So, I live in BK and work in Manhattan. That means that every morning and every night, I spend about 30 minutes riding the NYC subway -an hour total on a daily basis.
Now. Usually I don't mind this part of my day. I scrunch up tight in packed trains with my fellow commuters, willing to weather the occasional bump and jostle to get to work at a reasonable hour. I jam to my customized "commute" playlists. I read from my book-of-the-moment. I play mindless video games on my iphone (jellycar holla!).
Anyway, apparently, thanks to a new ad campaign launching this month on NYC subways, I will be adding "I am forced to read some f'ed up anti-choice ads" to my regular subway repoirtoire.
Metro US is reporting that, starting this week, the New York City subway system will be home of a massive ad campaign bankrolled by the San Diego-based anti-choice organization "Abortion Changes You".
More images and info on the ads after the jump.
The article warns that
The 2,000 ads, which straphangers will see in nearly every subway station beginning tomorrow [this week], depict either a woman saying, "I thought life would be the way it was before," or a man saying, "I often wonder if there was something I could have done to help her."
I call bullshit, and I'm not the only one. Samantha Levine of NARAL Pro-Choice New York is all over this one:
"The campaign suggests that feelings of sadness and self-harm are the universal experiences for someone who had an abortion. And there's no evidence to suggest that that's true. The organization behind these ads has an agenda. They aren't seeking to help women -- they're seeking to get abortion banned."
I totally agree. I'm all for validating and honoring the experience of women who have had an abortion. But there are already TONS of really great support systems for women who have had abortions that are equipped to address a RANGE of post-abortion emotions and outcomes- glee, relief, guilt, sadness, loss, pride, no reaction at all, or a million other possibilities. When an ad campaign chooses to ignore these very real experiences of women who have had abortions, you have to assume that they have an agenda other than helping real women.
So, "Abortion Changes You" ad campaign, I have a question for you: If you care about women so much, why push such an anti-woman agenda? I think that the hidden-agenda-cloaked-in-faux-concern-for-women trend needed to end with the Aughts, yet somehow, the bizarre and twisted logic behind showing women you care about them by cutting off their access to healthcare mysteriously, miraculously, persists in all its annoyingness. Unfortunately, these ads are only the latest to join the crowded ranks of people and initiatives who couch their anti-woman agendas in messaging about "concern" for women and families (Georgia Right to Life, and Howard Stern are two recent ones that come to mind).
Aside from all that, the pictures from the group's website are pretty funny when you think about the fact that all the models are fake and just had these words plastered over their faux-concerned images:
I'm sorry your wife gets depressed, Brett Favre, but that's no excuse to take away other women's autonomy.
Listen, if you thought you were doing your job, you were absolutely right! You're a model, and you're looking real melancholy in this generic print ad. So...congrats on that!
In sum, I'll take a cue from Maya who wrote on twitter "yes, abortion change you- it makes you not pregnant anymore!" Also, you know what else changes you? Being FORCED to carry a pregnancy to term against your will! Now that's an ad campaign I wouldn't mind seeing on my morning commute.
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Not like parenthood. Totally free of lifestyle changes of any kind. :rolleyes:
Ad number two is extra confusing to me. At first I was like, "Wow, that mom is over-invested in her kid's choices is she's SO UPSET every year that her daughter had an abortion. Cut the cord, Jesus."
And then I realized he's referring to the fetus as his daughter, so now I have a different view of who is over-invested in a clump of cells.
I think the intended meaning is the first one, mom and dad are sad because their daughter had and abortion. But I find that message to be really offensive. The issue can be difficult enough without the added pressure of "your mom and dad will be really bummed" added on to it.
As painful as it is to say this, I think Gnatalby's interpretation of this ad is correct. The guy is referring to the fetus that was aborted as his daughter.
I definitely first interpreted it as him referring to the aborted fetus as his daughter, but I think you're right about the intended meaning, now that I re-read it.
Wow...as if this whole premise isn't bad enough, now women are supposed to feel guilty about it because their parents really wanted grandkids? Sigh.
I hate those kinds of ads... there's a CPC advertising in the subway, so one day I taped a piece of paper to it that said something like "this place will lie to you and shame you, not support you"
You know, just once I want to see an ad that says "I had an abortion, and I'm pretty f*cking relieved."
While I agree that this campaign is likely seeking to have abortion banned, posts of this caliber nevertheless bother me. We are constantly trying to get the dialogue going about women who opted for abortion, and wonder if they should feel guilty about not feeling guilty before a huge chorus of Feminist voices reassures them that no, they shouldn't.
However, there are women who struggle with their abortion. There are women who are completely and totally pro-choice, and find themselves not only struggling with the guilt over terminating a pregnancy, but also facing a backlash for feeling guilt in the first place, as if they're not truly as Feminist or pro-choice as their peers who had the abortion without thinking twice.
I stated in an earlier post that there are huge narratives missing from the collective experience, of pro-choice women who have abortions and regret doing so. I was one such woman, and not all that long ago, and I'm constantly having to deal with the mixed messages. I have the anti-choice movement telling me that domestic violence or a casual, anti-motherhood movement forced me to make the decision on one side, I have the pro-choice movement telling me that any guilt or side effects I suffer (still) as a result of the choice I ultimately didn't make are the result of me being conditioned by a woman-hating propaganda campaign on the other. Neither is palatable, and both essentially contend I did what I did because I was brainwashed by the other side.
And the truth is, there aren't a lot of resources for us in the status quo. Places that support and offer abortion services don't generally have the ability to offer groups to help build a sense of community with other women coming to terms with their own abortions. Conversely, these same social settings for women grieving their abortions tend to run anti-choice in nature. So, when you're a pro-choice Feminist who regrets ending her own pregnancy, there aren't a lot of resources for you.
The truth about these campaigns is two-fold. First, some women do have these reactions, some do suffer from PASS, and experience what's described on these posters. Second, some women (including those who previously might have identified as anti-choice) don't, and that's just as acceptable, normal and expected. In the interest of keeping women informed (if it is about increasing the circulation of information, not serving a political agenda) posters expressing both sets of experience should be showcased.
There is a group called Exhale that lets women talk about ALL the things they feel after having an abortion, including guilt and sadness and grief, but that isn't out to be against abortion or to make women feel like they should have carried the pregnancy to term. I'm not sure if it's been mentioned here before, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone's already mentioned it. So there's that.
I did find out about Exhale, but not until after several months of agonizing despair and crying spells had settled in. Even when I called Planned Parenthood and told them what I was experiencing, and asked for some resources, they told me to contact my insurance company to find a therapist. Except that I didn't have insurance.
I do think Exhale offers a great start for support, but I'd love to see more than just a helpline. As inconvenient as it might be for my ideology, there are women who experience real, legitimate grief and depression over the decision that they made. A one-time phone call, or even several, will not do much to help with that. We definitely need as many resources to assist women in their grieving as we have allowing them to assert their reproductive autonomy in the first place.
Are you feeling guilty for ending the pregnancy, or regretful?
It's amazing, but these days people have a hard time differentiating between the two. Guilty is you thinking you are a horrible person, what you did is horrible, like you have done something you should be ashamed of. Regret is when you do something you know you have to do, but you'd rather not, so that wishing you had been able to do things differently - a stain that can't be easily washed away. I honestly don't think anything is wrong with regret... I do hope those feeling the regret aren't triggered into shame by such posters/people who want to shame them.
No matter what, the yahoo group "abortion celebration" has women all along the spectrum. Some of them have shifted along the spectrum from one extreme to the other, then back to the middle where they just feel a 'comfortable regret'. They view what they did as a 'necessary sorrow'.
I can identify that I feel both of those things. Owning up to the abortion is a relatively new experience for me (nobody in my support circle knew for months; most still don't and I'm not sure they ever will) which is interesting, to say the least. I've been a vocal advocate for sexual assault survivors for years, a frequent guest speaker at colleges in my area on the subject, a long-time member of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network but this topic, I'm utterly locked in silence.
I have good reasons for feeling both guilt and regret. I do know given the chance, I would have pushed for a different outcome. Going beyond that is a little too personal for a public forum, and probably distracts from my overall message. Quite simply, while we continue in our campaign to make abortion more accessible, we need to likewise keep in mind that there are women in our ranks experiencing what those posters are talking about, and their feelings are as valid as the women who feel nothing beyond relief at their abortions.
There are women who are completely and totally pro-choice, and find themselves not only struggling with the guilt over terminating a pregnancy, but also facing a backlash for feeling guilt in the first place, as if they're not truly as Feminist or pro-choice as their peers who had the abortion without thinking twice.
I'm not sure which feminists would disagree that many women indeed do suffer from abortion. It's an extremely difficult personal decision. In a perfect world, we would all have the money and resources and support to keep our babies if we wanted. Our partners would be good and kind and responsible. We wouldn't be coerced by parents or partners, or bombared with messages telling us how we're supposed to feel.
But I think the lack of resources for post-abortion support is probably related to the lack of resources for mental health in general. I mean, we have soldiers coming back from Afghanistan who've witnessed civilians and friends have limbs blown off or killed and aren't able to get help with their PTSD. As someone who suffers from depression and anxiety, I can attest that all you'll get from most doctors when you mention depression is probably the same thing you get when you mention that you're depressed because of your abortion: a referral to a therapist or an offer of medication. There aren't many alternatives, and what alternatives there are, insurance companies don't cover. Using the example of post-partum depression, another affliction "normal women" aren't supposed to have, I can't imagine there's any sort of extensive help network for that, or that many people or even doctors would take you seriously if you mentioned it unless you explicitly told them you had fantasies of harming your baby or something.
So, yes, I have no doubt there is a lack of post-abortion resources and support, but I don't really see how this is the fault of feminists, or how it's out of line with a general lack of access for all mental-health services.
I have a feeling that if someone tried to hold a post-abortion support group in my town that there'd be religious assholes protesting at it every week. :/
I'm certainly not correlating the lack of post-abortion resources with Feminism. The lack of resources is most certainly due, at least in part, to the stigma against mental health and due to the fundamental assumption in this country that as long as abortion remains a choice, living with it is a punishment for those who made the choice.
I also wanted to clarify that I think the Feminism community needs to begin addressing the schism when it comes to supporting all voices of experience in the greater abortion narrative. Even just reading these comments, the number expressing the "positives" to having had an abortion made me think twice before expressing my own story.
I've also had Feminist, pro-choice friends tell me that if I hadn't allowed myself to be "so conditioned" by my traditional, Midwest upbringing, I would be experiencing no lingering emotions over the abortion. It never occurred to my friends that to assume they knew better than I did why I was feeling what I was, smacked of the same condescending, patriarchal rhetoric that has permeated reproductive autonomy for centuries.
I do think the narrative of abortion in our circle tends to be one-sided. We do frequently exclude the voices of those who are legitimately suffering and in pain from their choices.
I completely agree with you that the the pro-choice movement needs to do more to acknowledge the full range of experiences and feelings that women have regarding abortion. I've never had an abortion but I've thought plenty about it and I know that it would be an extremely painful decision for me. I'm open about this and I have, at times, felt like I was being looked down upon for not thinking it was "just like getting a tooth pulled." I have other friends who are fully pro-choice but have made the decision that abortion is not for them personally, and they have at times felt ostracized too. This is a big problem and the feminist community needs to address it.
But the object of this campaign is not to try to humanize the experience of abortion by bringing the ambivalent and conflicted feelings of real women into the light. This is an unabashedly anti-abortion group that is trying to scare women out of considering abortion by telling them that they'll be emotionally damaged beyond repair afterwards. The motive matters. And while I completely accept that for many women, abortion truly does "change you", it's not for any outside influence to tell women how they feel or how they should feel about something so personal. Whatever a woman's private feelings are about abortion, they don't belong plastered all over the walls of a subway tunnel as some kind of cautionary tale.
I totally agree with you regarding this campaign. That's why I started out acknowledging this campaign is designed to get abortion banned, not understood. But having been a member of this community since before my abortion, I (accurately) predicted that many of the responses would invalidate that some women, even in this community, do experience what's written in those words.
So, I don't agree with the campaign's method, or that they're trying to suggest that ALL women and persons involved in an abortion will have such strong feelings. I just wanted to remind the other side of the spectrum with which I readily identify that their views and experiences aren't universal, either. Women should not be in the habit of telling or being told what they should feel regarding a matter so personal.
My abortion changed me! I was able to leave a controlling partner and go to graduate school! Hurray for abortion!
I wouldn't mind seeing no ads on the commute to work. Isn't the MTA supposed to be a public institution, partly subsidized with tax dollars and also all the damn tolls they keep raising on us (very broke) working class people? Why should we be subjected to the opinions of corporations and misogynists (two groups which seem to overlap, by the by)?
I think i'm going to start carrying a magic marker around and just fill in my own thoughts on ads I hate. those "abortion changes you" folks left a lot of empty space in those ads...
Lack of ad revenue might double or triple your ticket price, so there's that. But since it is a public resource I don't think you should be subjected to offensive ads. I think it's a good idea to take the conventional route and contact the subway and tell them you don't like the ads. I also love the non-conventional sharpie route!
Ha! I was thinking about brightly colored stickers that said "Not Me!"
Not to be trivial, but that is not Brett Favre. He's not a bad guy. He's not anti-choice. He does lots of charitable work.
My wife gets depressed around the anniversary of my signing with the Jets.
I don't think that Lori thinks its Brett Favre. I think she said that because the model looks like Brett Favre.
This seems like just the type of ad campaign that should be the target of something like The Bubble Project (http://www.thebubbleproject.com/), where you stick speech bubbles on the ad to engage with the subject matter and challenge the message.
If I lived in New York, I would totally do this. You can download and print speech bubbles from the website; but it would probably be easier to get some large label stickers from an office supply store, and possibly cut them into the shape of speech bubbles. So then you can make an ad that says "I had an abortion, and I'm pretty f*ucking relieved".
What a cool project! I did something similar when I saw a poster for the "pro-life" day of silence on my campus a few years ago. It featured a picture of a woman with tape over her mouth and said something about the "voices of the unborn." I got an index card, wrote, "What about women's voices?" and taped it beside the poster. I didn't want to deface the poster or write on it, but I couldn't NOT respond, it made me so angry.
That is a cool idea!
It reminds me of my sister's experience with an evangelical Christian friend at university. He and some evangelical friends had make a mock-up of the poster for that movie Trainspotting - you know the one that goes, "Choose a f***king big TV, choose washing machines, choose cars, choose [a whole bunch of other stuff].... or choose your future. Choose life" This is it here: http://christybharath.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/fp0275trainspotting-posters.jpg Anyway this group made one that went, "Choose materialism, choose shallowness, choose emptiness [etc]... or choose Christianity. Choose life."
The university just let it stand. So my sister and friends made another one exactly the same, and put it next to the Christianity one. It said, "Choose homophobia, choose anti-Semitism, choose misogyny, choose narrowmindedness, choose sky-fairies... choose Christianity."
It was supposed to highlight that it was acceptable on campus to say the pro-Christianity stuff but not the opposite. But predictably they got in all kinds of trouble. My sister's evangelical friend saw it and cried, and said he despaired for her soul. Apparently it was particularly galling to him because my sister had unknowingly made it to step 3 of his church's "12 steps to convert your friends into born again Christians" program and now all his effort had been wasted.
I think if these anti-abortion posters go up they should be defaced and debated in whatever legal manner is available.
I must be missing something.
Considering that the odds of people seeing these and saying "I never thought of that, I guess I'm not in charge of my own body!" is almost certainly around 0, only the last one is really offensive (though they're all kind of losery), with the strawfeminist implications of "doing my job."
I'd rather that nobody ran ads like these because they're emotionally manipulative. Deciding for or against an abortion has to be an emotional enough decision without a bunch of other people's opinions. Then again, I wouldn't limit their ability to speak, even though I would love to talk them out of it. So I don't know what one does in response to ads like this.
The best I can come up with is getting in on the anti-abortion business and getting a chunk of their funding by delivering measurable results. Where's the ad that says "I'm stuck between struggling to raise a child as a single mother or finishing my education and building the life I've always dreamed of. I wish I'd made him wear a condom." If all of those pro-life people put their effort into encouraging responsible birth control use, there would be less abortions.
To be annoyingly anal, we're still in the aughts. There's no year zero, so the last year of a decade is the 10 (or 20 or 50, etc.)
I'll always see these sorts of ads as nothing more than a chance to remind women that they are 'supposed' to feel guilty, and if they don't, they are just 'cold unfeeling monsters'. I've met too many women who started off fine with their abortions, only to start doubting their own minds the more they faced the assault of these types of messages, which ended up with them torturing themselves over a bunch of what-if's.
I'm also bothered that people still use the term 'PASS', but I can't talk about my Post Wisdom Tooth Extraction Stress Syndrome... People tell me that I'm being belittling, that a wisdom tooth extraction isn't traumatic. Maybe not to THEM, but it was VERY traumatic to me. :-( In terms of the procedure AND the fact that now I have an emptiness where there was none. I miss my tooth... Abortion was such a walk in the park compared to the wisdom tooth extraction. I still feel guilty for not bringing the tooth back to give it a ceremony and burial. It didn't fully hit me until I got home, then I spent a few days twittering about how upset I was... Sure, people probably found it weird, but people hurt over different things.
I am bothered that people still use the term "PASS" when there's no such thing as "post abortion stress syndrome".
A syndrome, medically speaking, is a unique collection of signs and symptoms which, occuring together, indicate a specific and particular disorder: the saying in the medical profession is, "Knowing the etiology, we can deduce the pathology, and knowing the pathology, can infer the etiology."
If a doctor sees a patient with a specific constellation of signs and symptoms -- a set usually called "Down syndrome" -- she can diagnose that person has having a condition called Trisomy 21. Conversely, if she is told "This individual has Trisomy 21", she will be able to infer that the person has certain, specific signs and symptoms.
If a doctor sees a patient knowing only "this individual has had an abortion", she will be able to infer nothing -- absolutely nothing -- about that individual's mental state. Conversely, if she sees a patient who reports suffering from distress, depression, sadness, regret, and guilt, she will not be able to tell you whether that individual has had an abortion or not.
THE MYTH OF POST-ABORTION TRAUMA
a man saying, "I often wonder if there was something I could have done to help her."
I saw this the other day and I wondered what answers I could give this hypothetical man.
Like:
"I often wonder if there was something I could have done to help her."
Answer: Like wearing a condom?
Answer: Like caring for her two other kids?
Answer: Going with her to the clinic?
I... disagree. A woman I know recently had an abortion and had a hell of a time finding any follow-up care. Frankly, the people at planned parenthood are great if you're an impoverished kid who's terrified of what she's doing, but if you're a mature professional who's nonetheless anguished and scared and guilty and feeling alone despite having a partner (and this is not always because the partner is a douchebag) and don't want to let family/friends know about the abortion, there's no good support structure: Exhale has stopped doing referrals to therapists outside of the bay area, and, when I tried to help this woman find a therapist who focuses on post-abortion counseling, it was next-to-impossible. Also, if you have health complications more than a month after your abortion, planned parenthood wants nothing to do with you: you're on your own.
In fact, if anyone has any references for post-abortion healing resources in the New York area, and wants to pass them along, it'd be much-appreciated.
Why do these anti-choice orgs always depend on this totally fallacious, overemotional logic? Of course "abortion changes you." Pregnancy, childbirth, and raising a child change you even more. Eating oatmeal for breakfast instead of eggs changes you. Every choice you make in a day changes you. And people who have babies get depressed, too. It's called postpartum depression, and my mother had it. It's like, what the fuck are they getting at?
And I sit here and wonder ... Why, in spite of these ads being total bullshit, are they still so effective? Why do regular anti-choicers constantly parrot and regurgitate this illogical, distorted, cherry-picked shit? It's like the most brilliant propaganda campaign ever.
Third, where do these orgs get all this fucking money to dump into propaganda campaigns? It's like they have a bottomless pit of cash. Are they collecting donations from churches, or what? I really can't figure it out.
I know those ads are exactly what I would want to see before coffee every morning. Ack.
I find these ads dishonest and incredibly insulting to women's intelligence. Studies show that 80% of women who have abortions do not regret it. Obviously, some do, and I do not mean to belittle that experience. (TabloidScully, you have my sympathy. I really wish I knew how to help, and I wish there were more resources for women in your situation.) But there is no evidence that "post-abortion stress syndrome" (as opposed to major depression or post-traumatic stress) exists anywhere outside of the minds anti-choicers.
In addition, the fact is that adults have to make decisions every day. Sometimes there are no good options. Sometimes this leads to regrets. As much as that sucks, that's life. The implication women shouldn't be trusted to make decisions because they might have regrets, and that the government (i.e. mostly men) is better equipped to make these decisions than the woman herself is sexist and reeks of paternalism.
Time to start carrying a nice fat sharpie.
Ugh, YES. I was thinking all sorts of snarky thoughts when confronted with one of these the other day.
And basically, what allegra said. Sure, abortion changes you! But who wants to bet this group did not also design websites for pregnancychangesyou.com, motherhoodchangesyou.com, adoptionchangesyou.com, and so on. The claim that abortion changes you is made here in a way to imply that other choices don't. BS.
Interesting note: this is not the first time they've run this campaign. I distinctly recall thinking the same snarky thoughts last year, maybe even around the same time of year. I guess there's something about the springtime.
Depends on the experience, what about scary anti choicers outside? Aren't they part of the problem?
Yes abortion changes you - typically from a rather panicked individual facing a neverending rush of nappies and school fees into a calm, mightily relieved person able to focus on their studies again and look forward to the prospect of a career in the legal profession.
Are these really that new? I saw at least one of these on the N/R/W line several months back - reading it definitely caused a very annoyed look to cross my face.