One of Many

in English, 144 pages,
Jennifer Trouton, October 01, 2024
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This book started in the archives. It began as a series of stories hidden in medical records, coroners’ reports, witness statements, jury verdicts, newspaper clippings and incriminating letters from lovers and abortion providers. The pregnant women involved were single, married, widowed and separated, aged from their teens up to their forties. They were mothers already or had no children. They were city women and country women, they were domestic servants, typists, nurses, factory workers and schoolgirls. Some were wooed and romanced, cared for and proposed to. Some were ignored and exploited, dumped at bus stops, abused on country lanes and raped by their employers. The forgotten women from the archives were as many and as varied as the unknown women who live today. Each woman was an individual, but all were united by a common trait; they were pregnant, and they did not want that pregnancy to result in a birth.

The women who have generously written short pieces for this book are in some way connected to the subject of abortion. They include activists, academics, filmmakers, authors, museum curators and abortion providers. Their starting point was the artwork, but their destinations are ultimately guided by their own backgrounds and their areas of interest. Their writing, like this book, is intended to be a conversation starter. It is presented in the hope that it will push back on the lie that women do not want or need access to safe, legal and local abortion provision. This is a conversation that each generation is forced to have, because if we say nothing, our silence will be taken as consent.