Abortion is love

A conversation with Hannah Matthews' about her new book, You or Someone You Love

This past Tuesday, I had the great privilege of joining several dozen people in a packed brewery in Portland, Maine to hear Hannah Matthews talk about her new book, You or Someone You Love: Reflections from an Abortion Doula. And I was not at all surprised when the event felt just like Hannah’s book - full to bursting with deep, radical love.

Hannah’s research, extensive interviews with people impacted and involved with every aspect of abortion care and reproductive justice, and the power of Hannah’s personal story (combined with the clarity and beauty of her authorial voice) make You or Someone You Love a book that is part guide, part resource, part narrative, and [earnestness alert!], part friend. It’s the rare book that deliberately invites the reader in as an active participant, and reading this book invited me to examine my own story, my own viewpoints, my own explicit and implicit biases, and mostly, cracked my heart wide, wide open. I can’t recommend this expansive, necessary book more highly (all royalties go to support abortion funds!) It is a book for everyone.

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Sara: Not only is this book a thorough examination of all that abortion entails, impacts, and enables, it’s also a really lovely practical guide for anyone invested in any type of care work. You include several specific questions you can ask to support your clients in your work as an abortion doula, and I think so many of these questions can be utilized to support anyone going through something with care and compassion. You also include a list of possible post-abortion gifts for folks. Why do you think we (generally speaking) so often struggle to get specific in our aims to help support people, even when we earnestly do mean it when we say something like, “Let me know if you need anything,” or “Let me know how I can help?”

Hannah: I think it’s a cycle – our lack of language and education feeds our discomfort with the specifics of what pregnancy and abortion entail, and our discomfort feeds our inability to talk about it with one another. Whereas if one has a basic understanding of what abortion actually is and what it feels like–just like a miscarriage or a birth–we’re equipped to offer specific kinds of support and comfort. We don’t assume what would feel good for someone, but we’re able to talk about the things that felt good for us or for our sister or friend or partner. 

Sara: Talk to me about language. Everyone should 100% buy your book (for countless reasons), but I really appreciate you taking the time in the book to interrogate how language contributes to our consideration and discussions centering abortion. Can you speak about why precise and inclusive language is so important when it comes to abortion? I think about language a lot as it pertains to motherhood and caregiving. I mean - “BABY BLUES” (fuck off to whichever cis white dude came up with that). 

Hannah: The other day I was supporting someone who had a button on their backpack that said PRO-LIFE, PRO-ABORTION and I love that so much. I think about the rhetoric that’s been weaponized against us and that’s been harmful and violent to us – “bikini body,” “man’s man,” “family values,” “patriots” (which now just seems to mean Nazis or fascists of other flavors), and even more explicitly: “pro-life” (unless it’s the life of the person I think should give birth against their will or despite their body or life’s limitations) and “unborn child” (not a thing) and “late-term abortion” (not a thing!!!) and I think about how we’re ceding ground whenever we use these terms credulously. The abortion providers I work with save lives, every day, and then they care for their patients and families and communities in the ways that make those lives as free and safe and healthy and joyful as possible. They’re pro-life. Period.

Sara: You write about the regular practice of “values exploration” in abortion care work, and this strikes me not only as fundamentally important to best supporting people having abortions, but also a helpful way of approaching so many polarizing cultural conversations. You write: 

Our desperate yearning to have all the answers, to be always and fully imbued with the moral clarity and authority that might cut through the fog of being human, short-sighted and self-centered as we are. The pressure, self-applied or otherwise, not only to do no harm, but to think no harm. But bodies and hearts–”gut feelings,” fight-or-flight instincts and cortisol levels and the memories we carry in our bones and blood and cells–don’t work like that. 

Even if we have the “correct” framework for speaking to people about their experiences, we can never override our corporeal realities, right? It seems that longing to be a “perfect” thinker and doer in terms of flawlessly supporting people having abortions is also missing the point because it’s centering YOU, right? (I’m using the universal “you” here!)

Hannah: Exactly! We can get so caught up in trying to control other people’s perceptions of us, of trying to ensure that we’ll be unimpeachably good at whatever we’re doing or perfectly articulate in what we’re trying to say or communicate–and that’s just not being a human in relationship to other humans. We limit ourselves and place limits around other people when we can’t be messy, imperfect, honest, and when we can’t mess up and apologize and learn and keep going. We’ll misspeak and misunderstand each other and be confused (or wrong!) about our own feelings and our own place in a given situation. That’s a guarantee. So working to avoid that or pretend it’s not true is taking our vital, precious time and energy and resources away from the people and organizations and resources we need to be pouring them into.  

Sara: Motherhood is a famously fraught identity in the US for so many reasons! And in my own work, I often focus on the systems preventing mothers from living full, supported lives, but in your writing about reproductive justice (versus reproductive rights or reproductive healthcare), I was struck by how YES, external power systems are enacting significant harm by means of abortion bans and abortion legislation, but also, by centering the most vulnerable among us, or those most impacted by systematic oppression, we can all empower ourselves to define justice on our own terms. Of course, in the book, you’re directly speaking to reproductive justice, but I saw threads to Angela Garbes’ work in Essential Labor in terms of redefining care work and mothering through an intersectional feminist lens.

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Hannah: This is so kind–of course I see my work being in conversation with Angela Garbes’, but that also sometimes feels like comparing my singing to Beyonce’s! I read Like a Mother before I became a mother myself, and Essential Labor after my son was born, and both books were absolutely life-changing and mind-expanding for me. Raising children who understand that other people’s bodies are never their property, that the only expert on a body or a pregnancy is the person inhabiting or experiencing it–raising children who understand what Reproductive Justice is (and who the RJ leaders are that we owe our knowledge and liberation to: Black women)...that’s the most powerful thing on earth. And it’s not just parents who raise children of course. You’re raising children when you’re investing in your communities and organizing against book bans and teaching and making meals and protecting your school boards and city councils and workplaces from fascists.  

Sara: I felt a not insignificant amount of rage when diapers came up in your book. The fact that there’s no federal assistance for VERY NECESSARY diapers is just unconscionable. You note that 75% of abortion patients are poor or low-income, and this just clarifies how SO MANY social injustices undergirded by sexism or misogyny are also direct attacks on poor people. (And people of color, and trans and nonbinary people, and, and, and). Your book so clearly elucidates the aim of the “antis,” which is to erase people and prevent certain people from thriving. Can you speak about this at all? I think there’s this idea that antis are largely motivated by religious beliefs or deeply held morals (and while, of course, that might be true for some individuals), I think the political power of anti ideology is very much an orchestrated attack against people with specific identities.

Hannah: For all of us in this country–but tenfold for poor people, Black people, Indigenous people, trans people–the intentional acts of continuing a pregnancy OR ending a pregnancy are radical ones, at this point. If anti-abortion activists were rioting in the streets about maternal and infant mortality rates for Black families, or for universal preschool, or for diapers for all–okay. That would be a different conversation. Maybe we could accept that they truly care for babies and children and families. But they’re not doing that, are they. They’re moving through (and being funded by) the same organizations that perpetuate sexual violence, child abuse, corruption and greed that rob families and children of the resources they need, etc. etc. They’re voting for abortion bans and restrictions, and other policies, that kill and harm and punish pregnant parents and children. 

Sara: A major focus of this newsletter is a critique of maternal ideals or tenets of “good motherhood,” the idea being that so many of these ideals are rooted in racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, fat phobia, and classism. The majority of people (as you write) who get abortions are parents. I’d love it if you could speak to how the decision to get an abortion is so often a decision directly tied to one’s parenthood. You write: “Even if you are not yet–or never will be–a parent, abortion can be an act of parental love in and of itself.”

Hannah: Yes! Abortion is a part of family planning just like any other, and my own abortion was something I did, almost entirely, for my son. And so many people who want to be parents in the future–when they experience a pregnancy at the wrong moment or with the wrong person or through the wrong circumstances for their body or mind or hear or life–seek abortion care in pursuit of that future. 

In the book I tell the story of someone who found out, after her own abortion, that she and her siblings–her family’s existence–are only in this world because of an abortion that her dad’s college girlfriend had. From every abortion branches off all these new lives and futures. I think that’s so beautiful, and can be so healing for people who–like me–feel a lot of grief around our abortions. 

Sara: I found your writing on faith and religion to be so refreshing. Because, of course, antis have weaponized religion so effectively in conversations around abortion. Can you talk a bit about researching that section of the book, and speak to how people of faith are actively engaging in abortion care work? I loved your mention of Thank God for Abortion. I also think your writing on religion is a wonderful example of how we’ve been sort of explicitly tricked into believing that we (the pro-abortion folks) are in the minority? This seems like a deliberate strategy on the part of antis to increase shame, silence, and secrecy.

Hannah: People are so shocked when I–citing the Guttmacher Institute, probably the most reliable source of abortion statistics and data we have–tell them that nearly a quarter of U.S. abortion patients identify as Catholic, and many others identify as Evangelical. The anti-abortion powers that be, and the media over which they wield enormous amounts of influence, have really done such a good job at painting abortion as an issue on which our country is divided, split down the middle. But if you look at the actual polling, abortion is popular. The people who believe abortion should be illegal are a very small minority. And I think most people are wise enough, and empathetic and kind enough, and connected enough to their own communities, to know that at any moment it could be them or their own family members, friends, or loved ones who need abortion care. Abortion is normal and common and frequent–though sometimes it is also devastating or intense or complicated or strange–and I really think most people understand that. Including religious people. 

I also really think we need to keep talking about the ways in which abortion bans violate the religious liberties of many, many Americans. Jewish leaders and advocates have been really effective at highlighting that. 

Anyway, God is cool with abortion, and I’m always happy to talk about that. 

Sara: This is a relatively small part of the book, but I’m SO glad you mentioned the importance of “Having sex for reasons other than procreations. Decoupling femininity from pregnancy or womb ownership, womanhood from motherhood.” In both considerations of institutional American motherhood AND in considerations of abortion, gender constructs are sooooo important. Please discuss!

Hannah: I think often of Torrey Peters discussing the ways in which cis women are expected to perform womanhood, just like trans women are, and falling short in all kinds of ways, and how motherhood is maybe the summit of that impossible climb. Concepts of motherhood–sacrifice, humility, nurturing and deferring to others’ needs at any cost–have come to be synonymous with womanhood in ways that can be pretty horrifying, and even women who don’t want to be mothers–or parents who aren’t women–can fall into these traps set for us everywhere. 

But just like motherhood, sex and sexuality and gender can live in our bodies and lives in endless ways. If there are two billion mothers on earth right now, there are two billion forms of motherhood. If there are four billion adults (do we know how to divide the world’s population into adults and children/adolescents? I’m sure we do and I’m just not smart enough to find it), there are four billion different sex lives and sexualities and relationships to our own reproductive organs and their functions. 

Lately my two-year-old has been pointing at adults he sees, on the street or in the grocery store, and labeling them “Mama” or “Dada”, which is Not Great for so many reasons (and trust me, I’m trying to redirect and help him move through this phase to the other side, as his little brain tries to organize the world neatly and clearly.) But it really struck me that our legislators and cultural influencers and church leaders etc. are essentially two years old, when it comes to their understanding of gender and of what it means to be a human adult moving through the world. You’re a mama or a dada, and don’t you DARE step out of line. Like, they could have a conversation with my two-year-old, but I think he would surpass them pretty quickly. 

Sara: In Momfluenced, I try to emphasize the fact that the construction of the Ideal Mother in the US hurts ALL mothers, even the most privileged of us. You share an enraging and heartbreaking story about how ableism impacted one diabetic mother’s abortion, and point out that “as holds true in all forms of oppression–ableism baked into our systems of abortion care and support hurt every person in need of an abortion.” It might seem obvious, but I think sometimes it’s helpful to be explicit and say the obvious thing out loud! Can you talk about why (both as it pertains to mothers and people who get abortions), centering folks most directly impacted by systematic oppression is necessary for liberation and meaningful reform?

Hannah: The notion of the perfect abortion patient, just like the notion of the perfect mother, continues to imprison all of us–because that’s letting other people set the terms for our reproductive lives. Any desired pregnancy, any desired child, and any desired abortion are good, and we should be focusing on weaving nets of support under the people who experience these things–not deciding who deserves to be caught and gently cradled in them and who deserves to fall and hit the ground. 

Sistersong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective defines Reproductive Justice as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities,” and that pretty much says it all, to me. 

Who currently has access to that human right, and who is wielding the power that keeps others from it? Who is gatekeeping and white-savioring and trying to speak for other people’s bodies and families and pregnancies? Who is–implicitly or explicitly–creating or perpetuating false binaries and divisions between “good” pregnant people and other pregnant people? How can we take the microphone, the podium, the funding and clout from them,  and hand it to somebody else?