The following letter was received by Salon magazine.
“I’ve had an abortion. And I think women’s rights are important. But, to state the obvious, abortion is a terrible thing to go experience. It isn’t cool. It’s a private grief.
It isn’t something to broadcast on a T-Shirt. It isn’t a cheesy slogan. Like “I had a great time at the abortion clinic today” or “Guess where I where I went over spring break?” Yes, standing up for women’s rights is important. But trivializing, or diminishing, an agonizing life changing choice is not the way to go about it. I am not proud of the loss that I’ve had; I’m grief stricken. I’ve often found that having a normal human ambivalence about this issue is not O.K. with activists on either side.
That day, when I was in the recovery room, after the abortion, a women who was less sick than me stood up to leave and the nurse said flippantly “oh I wouldn’t want to waste my day,either.” As if the woman had just stopped in to pick up her dry-cleaning. The woman turned around for a moment to stare at the nurse. She said, “I hope I never see you again” and slammed the door.
“Say it sister” are the exact words that I thought then, as I leaned over to throw up again.”
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Salon.com, Letters
Say it sister, I had an abortion: 8/4/2006