Bringing Abortion Rights to the Ts
Rebecca Hyman / WINTER 2005
THERE’S A NEW FRONT IN THE BATTLE FOR ABORTION RIGHTS—the literal front, that is, of a T-shirt designed by writer and feminist activist Jennifer Baumgardner. It proclaims, “I had an abortion.” The shirt, initially for sale on Planned Parenthood’s national website and now available on
Clamor
magazine’s website, has generated controversy among antiabortion folks and pro-choice feminists alike.
Inspired in part by the bold irreverence of second-wave feminists, who circulated a petition proclaiming the fact of their own abortions and published it in the first issue of Ms., Baumgardner created the T-shirt to combat the stigma that still shames and silences those who have had an abortion. The shirt is one component of a multipart project she conceived to document the history of abortion through personal stories, including a film featuring interviews with women who have had abortions, a guidebook to busting through the gridlock on the abortion debate, and resource cards to help women locate abortion services and obtain postabortion counseling.
The shirt has certainly fulfilled Baumgardner’s hope that it would start a conversation about abortion, but the very brevity of its message has had an unanticipated consequence. Although it’s no surprise that individuals such as Jim Sedlak, executive director of the American Life League’s STOPP International, think the shirt “celebrates an act of violence” and
demonstrates that Planned Parenthood “lacks any sense of integrity, tact, and compassion,” it’s interesting to note that many pro-choice feminists are ambivalent about—or even angered by—the shirt’s message. Why, they ask, is the abortion fight taking place on something as public and casual as a T-shirt?
In one respect, using a T-shirt to proclaim the reality of abortion in plain language is the perfect antidote to the climate of fear that informs the ongoing battle for women’s reproductive rights. The Bush administration’s attack on sex education and prenatal care, as well as abortion, is taking place in multiple arenas: the gag rule, limits on stem-cell research funds, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban’s vague and overbroad language, and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (which creates a precedent in which the fetus is granted the legal status of a person).
In the face of such a far-reaching anti-choice agenda, T-shirts proclaiming abortion histories would seem a forceful response. As Barbara Ehrenreich recently reminded readers in a
New York Times
editorial, “Abortion is legal—it’s just not supposed to be mentioned or acknowledged as an acceptable option.” Since
Roe v. Wade,
she writes, “at least 30 million American women” have had abortions, “a number that amounts to about 40 percent of American women.” Yet according to a 2003 survey conducted by a pro-choice organization, “only 30 percent of women were unambivalently pro-choice.” Ehrenreich logically surmises that many women who refuse to state publicly that they are pro-choice have nevertheless obtained safe, legal abortions. To be vocal about abortion—not by supporting an abstract “freedom of choice” but instead by naming abortion as a fact of women’s experience—is thus to break the dual threat of political and private shaming that keeps women silent.
Like Ehrenreich, who called for women to “take your thumbs out of your mouths, ladies, and speak up for your rights,” Baumgardner sees a direct correlation between the increase in women’s speech and the increase in their rights. “When women were most vocal about their experiences of abortion,” she says,
“Roe v. Wade
was enacted. Now that women are silent about their experiences of abortion, we are seeing a decline in their reproductive rights.” Given this history, it’s no surprise that Planned Parenthood, which initially agreed to sell two hundred shirts on its website, sold out so quickly that it had to refer potential customers to Baumgardner’s site
to meet the demand. Ehrenreich wears her shirt to the gym; Ani DiFranco wore hers to an interview with
Inc.
, an apolitical business magazine. When the photograph of DiFranco sporting the shirt and holding her guitar appeared, readers wrote to the editors to protest, sparking an extended dialogue about abortion rights on Fresh Inc., the magazine’s blog.
I spoke with many women in the Atlanta area about the shirt, most of whom were pro-choice feminists, and heard it called tacky, cavalier, simplistic, arrogant, cool, shameful, and brave. One twenty-four-year-old woman found the shirt offensive because it returns the abortion debate to the public realm. “The whole purpose of abortion rights,” she told me, “is to ensure that a woman can make her own decision about her body, in private, without having to seek permission from anyone else—not even her partner.” A woman wearing the T-shirt, she explained, is asking for comments of approval or disapproval from men and women. “My body is mine,” she said, “and I shouldn’t have to justify or announce my decisions to anyone else.”
Another woman told me that, though she’s pro-choice herself, she couldn’t understand why a woman would announce her abortion unless she was doing so as a matter of pride. “Does she want me to think about the fact that she had an abortion every time I see her?” she wondered. “Because if I saw her wearing the shirt, that is what would stay with me, even if she never wore it again.” I asked why she was associating a factual statement with the sentiment of boastfulness. “Because it’s on a T-shirt,” her friend chimed in. “Like the one I have that says, ‘No One Knows I’m a Lesbian.’” Her statement was greeted by nods of approval from the other women who were listening to our conversation.
And what about the shirt as a fashion statement? If a woman wears the shirt because she likes it but hasn’t had an abortion herself, she could be seen as an ally in the struggle, or she could be faulted for appropriating another woman’s experience—or, worse, disregarding it altogether. It all depends on the way others perceive her. An activist from California told me that she wants to see as many women as possible wearing the shirt, regardless of whether they’ve had an abortion, to “participate in the collective destigmatizing of the procedure.” To represent the fact of abortion, as the shirt certainly does, is not equivalent to representing experience. It’s only an opening line.
The negative reaction many feminists have to the shirt reveals a fundamental contradiction in the current state of pro-choice politics—or, more precisely, the extent to which those who are pro-choice feel ashamed, at some level, to support abortion. The fact that so many women read a simple statement as a “celebration” of the procedure speaks volumes about the feelings women have internalized as a consequence of the conservative assault on women’s rights. Although most of the women I spoke with were uneasy about their response to the shirt, repeatedly insisting that they were pro-choice even as they told me they would never wear it, some reacted to a photograph of the shirt with anger.
“The only reason anyone would wear such a shirt would be to piss people off,” one nineteen-year-old woman snorted. “No one who was serious about supporting abortion rights would wear it.” Those who saw the shirt as an aggressive tactic also thought it was perfect ammunition for the antiabortion movement, playing into the propaganda that paints pro-choice women as glorying in the selfish taking of a life. And judging from the comments on conservative blogs like Outside the Beltway and Baby Center, this argument has some merit. Amid the usual vitriol and sardonic humor (one person wrote that the back of the shirt should say “Roe
v.
Wade—Eliminating Future Democrats One Choice at a Time”) is a sense that, by creating a T-shirt so many would see as offensive, the pro-choice movement had intentionally sought to outrage the Christian right.
In fact, the fear that the shirt could inflame the existing passions of the anti-choice movement has led some Planned Parenthood affiliates to condemn it. Leola Reis, Planned Parenthood of Georgia’s vice president of communications, education, and outreach, told me the chapter had not been consulted about the national organization’s decision to sell the shirts. “Women have enough trouble trying to secure safe and legal abortions without having to become the unwitting victims of pro-life wrath,” she says. Though she understands the intention behind the shirt, she’s not sure it will have a positive effect on the actual experience of women trying to attain abortions in such a conservative time. Chapters of Planned Parenthood in Idaho, North Carolina, and South Carolina have criticized the shirt outright, and Planned Parenthood Canada distanced itself from the controversy by saying, via its website, that it “cannot comment on the approach” taken by Planned Parenthood of America.
It’s important to recognize the extent to which the attention of the pro-choice movement has shifted away from the bodies and lives of women who need abortions and toward those who aim to strip women of the right to control their reproductive lives. So it’s not surprising that a large part of the movement is plagued by the notion that anti-choicers riled up by the sight of women proclaiming their abortions on their chests will want to step up their efforts to deny them this power. Given this fear, it would seem a smart strategy to keep quiet, stay under the radar, and hope that women will vote anti-choice legislators out of office. Such a focus, however, ignores the effect pro-choice speech, including the shirt, might have on a woman feeling isolated and ashamed because she had an abortion or is considering it. A public sisterhood of those who have chosen abortion, for a variety of personal reasons, could do a lot to counteract the hateful rhetoric of the anti-choice movement.
Baumgardner’s T-shirt is a lightning rod for the emotions that surround the abortion issue—especially among feminists—because it forces the current unspoken contradiction of the pro-choice movement into public speech. Keeping quiet might seem like a smart political tactic, but when women muzzle themselves because they are afraid, their silence can masquerade as the appearance of support for an anti-choice agenda. If we don’t break the silence about abortion, our right to control our reproductive destiny will never seem as natural as the right to wear our political opinions on a shirt.
A Spunky, Adventurous American Girl
Anne Elizabeth Moore / SPRING 2005
JUST OFF MICHIGAN AVENUE IN CHICAGO EXISTS A PLACE where girls shop in special boutiques, dine in specially constructed chairs, and beautify themselves at the hands of trained experts. There’s even an onsite hospital in case of a medical emergency such as decapitation, a plight suffered tragically often by this community. For here, American Girls are given everything they desire. At least the dolls are: I was hassled for two hours, escorted out of the store by the cops, and told never to return upon penalty of immediate arrest.
A three-floor worship center for the female consumer, American Girl Place exists to hone a sense of class and race privilege, and to foster in youth the ability to locate, and financially capitalize on, difference and tragedy. Shoppers grab small cards printed with pictures of the American Girl dolls—like Addy, who was born into slavery in 1864 and escapes with her mother to the North, or Kit, who lives during the Great Depression—as well as a brief description and a price. The cards are meant to be contained in small maroon folders imprinted with the phrase “Pocket full of wishes.” It’s a brilliant scheme: These can be brought to the nearest cash register or, as the folders brightly suggest, brought home as souvenirs, whereupon the cards can be flipped over and the pictured item ordered via the handy tollfree number.
I like American Girl Place, especially compared to the other screwy options
offered to young girls in our culture. Parent company Mattel uses the American Girl products to teach history and instill an early sense of self-worth into a diverse array of young lives. In teaching consumers about the lives of past girls, however, Mattel conveniently avoids showing them the reality of female futures. So I planned American Girl Project: Operation Pocket Full of Wishes, and created a batch of cards that mimicked American Girl shopping aids and included the following actual wishes of actual girls: Equal Pay for Equal Work, Self-Confidence, Healthy Body Images, Safe and Effective Birth Control, Ample Career Opportunities, Safe and Legal Abortion Access, and Free Tampons. These were described by the phrase “not pictured” and priced at $0. I took the “Pocket full of wishes” folders home, placed the cards inside, and returned them to the slots whence they had originated at American Girl Place. (Since the inside of the sleeves does offer the option of taking them home, it is completely acceptable to have removed them from the premises.)
No crimes were committed, no acts of civil disobedience were undertaken. In fact, two hours of intimidation and interrogation by security guards succeeded only in acknowledging that the messages I had planted were consistent with American Girl Place’s stated values. (One guard flipped through the cards mumbling comments like “Well, everyone agrees with that,” while the other, I am convinced, kept a set for herself.) And still: a frisking and between eight and ten on-duty Chicago police officers—fully armed and wearing protective body armor—were apparently required to keep the girls safe from such notions as Domestic Partnership Benefits.
Outside on the street, one of the officers tried to bad-cop me. “Next time you wanna commit your freedom-of-speech thing, you’re going to have to do it out here on the street. And only to adults!”
“So, American Girl Place doesn’t allow freedom of speech on its premises?” I asked him. I knew I was provoking him, but—like Kaya, a Nez Percé Indian girl from 1764—I just can’t keep my mouth shut when there’s a point to be made.