A book to add to my very long list of books to read: Dr. Susan Wicklund’s “This Common Secret:  My Journey as an Abortion Doctor.” In her book, Dr. Wicklund, an abortion provider who flies into underserved areas to perform abortions, takes on the abortion taboo.

We don’t talk about it,” she said in a telephone interview. “People say, ‘Nobody I know has ever had an abortion,’ and that is just not true. Their sisters, their mothers have had abortions.”

She’s right. We don’t talk about abortion. We don’t talk about how common it is. We don’t question loudly enough our tacit acceptance of abortion as something shameful. And - and this is a hard pill even for many RJ advocates to swallow - we don’t talk about how even with all the prevention in the world, abortion would still exist, would still be central to women’s reproductive health, and must still be legal.

That said, Dr. Wicklund’s not perfect. It seems she too is focused on the line of rhetoric we have been fed — the idea that the central problem of abortion opponents is that they do not support prevention, say. Yes, this hypocrisy is central to their advocacy, but it’s only one of many many hypocrisies. What about the fact that the antiabortion movement is also, on the whole, against childcare subsidies and universal healthcare, and even SCHIP?  What about the fact that a so-called “pro-life” stance should include helping protect the lives of teenagers by teaching them, through comprehensive sex-ed, how to prevent STDs? What about public financing for abortions (are you listening Mr. Hyde, you freedom of medal winner you?) so that women who want to terminate their pregnancies can do so as early as possible - when it’s safest and when Dr. Wicklund actually performs abortions?

I don’t want to bite a generous hand - and Dr. Wicklund certainly gets a lot of it right. But if we’re going to stop being so ashamed to talk about abortion, we’ve got to really talk. Not only about abortion per se, but about abortion as an integral part of a patchwork of social justice initiatives and conversations.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 4:07 am and is filed under poverty, words, feminisms, abortion, education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.