Plus de 200 000 femmes avortent chaque année en France, et une femme sur deux aura recours à l’IVG au moins une fois dans sa vie. Cet acte, pratiqué sous contrôle médical, est des plus simples. Pourtant, le parcours des femmes qui avortent l’est de moins en moins.

Le droit à l’IVG est doublement menacé : en pratique, par la casse méthodique du service public hospitalier, et dans les discours dominants, qui présentent l’avortement comme un drame, un traumatisme systématique. Ces discours culpabilisateurs sont autant de discours anti-IVG qui avancent masqués.

En mettant en avant des témoignages positifs et résolument décomplexés, il s’agit ici de réaffirmer que l’IVG ‘est un droit, c’est une solution, et c’est un choix qui doit être respecté. Il s’agit de revendiquer le droit d’avorter la tête haute.

صيف 2022 عندما قامت المحكمة الأمريكية العُليا بإلغاء الحق الدستوريّ في الإجهاض، ويستمر هجوم الجمهوريين على الحق في الإجهاض على مستوى الولايات الأمريكية المختلفة وعلى المستوى الفيدرالي وفي الوقت الذي تتراجع فيه الحماية القانونية والمجتمعية للحق في الإجهاض في بلدان الولايات المتحدة..نيكاراجوا..السلفادور…

مشاركة من عبدالسميع شاهين كل الاقتباسات —

À toutes celles qui sont mortes dans la clandestinité d’avoir refusé de mener à terme une grossesse qu’elles ne désiraient pas.

Elles ont 18, 24 ou 51 ans. Elles sont enceintes de trois semaines, un mois et demi ; parfois beaucoup plus. Souvent, elles sont déjà mères. De deux, trois, quatre, cinq ou six enfants. Elles ne peuvent plus « joindre les deux bouts ». Sont « capables du pire ». Elles ne veulent pas « engager la vie d’un petit être non désiré ». Elles souhaitent avorter. Alors, « l’espoir au cœur », elles écrivent à un médecin célèbre. À une époque où avorter est illégal, elles savent à quoi elles s’exposent mais elles sont déterminées.

Ces lettres pour un avortement illégal sont issues des archives de Choisir la cause des femmes. Témoignages historiques exceptionnels, elles tracent le portrait social et humain de celles qui étaient pénalisées pour avortement en France dans les années 1970. Ces voix nous ramènent à l’origine de nos luttes. Elles nous font connaître notre histoire pour pouvoir mieux l’écrire aujourd’hui et donnent de la force pour construire une Europe féministe, queer, intersectionnelle et antifasciste.

This collection of stories is the culmination of CommonHealth’s Lifeline Campaign, created to mark International Safe Abortion Day on 28th September 2024. In a time of escalating global challenges to reproductive rights and autonomy, this campaign was conceived as a counter-narrative to the anti-choice rhetoric that paints abortion as “anti-life”, cruel and inhumane. Such framing, steeped in stigma and moral policing, perpetuates harmful myths and denies people access to life-saving care. The Lifeline Campaign set out with an unequivocal goal: to reclaim the language of life and affirm that safe, legal abortion is not just a fundamental human right—it is essential to individual well-being, public health, and reproductive justice.

We issued a nationwide call for personal stories, inviting individuals to share their experiences with abortion—whether accessed through formal healthcare systems or alternative methods, including over-the-counter medication or unregulated providers. We believe these narratives are crucial in demonstrating that restrictions on abortion access do not prevent abortions from occurring but rather push individuals to seek potentially unsafe alternatives.

Je suis la preuve qu’un avortement peut provoquer l’indifférence ou une déflagration.Je suis la preuve qu’un même corps peut vivre deux fois ce même événement en mobilisant de façon totalement différente la tête qui le surplombe ou les émotions qui l’animent.Je suis la preuve qu’il peut occuper vingt ans ou les seules semaines nécessaires à son accomplissement.Qu’il peut être l’unique issue ou simplement permettre d’attendre un meilleur moment.Alors, j’ai été lasse des discours péremptoires et fermés sur les raisons pour lesquelles les femmes devraient y avoir recours et sur ce qu’elles devraient ou non ressentir à son occasion. J’ai été lasse et j’ai eu envie d’écouter certaines d’entre elles raconter ce qu’elles avaient vécu en refusant d’admettre que d’autres parlent pour elles.Ma préoccupation n’était pas le droit à l’avortement mais le droit à la parole de celles qui l’ont expérimenté. S. V. Un livre vibrant et incarné, dans lequel l’autrice brisele silence autour de l’IVG.

A galvanizing history of abortion recentering people of color to put forth a timely argument that we must liberate abortion for all. People of color have been having abortions since the dawn of time, yet our access is continuously under attack. In Liberating Abortion, award-winning abortion activist Renee Bracey Sherman and journalist Regina Mahone illustrate the long racist history that brought us to this moment, uncover the hidden figures who set the foundation activists and storytellers are building on today, and explain how abortion has been and remains essential to the health of our communities.

Liberating Abortion will take you back to the basics of sex education, detailing the traditions of abortion over centuries, while examining how society makes us feel about our experiences. You’ll find rigorous research, never-before-heard stories, and eye-opening interviews with over 50 people of color who’ve had abortions, including activists, actresses, television writers, politicians, and the two Black members of Jane, the Chicago feminist service that provided abortions before Roe. With poignant storytelling and precise analysis, Liberating Abortion will change how you think about abortion forever.

My Mom Had an Abortion is a unique coming-of-age tale told by a self-described dyslexic-asexual-lesbian-feminist teenager and illustrated by body-positive comic artist Tatiana Gill.

We follow our protagonist Beezus B. Murphy as she chronicles her evolving understanding of menstruation, reproduction, and abortion and finds her place in a confusing world. Initially influenced by harmful narratives in pop media such as the “the pregnant teenager” cliche, we watch Beezus’s ideas change as her body changes and as she learns more about the intricacies of her family history and her mom’s own reproductive experiences. She grows from a confused, out-of-place kid into a self-assured, empathetic, and strong-willed activist teen. As Beezus says, “People shouldn’t be shamed for getting or not getting abortions. Young people absorb the information that we gather from our surroundings. Sometimes it’s good information and other times it can be harmful. But now I realize abortion is perfectly normal and should be kept safe and legal.”

E-book, new edition: Twenty-five years after its publication in 1998, No Choice remains an essential read in Canada and around the world, where abortion rights are still under threat. These stories, spanning six decades, illustrate the terrifyingly dangerous means that people will resort to in order to end a pregnancy. This digital edition includes the original foreword from Doris Anderson, a new foreword, and a review from Michele Landsberg: “[No Choice] should be required reading for every student, every daughter, every elected man or woman who dares to think of meddling ever again with women’s reproductive rights.”

From the author of I Hate Men, a personal and political reflection on abortion rights. Discussion about abortion and associated rights are often limited to either ‘anti-abortion’ or ‘pro-choice’, the latter of which focuses on the importance of having the right to choose, rather than on what that right means for real people. In this timely essay, Pauline Harmange provides an intimate, detailed account of her abortion. Reminiscent of Annie Ernaux’s The Happening, Abortion is nuanced, complex, honest, and precise. Harmange gives voice to the emotions, reflections, and contradictions that someone could experience when they choose to terminate a pregnancy. At a time in which women’s reproductive rights are being called into question around the world, Abortion is a clarion call, a powerful personal testimony, and a resolutely political vision: to restore power to our experiences, all our experiences, by sharing them, and to transform society for the better.

Pauline Harmange, l’autrice de Moi, les hommes, je les déteste, nous livre dans Avortée un essai intime et documenté autour de son propre IVG. Alors que le droit à l’avortement est remis régulièrement en cause en France, comme ailleurs, elle présente ici les émotions, les réflexions et les contradictions que l’on peut avoir quand on est féministe et confrontée dans sa chair par l’avortement. C’est une vision résolument politique que l’autrice porte : redonner du pouvoir à nos vécus, tous nos vécus, pour mieux transformer la société.

Based on candid, in-depth interviews with women who considered but did not obtain an abortion, No Real Choice punctures the myth that American women have full autonomy over their reproductive choices. Focusing on the experiences of a predominantly Black and low-income group of women, sociologist Katrina Kimport finds that structural, cultural, and experiential factors can make choosing abortion impossible–especially for those who experience racism and class discrimination. From these conversations, we see the obstacles to “choice” these women face, such as bans on public insurance coverage of abortion and rampant antiabortion claims that abortion is harmful. Kimport’s interviews reveal that even as activists fight to preserve Roe v. Wade, class and racial disparities have already curtailed many women’s freedom of choice.

Told with care and sensitivity, No Real Choice gives voice to women whose experiences are often overlooked in debates on abortion, illustrating how real reproductive choice is denied, for whom, and at what cost.

Rosaura “Rosie” Jimenez was the first woman known to have died in the United States due to an illegal abortion after the Hyde Amendment was passed, whic prohibited funding of abortion for poor women on Medicaid. Rosie was unable to afford a legal abortion and died at age 27 in 1977 from an unsafe abortion in McAllen, Texas.

Focus on Abortion: Americans Share Their Stories, introduces the often-missing and most important voices in the abortion conversation: the voices of those who have experienced abortion.

Sixty individuals are featured. They have had an abortion or are close to the abortion experience, including partners, friends, relatives, counselors, and professionals who provide abortion care. Each person is represented by a photographic portrait and a first-person narrative. The storytellers come from diverse socio-economic backgrounds and generations.

These nuanced stories have the potential to mitigate the profound stigma that surrounds abortion. Few people talk about their abortions so many will be surprised to learn that one out of four women in the US will have an abortion during their reproductive years.

Storytelling has always been a tool for connection and social change since the beginning of time. More and more we’re hearing those who have had abortions share their stories to fight against the pressure to stay silent and isolated. Abortion storytellers are sharing their stories in the media, in their communities, and with loved ones. But how do advocates support public abortion storytellers and what should storytellers consider before sharing their stories? As someone who has both shared her abortion story in public, and an advocate supporting people who’ve had abortions and LGBT young people sharing their stories with lawmakers and the media, I wanted to gather all that I had learned from those experiences in one place.

For a long time, when people asked Dr. Meera Shah what she did, she would tell them she was a doctor and leave it at that. But over the last few years, Shah decided it was time to be direct. “I’m an abortion provider,” she will now say. And an interesting thing started to happen each time she met someone new. One by one, people would confide–at BBQs, at jury duty, in the middle of the greeting card aisle at Target– that in fact they’d had an abortion themselves. And the refrain was often the same: You’re the only one I’ve told.

This book collects those stories as they’ve been told to Shah to humanize abortion and to combat myths that persist in the discourse that surrounds it. An intentionally wide range of ages, races, socioeconomic factors and experiences, shows that abortion does not happen in a vacuum–it always occurs in a unique context. Today, abortion has become a core political litmus test for party loyalty. A healthcare issue that’s so precious and foundational to reproductive, social, and economic freedom for millions of people is exploited by politicians who lack understanding or compassion about the context in which abortion occurs. Stories have power to break down stigmas and help us to empathize with those whose experiences are unlike our own. They can also help us find community and a shared sense of camaraderie over experiences just like ours. You’re the Only One I’ve Told will do both.

These stories, rooted in Judith Arcana’s experience as a Jane in Chicago’s pre-Roe v. Wade underground abortion service, were written as the United States has moved relentlessly into constraining motherhood and denying reproductive justice. By necessity, these stories reach from the past into the future, offering history and hope.

In these monologues – from the play of the same name – twenty-three women reveal the details of their lives, relationships and families as they tell the stories of their abortions. Sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, but always thought provoking, The Abortion Monologues exist in stark contrast to the real world in which women seldom publicly discuss this choice.

Many women throughout the world face the challenge of confronting an unexpected or an unwanted pregnancy, yet these experiences are often shrouded in silence. An Open Secret draws on personal interviews and medical records to uncover the history of women’s experiences with unwanted pregnancy and abortion in the South American country of Bolivia. This Andean nation is home to a diverse population of indigenous and mixed-race individuals who practice a range of medical traditions. Centering on the cities of La Paz and El Alto, the book explores how women decided whether to continue or terminate their pregnancies and the medical practices to which women recurred in their search for reproductive health care between the early 1950s and 2010. It demonstrates that, far from constituting private events with little impact on the public sphere, women’s intimate experiences with pregnancy contributed to changing policies and services in reproductive health in Bolivia.

No Choice is an anthology of women’s stories of illegal abortion prior to the loosening of Canadian abortion laws in 1969. Included are the stories of several doctors who performed abortions in these times. The stories are told first hand by a diverse group of 21 women who experienced the frightening underground world of backstreet abortions.

Following the U.S. Congress’s attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, the hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion became a viral conduit for abortion storytelling. This book is a collection of photos, essays, and creative work inspired by the movement of the same name, a template for building new communities of healing, and a call to action. Shared stories and communities built around these conversations include: making art, hosting comedy shows, creating abortion-positive clothing, altering billboards, making zines, and hosting thank you letter-writing parties for their local abortion providers.

Every day in America, abortion providers and the women who need them are in danger. This collection of 25 powerful stories from contributors both famous and ordinary, privileged and poor, provides often harrowing insights into what happens when women are denied the right to choose. Testimonials from teenagers, college students, overloaded young mothers, and even a retired male Marine put a human face on one of this country’s most controversial issues and offer passionate arguments for access to legal and safe abortions.

Dieses Buch erzählt die Geschichte meiner Liebe zu einem Mann. Andreas. Es erzählt, wie wir uns getroffen haben, wie wir zueinander gefunden haben und miteinander leben. Es erzählt die Geschichte, wie wir ein Kind zusammen gezeugt haben und wie wir es abgetrieben haben. Dieses Buch erzählt die Geschichte unseres Kindes, dem wir die Chance auf ein Leben verwehrt haben. Es erzählt von meinen und unseren Beweggründen für diese Entscheidung, von unseren Kämpfen mit uns selbst, mit unseren Wertvorstellungen, Plänen, Träumen, Ängsten und Unzulänglichkeiten.Dieses Buch erzählt von meinen Gefühlen und Gedanken nach der Abtreibung. Von meinen Vorwürfen und Selbstvorwürfen, von meinem Hadern mit meinen eigenen Entscheidungen, von meiner Erleichterung, meiner Wut und Enttäuschung und Trauer. Dieses Buch erzählt eine verwirrende und manchmal auch verwirrte Geschichte, aber ich werde sie nicht glatt bügeln, um sie leichter verständlich oder logischer zu machen. Ich werde sie erzählen, genauso wie sie sich nach meinem subjektiven Empfinden zugetragen hat. Mit all ihren Höhen und Tiefen, ihrem Schmerz und ihrer Freude, ihren immer wiederkehrenden Themen und plötzlich auftauchenden neuen Blickwinkeln, denn es ist meine Geschichte.

Ospedale silenzio è un luogo di storie scritte per l’urgenza di dire ciò che le donne non riescono a esprimere, di raccontare un dolore profondo. E il luogo del corpo che parla e il luogo dell’anima che cerca di ascoltarlo. Le storie di questo libro sono la testimonianza di come l’ascolto sia l’unica strada per comprendere le scelte, tutte le scelte che incidono profondamente la vita di una donna. In questi racconti di occultamento, in cui le protagoniste nascondono a se stesse la verità, in cui nessuno vuole ammettere la presenza di un problema, in cui non si chiamano le cose con il proprio nome, l’autrice si mette dall’altra parte e sceglie di far vedere, di non nascondere più. La gravidanza e l’aborto sono raccontati nelle emozioni provate e nel dolore del corpo. La paura, l’imbarazzo, la speranza, ogni cosa trova posto nella voce soffocata delle donne che l’autrice ci fa ascoltare. Il silenzio diventa una voce così forte che non possiamo far finta di non aver sentito. E scritta, non è più taciuta.

A look at the dark period prior to the legalization of abortion in the U.S. Abortion rights activist Miller presents the thoughts of children who lost their mothers to back-alley abortionists, the coroners who autopsied those women, and the unskilled people who performed those abortions

Untold Stories: Life, Love, and Reproduction is a collection of stories of ordinary people talking intimately and honestly about their reproductive experiences including abortion, egg donation, adoption, LGBT parenting, remaining child free, and much more. This unique collection is a project of The Sea Change Program, a nonprofit committed to upholding the dignity and humanity of all people as they move through their reproductive lives.

The multiple perspectives in this book challenges stereotypes about people whose reproductive decisions and experiences fall outside of the dominant story of pregnancy and parenting. By reading and discussing these stories about reproductive experiences, you will be part of ending shame and isolation while helping to expand a more inclusive and compassionate understanding of family.

A moving collection of 24 personal essays about the real, human experiences behind the highly politicized issue of reproductive choice. At a time when a woman’s most complex decisions have been reduced to political rhetoric and impersonal theory, and political debate has been hijacked by pundits and name-callers, Choice joins the discourse with an assortment of candid voices in an effort to humanize the debate about reproductive rights. In addressing a wide range of women’s choices from using birth control to taking the morning-after pill, from adopting a child to putting a child up for adoption, from having an abortion to bringing a pregnancy to full term Choice explores the complexities inherent in every reproductive decision.

Twenty years ago, Dr Bertram Wainer, the abortion reform doctor and campaigner, placed an advertisement in a newspaper asking women who had illegal abortions to come forward to tell their stories. Their personal testimonies and the accounts from doctors and nurses are published for the first time in this collection. Women had to draw on deep reservoirs of courage and determination faced with the fear of illegal abortion. This collection tells of some of those acts of courage and the difficulties society placed in women’s way. Moving and candid, these stories uncover the hidden history of abortion in Australia.

‘It is chastening to read these bald tales, shockingly direct and unvarnished. Each story contains matter enough for a novel. Each one is a window onto a larger life, a broader world: a tantalising view of endlessly unfolding complexities.’-Helen Garner

In this classic book, Reagan traces the practice and policing of abortion in America. While abortions have been typically portrayed as grim “back alley” operations, she finds that abortion providers often practiced openly and safely. Moreover, numerous physicians performed abortions, despite prohibitions by the state and the American Medical Association. Women often found cooperative practitioners, but prosecution, public humiliation, loss of privacy, and inferior medical care were a constant threat. Reagan’s analysis of previously untapped sources, including inquest records and trial transcripts, shows the fragility of patient rights and raises provocative questions about the relationship between medicine and law. With the right to abortion again under attack in the United States, this book offers vital lessons for every American concerned with health care, civil liberties, and personal and sexual freedom.

Publisher’s Weekly review: Activist, filmmaker (of I Had an Abortion) and co-author (Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future) Baumgardner dedicates her work to spreading awareness about abortion. Graced with black and white photo portraits by Tara Todras-Whitehill of women wearing Baumgardner’s shirt, reading simply “I had an abortion,” the emphasis is on the testimony of these patients, revealing not only how common the procedure is (one in three women, according to the Guttmacher Institute) but how diverse those women and their situations are. Baumgardner begins with a brief history of abortion legislation in America, from pre-Roe v. Wade restrictions to clinic workers and doctors protested, threatened and murdered (as in the case of Buffalo doctor Barnett Slepian). Still, as Baumgardner says, it’s the record of “our lives [that] might provide the best road map to strengthening women’s reproductive freedoms.”

From clandestine abortions in the 1940s to the introduction of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s, this comprehensive reference provides a well-rounded review of the legal, medical, and emotional facets of abortions then and now. At the heart of this groundbreaking book are deeply moving personal stories—which encompass suffering and resilience, isolation and community—from women who have experienced an abortion. These accounts are supplemented with the voices of doctors, police, and advocates committed to addressing and improving issues in women’s reproductive health.

One Kind Word: Women Share Their Abortion Stories is a groundbreaking collection that helps to end the silence surrounding abortion experiences and to combat the feelings of fear, shame, stigma, and isolation that many women face. By featuring over thirty women’s personal experiences and portraits, One Kind Word shifts the focus of the abortion debate towards creating a more open, honest, and compassionate dialogue about reproductive freedom in Canada. The stories and portraits in One Kind Word remind us that women who have had abortions come from all backgrounds, ethnicities, cultures, and ages. Women who have had abortions are our mothers, sisters, grandmothers, lovers, friends, neighbours, doctors, teachers, and politicians.

Rough on Women is, in some respects, the prequel to Abortion Then and Now: New Zealand abortion stories from 1940 to 1980, in which women recorded their firsthand experiences of abortion.

In contrast to the intimacy and frankness of that book, the women in Rough on Women are all long dead and little is known of their inner lives. Most of what we know about them comes from coroners’ reports and newspaper accounts, and in many cases we know more about their abortionists than the women themselves.

Rough on Women shows the lengths to which women will go to avoid bearing an unwanted child, and how far New Zealand has come in the battle for women to control their own fertility.

Risking Their Lives is the third book in a series recording the history of abortion in New Zealand. It fills the gap between Abortion Then and Now: New Zealand Abortion Stories from 1940 to 1980 and Rough on Women: Abortion in 19th-Century New Zealand.

Abortion has always been a fraught political issue in New Zealand, from the draconian laws of the 1860s, when most abortions were illegal and clandestine and society’s emphasis was on punishment, to the turbulent abortion rights protests of the 1970s. Risking Their Lives features many previously untold stories salvaged from the coroner’s reports and newspaper reports of the day. The narrative is grim, but this is an honest retelling of our past, primarily letting the stories speak for themselves. As those who fought to make abortion safer and easier for women grow older and there are fewer people who remember what it used to be like, such stories become increasingly important to ensure that history does not repeat itself.