This brief has personal stories from 368 legal professionals describing how their own abortions improved their lives. It is so moving. I really encourage people to read the whole thing but here are some highlights:
â [T]he morning I woke up and was not pregnant, I had a feeling of having narrowly escaped the end of all hope for my life. I was eighteen â
â After the abortion, I finally escaped the abuse, quit my job, and went to law school. I would never have been able to help the people Iâve helped as a lawyer had I not been allowed the freedom to determine my own future, by controlling my own body at a pivotal point in my life.â
â I am haunted that, in another life, I would have been forced to ascribe to my legislatorsâ personal religious and moral beliefs and continue my pregnancy. Legislators who knew nothing of my pregnancy or fetal diagnoses. Legislators who would not have had to endure the physical trauma or emotional anguish of delivering my child to his death sentence, or sit by his side and feel the unrelenting pain of his diagnoses, day after day. Legislators who would not have to physically and financially ensure his best possible treatment while tending to the needs of our first born.â
âMy mother died in 1959, leaving four children, a successful husband and heartbroken parents. She was 31. I was 11 years old and abortion was not legal. My mother used a knitting needle and was dead of sepsis within 24 hours. More than loss of career or marriage, or disability, she lost her life. And she was just one of thousands of girls 25 and women who died in that terrible, wasteful way. I grew up without a mother and my family was emotionally splintered and set adrift in many ways by her death.â
â Identifying myself publicly brings me fear of reprisal from my colleagues and my broader community in South Carolina, many of whom are deeply religious and against abortion. I suspect that many would (and will) see me differentlyâas morally inferiorâupon learning that I have had an abortion. Many of my students write passionately against abortion in their class papers, so exposing myself also brings a risk of backlash from them. These fears contribute to a great anxiety about my name being published on this list. At the same time, I feel a sense of duty to identify myself and to clarify that abortions are something that all women benefit from having access to. â
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