My mother looked down at her hands and said…"I’m pregnant."
I would say my life has been defined in a large part by the lack of agency my mother had in her choice to have children. She was married...
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Momologues
Sixty-two self-identifying mothers responded to 18 text prompts. Read them here.
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- Sep 23, 2022
The Sonogram Tech Gave Me No Signs
Three. For some reason three was the magic number in my head. Number one was so hard to conceive, to carry, to birth, to nurture. Number...
- Jul 11, 2022
I was not ready to make this commitment, and neither was he.
When I was in college, after a spell of indiscriminate sex partners who were not at all interesting or good to me, I met an artist who...
- Jul 11, 2022
It was a time when abortion was legal and accessible
As a college student in the early 1980's, I married young and briefly, and had two abortions. I trusted a man who turned out not to be ...
- Jul 10, 2022
We were not ready to start a family.
It’s almost 1am here. I’m wide awake after cleaning up the vomit filled bed of my eight year old. I’m also pregnant with my third child,...
- Jul 10, 2022
Abortions are health care.
She was trying to become pregnant after so much planning. She’s so smart, such a planner. She was so thrilled to finally get a positive...
- Jul 10, 2022
I know my healing continues as I share my story
My husband and I already had two beautiful, healthy children that were well into self-sufficient ages. Two children were all we could...
- Jul 10, 2022
I can’t believe this choice is being taken away from us
I spent the first night of my son’s life with only him in the hospital, as my husband was tired and needed to go home to sleep. I didn’t...
- Jul 10, 2022
It’s hard to be a mom when the word MOTHER somewhere in your psyche terrifies you
My childhood was filled with intense emotional and physical abuse. My mother was a single mom in the 80’s. My mother was mentally ill, ...
- Jul 10, 2022
Nine months later, the same woman who counseled me for my abortion delivered my perfect baby boy
I knew I was pregnant. That’s not why I made an appointment at the family planning clinic. It wasn’t my first time in this situation,...
- Jul 6, 2022
Avoid bearing children at all costs
On July 4th, 2022 my husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. Twenty-five years ago, I was focused on finishing up a work...
- Jul 6, 2022
I owned that choice
I was 23 when I had an abortion. I was a senior in college and getting ready to study and travel abroad for my final semester. I was...
- Jul 2, 2022
Too Poor
I had been engaged for about 6 months. I had been feeling ill for several weeks, and when I missed a second period (because who on...
- Jun 29, 2022
I squatted, reached inside and...
We were interrupted unexpectedly and he bolted out the back door so no one would know. The phone rings. On the other end was him. He said...
- Jun 29, 2022
I was terrified, alone and ashamed.
It was 1969. A few months earlier a man I was on a date with had forcibly raped me. Now I was in Australia at a college friends sheep...
- Jun 28, 2022
I wanted that baby so much
I had a complete hysterectomy that removed my uterus and a baby with a healthily beating heart the night before Roe v Wade was...
- Jun 27, 2022
Two different choices can evoke the same emotions
"I never had to grapple with a decision that would change my life one way or the other. When I found myself pregnant in a toxic ...
- Jun 26, 2022
Because it was the right thing for me
This photo is from a time when my then-husband was out fishing and I was, simply put, not okay. My body was broken in many ways after a...
- Jun 26, 2022
My body felt different immediately
Storytelling is my love-language and you'd think that I'd be able to be loud and proud over this, but as you know, or can imagine, it's...
- Jun 26, 2022
I was drugged
I was drugged and raped in college. If I hadn't miscarried I would have aborted. To this day I don't even talk about it with my husband...
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