I never had an abortion. So why am I obsessed with abortion stories?

I've spent the past week insatiably reading one abortion story after another. I finally figured out why.

Abortion stories are everywhere at the moment. Billie Jean King, Crissy Perham, a woman who was raped by her father, and even SNL have taken this on. With Roe vs Wade on the chopping block and states everywhere threatening women’s basic rights and well-being over this, I’m glad people are speaking out. These voices are desperately needed right now, even if their ultimate impact remains unclear.

Interestingly, here in Israel abortion is also currently in the news — in this case for a better reason. To be clear, Israel is not America on this issue. There are no back-alley stories, clinic bombings, or women traveling days to find a doctor in another state. Though there are anti-abortion nationalists pressuring women with abusive language and nationalistic messages. Still, Israeli women who need abortions can, for the most part, get them legally, but they have to go through a humiliating “committee” to evaluate their mental state. Women who do not fit into proscribed “categories” of emotional or physical need for for an abortion — say a married, middle-class woman who does not want any or any more children — may find themselves having to declare themselves mentally unwell in order to get an abortion. While this is a minor inconvenience compared to the sheer terror that American women potentially go through, it is still bad. Last week, when the Health Minister announced a much-awaited bill to cancel abortion committees and change the procedures to be more humane to women, women began sharing their abortion stories (in Hebrew).

In short, my American-Israeli self is feeling this topic coming from all sides. And I’m reading it all, drawn to the stories like a pirate seeking treasure. I have also been writing and posting about this topic for the past few weeks, responding to the assault of anti-abortion activists as if they are threatening my own body. The topic of abortion been almost all-encompassing.

It was hard for me to understand my own current obsession. Certainly it’s a core feminist issue, but it’s not necessarily personal for me. On the surface of things, I’m not directly affected by abortion. I’ve never myself had or considered an abortion. I’ve had five very wanted pregnancies, four healthy live births, thank god, and a sad double miscarriage. My children now range from ages 18-28, and I’m post-menopausal. So I’m barely even in that world anymore. My own negotiations with pregnancies are no longer an active part of my life.

Yet, the story still feels personal. Very personal. And still current.

Actually, for a while I had an aversion to abortion stories. I have a hard time with language that sometimes crops up in these debates about women regretting their children, a line which emerged into a kind of movement. This language is extremely triggering for me and feels like a form of emotional assault. I have most definitely felt like that child that a mother regretted, and this that is not something I’m capable of hearing dispassionately.

My mother never talked in precisely those terms of regretting me or wishing she had an abortion, god forbid! (As Orthodox Jews, issues that were far milder were taboo for discussion….) Still, my mother let me know in no uncertain terms that I am not what she wanted and she wished I were simply someone else, something else. I was everything she did not want in this world, and she was stuck with me. Woe is she. Stuck with this odd creature.

Too loud. Too annoying. Too talkative. Too opinionated. Too ambitious. Too independent. Too wild. Too arrogant. Too unyielding. Too disobedient. Too selfish. Too disrespectful. Too fat. Too hungry. Too unrestrained. Too impetuous. Too irreverent. Too unrepentant. Too insensitive. Too much not knowing her place. Too feminist. Too messy. Too strange. Too abnormal. Too unladylike. Too stubborn. Too bossy. Too mean. Too thoughtless. Too immodest. Too exposed. Too uncontained. Too outrageous. Too vocal. Too unruly. Too defiant. Too angry. Too uncontrollable. Too much, just too much….

Mostly, I was embarrassing. My mother’s primary message to me throughout my life was that she wished I would just figure out how to disappear and stop creating a shonda by my personality. If only I were quiet, covered, and controlled. She complained for years to all my aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings about how terrible her life was because of me. Anything that was wrong in her life was because of me. If only I would just, you know, stop being me. Then her life would be better.

I find myself identifying with the critiques of abortion discourse that come out of the world of feminists with disabilities. Feminist disability activists often express concern over the issue of eugenics — that is, that the language of women’s absolute right to abort “imperfect” fetuses leaves people with disabilities at grave risk and casts them as humans of lesser value. I feel their pain. I often think that if my mother could send me back and get a different model, she would. It’s excruciating to live with that text in your head. It is a perpetual lessness as a human being. Like you don’t really belong here.

Nevertheless, during this current wave of threats to women’s reproductive rights, I have been reading the stories, sucking them down like a syringe of bitter chocolate. Intoxicating, addictive, and stinging.

And then, last night, I read a story in the NYT that I was certain was going to trigger me called “The abortion I didn’t have”. Another woman regretting having a kid, I thought.

I read it anyway. And remarkably, it helped me understand why this topic does, in fact, resonate with me so deeply, still today.