[November 13's] live-streamed "one in three" speak-out made me realize that even as a staunch reproductive rights advocate, a clinic escort, and a feminist, I still have to battle my own internalized abortion stigma.
That quote comes from Chanel Dubofsky writing about how "Abortion Speak-Outs Can Combat Our Own Stigma Too."
An e-mail that feminists Rosalyn Baxandall (who participated in the original 1969 speak-out) and Katha Pollitt sent to friends raised nearly all the money I needed to get the film going in less than two weeks.
Women are perhaps even quieter than they were pre-Roe, when at least a few hundred feminists held speak-outs and signed public petitions about their illegal abortions.
Imagine the protests, the
speak-outs, the do-it-yourself teach-ins, the civil disobedience, the calls for judicial impeachment, the recall elections.
You get outrageous and decentralized "actions" that recall the Redstockings' 1968 Miss America protest and abortion
speak-outs.
It made me remember again the early days of abortion
speak-outs when there was less effort to justify ourselves, when the very desperation of our search proved the sincerity of our need.
There is ample evidence that attitudes illustrated by these examples were predominant at the teach-ins and
speak-outs organized at many colleges and universities in the wake of September 11.
Over a year and a half of mobilizing since the Seattle events -- including teach-ins and
speak-outs around the FTAA, planning direct-action training, preparing detailed logistical plans for outreach and coalition-building, and reading anti-capitalist theorists like Susan George, George Monbiot, Vandana Shiva and Walden Bello -- has seen the development of a new layer of well-informed activists and effective coalitions.
Through consciousness raising,
speak-outs and action groups, feminism modeled a format for talking about emotional and relational concerns.
In the tradition of the consciousness-raising groups and feminist
speak-outs of the 1970s, these feminist mothers explore forbidden topics and make "bad-mother" confessions.
Feminist thought about the family, our
speak-outs and consciousness-raising groups, have left their mark on these two motherhood books, which openly share "bad-mothering" stories, pain and confusion, along with recognition of the pleasures and power in mothering children.