” from an enormous population of women in the world.

Privilege and resource are tools that give us more control in our lives. Being human is complicated even when we feel like we have some control, and when we feel as if someone else holds the strings that direct our show, discouragement comes much easier. Rightly so, self-victimization feels like a much easier path to take than self-confidence. It can look like  helplessness, passivity, loss of control, pessimism, negative thinking, strong feelings of guilt, shame, self-blame and depression. 

Many people would say that privilege and resource give us more to work with, but I would argue that more importantly they give us less to navigate through. Fewer strings to untangle. 
With access in our hands, we have less to think about, less to balance, less to overcome, and this leaves us with a much clearer view of our destination. We can direct our own show when we can see where it’s headed. We become the puppeteer and the puppet. 

The social and political climate surrounding reproductive health is messy. No matter which angle you look from there’s a lot to clean up, a lot to untangle. To do that work, we have to be willing to widen our perspective, and we also have to be willing to clean up our own strings before we direct an entire marionette performance. As leaders in the field we have visions of what’s possible, but our greatest strides in progress will come one woman at a time. 

One woman
claiming privilege in her mind,
seeking access to untangle her strings,
acquiring  knowledge to use and share,
and finding support to do it all around people who believe in her.

Those of us who are born with, or have earned privilege in the world, are the space holders. We can set the stage for the show.

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If you are one of the 1 in 4 women who have had an abortion in your lifetime,
and you are not thriving the way you desire: