"I had mine in Harrisburg. Where did you have yours?"

a gathering of voices

We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.”

Malala Yousafzai

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, erasing the constitutional right to bodily autonomy from over a hundred million people in the United States. To commemorate the date, I am sharing a writing project created in response to the ruling. If you are familiar with unspoken or contributed a story, thank you for your ongoing support. If you are new to me or this newsletter, I appreciate you being here because when the unimaginable has become our reality, our voices and stories matter all the more.

A special thank you to Claudia Pretelin and Instruments of Memory: Conversations with Women in the Arts for your support of the work from the beginning—I couldn’t have done it without you.

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On June 24, 2022, in a sweeping and historic decision, the U.S. Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v. Wade, declaring that the constitutional right to abortion, one upheld for nearly a half-century, ceased to exist. 

It was a ruling that swiftly and decisively affected the lives of every person in this country but weighs most heavily upon any individual capable of carrying a child to term, particularly Black and other women of color.

The decision to terminate a pregnancy is not an uncommon experience: nearly one in four women in the United States will undergo an abortion by age 45 for reasons that are deeply personal, yet the stigma around abortion has generationally silenced women for fear of repercussion.

Abortion stories are unspoken stories.

The narrative thread of motherhood will be one forever woven through our collective human consciousness, connecting our unique stories, both fragile and fierce. They are tau(gh)t stories that begin within a reproductive body, and the cost, the courage, and the choice to give birth should remain a choice all the mother’s own.

Rebecca Traister has written how decades of silence had left us unprepared for a post-Roe world, as well as the ensuing battle forward: 

The fewer stories that get told, the more representational weight each one carries. Each individual narrative is asked to stand in for so much, rather than exist simply as one grain of sand on a beach’s worth of reproductive experience. In the lived world, abortion isn’t some heavily weighted reality siloed off from the rest of life, health care, and humanity. 

Abortion is life, health care, and humanity.

unspoken was conceived as a space for women to share their abortion stories. Women were asked to consider how they remembered and interpreted a specific moment in their lives. To reflect upon their experience of a moment of need because we are in a moment of urgency again.

The unspoken stories we received were personal, powerful, and poignant. They became the pages of a digital commonplace book interweaving the stories of women who chose to terminate a pregnancy with Cynthia Mulcahy’s series Abortion Bouquet: An Action. 

Mulcahy makes “abortion bouquets” from traditional abortifacient plants for artists, activists, abortion rights advocates, and allies: contemporary women holding bouquets imbued with the ancient wisdom of midwives. 

Together unspoken explores the multiplicity of ways stories speak through silence and speech. The project offers visual and verbal tropes of women, of how they have (always) been the silent keepers of their reproductive health and safety, and in a post-Roe world, will be called to interpret and navigate again.

unspoken is an act of defiance. The storytellers share their fierceness, and we appreciate their courage. Together these stories create a bouquet, and what were once secrets ceded have become potent seeds to be scattered and sown.

At this critical historical juncture, abortion stories can no longer be held in secret or shame. They must be shared in support and service to generations of future women, to actively be unspoken no more.

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Since the initial publication of unspoken, many women have continued to reach out to me to share in story, and gather our voices—the work is as relevant today as it was a year ago, perhaps even more.

Although I haven’t determined the most suitable container, I am committed to this being an ongoing project. If you would like to become more involved in any capacity, please contact me personally or share this post!

In closing, I leave you with a few thoughts from others in reflection and solidarity for where we go from here:

This American Life: Nine Months Later

“You’ve Never Had An Abortion, Have You?”

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