Amelia Loulli opens this fearless, frank, absorbing debut with the words ‘I’m going to tell you what happened’, and that is precisely what she does. With these careful, generous, insistent poems, we are led through the experience of abortion and surprised at every turn. There is vulnerability and despair, there is the shame and silence too, but there is also the constant, steady pulse of compassion, tenderness and wonder at the world.

Slip is a daring book, not just in subject but in style: skilfully worked, integrating the rich terror of nursery rhymes and folk tales with the bland banalities and euphemisms of social interaction, of medical techniques. It is also, sadly, a necessary book – provocative and transformative poetry about women as mothers and survivors. A cry of fury and a cry of love.

Canada, 1967, l’avortement est un crime passible d’emprisonnement. Chaque année, des centaines de femmes meurent, ou restent mutilées aux mains de charlatans. Le silence se fissure. Le mouvement féministe émerge, réclamant le droit à l’avortement sécuritaire et légal. À Montréal, Henry Morgentaler entend son appel. Ce médecin, militant humaniste et survivant de la Shoah, choisit de défier la loi et commence à pratiquer des avortements dans des conditions médicales rigoureuses. Il est arrêté. S’ouvrent alors 15 années de lutte juridique, de procès spectaculaires et de mobilisation sociale. Soutenu par les militantes, confronté à l’État et à la prison, Morgentaler deviendra malgré lui une figure centrale d’un combat historique, celui de rendre aux femmes le droit fondamental de disposer de leur corps.

In this empowering and defiant novel in verse, a teen poet grapples with an unplanned pregnancy and determines what happens to her body in a world that wants to take the choice away from her.

Seventeen-year-old Truth Bangura wants nothing more than to know a life beyond her hometown. Writing and performing is her only solace in a life overwhelmed by a drifting relationship with her best friend, an emotionally turbulent home environment, and the reality that her below average grades make her true dream–escaping her mother’s grasp after graduation–uncertain. When Truth learns she’s pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, she makes one decision she’s finally sure about: an abortion. Determined to move forward, Truth turns to the pages in her notebook with the support of her slam poetry team–including the poet with a voice smooth as summer jazz, who’s been catching her eye during practice. At an open mic night, Truth finally gains the courage to perform a piece that dives into her rocky relationship with her mother-and reveals the choice she never told her. But when a video of Truth’s performance is posted online and starts going viral, her decision quickly becomes everyone’s business-including her mother’s.

France, début des années 1970, trois femmes, trois vies et trois grossesses subies. Chacune d’entre elles décide alors de se rendre en Angleterre dans un bus affrété par le Mouvement pour la liberté de l’avortement et de la contraception. Florence Cestac et Tonino Benacquista signent une oeuvre rare, d’une grande humanité, sensible et souvent drôle sur un sujet particulièrement délicat, l’avortement.

À travers de magnifi ques portraits de femmes, “Des salopes et des anges” ne juge pas, mais parvient tout en finesse à remettre en question les certitudes. Indispensable.

Sabrina ha 26 anni, abita in una città di provincia che le sta stretta e ha un carattere forte, che a tratti si fa violento nel gridare agli altri il suo malessere, la sua sofferenza. La sua è la condizione di chi non ha più vent’anni, ma non si sente ancora un adulto in grado di assumersi le responsabilità che la vita impone. La condizione di molti giovani negli anni della crisi economica che si fa crisi esistenziale: alle soglie dell’età adulta non ci si sente capaci di affrontare la vita.

E si sbanda, tra colpi di testa, ingenui tentativi di evasione, autocommiserazione, rabbia. Una gravidanza non prevista si pone come un’esperienza emblematica. La vita che spinge forte suscitando dubbi e ansie, sul proprio essere donna, sulla maternità come spartiacque. E intorno sollecitazioni contradditorie. Lucia Biagi affronta un tema “scomodo” come l’aborto restituendolo all’unica sfera legittima, quella della narrazione personale, fuori dai tabù e dalle contrapposizioni ideologiche, nel rispetto delle scelte della donna, della libertà di decidere del proprio corpo e della propria vita.

Sabrina est une jeune italienne de 25 ans au caractère bien trempé, elle vit chez ses parents dans une petite ville de province, mais passe le plus clair de son temps chez son petit ami, Stefano. Mal à l’aise dans son corps et dans sa vie, elle exprime parfois violemment son mal-être et se heurte à sa famille et à son entourage. Confrontée comme tous les italiens de sa génération à une terrible crise économique, elle affronte également une crise existentielle. Au seuil de l’indépendance et du monde adulte, elle ne se sent pas en mesure de faire face à ces changements.

Un début décembre, une grossesse imprévue vient bouleverser la vie déjà passablement mouvementée de Sabrina. Elle décide d’avorter mais le rendez-vous à la clinique est fixé au mois de janvier, du fait des fêtes de fin d’année… Près de trente jours pendant lesquels Sabrina est soumise à des pulsions contradictoires, à l’angoisse et à la colère, se fait licencier et se sépare de son compagnon… Perturbée par tous ces événements, elle devra aussi composer avec les répercussions psychologiques de l’avortement avant de retrouver un équilibre. Lucia Biagi aborde le thème de l’avortement à travers un récit intimiste et nuancé, au-delà des tabous et des clivages idéologique, et revendique clairement la liberté de choix et l’absolu droit des femmes à décider de tout ce qui concerne leur corps et de leur vie.

Ce roman graphique raconte l’histoire de ce manifeste publié le 5 avril 1971 dans les colonnes de l’hebdomadaire «Le Nouvel Observateur» et son impact sur la société.

343 femmes célèbres s’y accusent du délit d’avortement dans l’espoir de faire avancer le droit des femmes, contribuant ainsi à la future adoption de la loi Veil.

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.

Focusing on the near-fifty-year period in which abortion was legal in the United States (1973–2022), The Last Safe Abortion recognises the care, advocacy, and community-building of abortion workers. Artist Carmen Winant draws from over a dozen personal, organisational, and institutional archives from across the Midwest, in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Kentucky, North Dakota, and Ohio.

The photographs themselves are surprisingly regular: women answer the phone, sterilize medical equipment, throw staff birthday parties, offer workshops, and schedule appointments. In centring the tender, quotidian, and routine acts that inform this healthcare work, Winant works to counter the ways anti-choice activists have weaponised photography by proposing a visuality that attends to abortion care. The Last Safe Abortion presents a selection of this vast collection of photographs, accompanied by a text by Winant.

An engaging exploration into the enduring popularity of Dirty Dancing and its lasting themes of feminism, activism, and reproductive rights.
When Dirty Dancing was released in 1987, it had already been rejected by producers and distributors several times over, and expectations for the summer romance were low. But then the film, written by former dancer Eleanor Bergstein and starring Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze as a couple from two different worlds, exploded. Since then, Dirty Dancing’s popularity has never waned. The truth has always been that Dirty Dancing was never just a teen romance or a dance movie — it also explored abortion rights, class, and political activism, with a smattering of light crime-solving. In The Time of My Life, celebrated music journalist Andrea Warner excavates the layers of Dirty Dancing, from its anachronistic, chart-topping soundtrack, to Baby and Johnny’s chemistry, to Bergstein’s political intentions, to the abortion subplot that is more relevant today than ever. The film’s remarkable longevity would never have been possible if it was just a throwaway summer fling story. It is precisely because of its themes — deeply feminist, sensitively written — that we, over 30 years later, are still holding our breath during that last, exhilarating lift.

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.”

For the Lives of All Women is a collection of photographs and interviews by Camila Cavalcante. For over two years, Cavalcante travelled around Brazil meeting women who have had, or who have been witness to, illegal abortions. She photographed a total of 50 women who, with their identities protected, shared their stories and intensified the debate for women’s reproductive rights.

In these photos, Cavalcante exposes her body and her identity on behalf of these women in an act of dissent, as well as solidarity, for all, making her collection of portraits both deeply personal and political. Within this context, For the Lives of All Women is an act of rebellion in itself.

A landmark literary anthology of poems, stories, and essays, Choice Words collects essential voices that renew our courage in the struggle to defend reproductive rights. Twenty years in the making, the book spans continents and centuries. This collection magnifies the voices of people reclaiming the sole authorship of their abortion experiences. These essays, poems, and prose are a testament to the profound political power of defying shame.

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.

This is a curated collection of 34 short works for performance, including plays, poems, spoken word and other writings – each about 5 minutes long. They range from history to futuristic visions, heartfelt true stories to creative fiction. A wide diversity of writers, styles, topics and moods is included. The works recognize and celebrate the fundamental human right to bodily autonomy.
Proceeds from sales are donated to a reproductive health organization.

Comics for Choice is anthology of comics about abortion. As this fundamental reproductive right continues to be stigmatized and jeopardized, over sixty artists and writers have created comics that boldly share their own experiences, and educate readers on the history of abortion, current political struggles, activism, and more. Lawyers, activists, medical professionals, historians, and abortion fund volunteers have teamed up with cartoonists and illustrators to share their knowledge in accessible comics form.

Judith Arcana, a reproductive rights activist formerly involved in Chicago’s pre-Roe v. Wade underground abortion service, imbues her poetry, fiction and essays with the same ferocity, humor and passion that informs her activism. “It’s a passionate rush of language, hope in a hard time, truth in the middle of lies. This poetry sparks and burns with the hidden language and stories of women” – Minnie Bruce Pratt.

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.

All Access Presents: Our Voices, A Collection of Poems on Abortion From New Mexico