Author's note: During the summer of 2009, I talked to dozens of young pro-choice activists and doctors about what motivated their work for reproductive justice, what concerns them most about the current state of abortion rights, and what they think the future holds for legal abortion in the U.S. In the three interviews included here, four young activists - a law student, an attorney, and the creators of a pro-choice website - discuss these issues and also share their thoughts about why it's so important for their peers to not take legalization for granted.  The interviews will appear in my forthcoming book, Generation Roe.  Sarah Erdreich 

Kyle Marie Stock: Third-year law student, University of Texas; former board member, Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity

[The Lilith Fund is] a small, all-volunteer organization, we have about ten people on the board now. We cover Austin and south to the border and all the way west to El Paso, it’s a huge area. We have a hotline which is twenty-four hours, people basically leave messages and then the volunteers call them back. We actually have a relatively diverse board in terms of age, there’s early 20s all the way up to 60s; relatively diverse in terms of faith and different sexual orientations. We haven’t been so good with racial diversity, that’s been difficult for us.

We have people from all over the state call, from the big metropolitan areas to the tiniest, little towns. A lot of people are already parents; that’s definitely one of the things that come up often. People already have children and they can’t necessarily provide adequately for another kid, and they’re really trying to make sure that they’re able to raise their family in a healthy manner.

The [story] that sticks with me, that I was like oh my gosh, I cannot do this anymore, this is horrible, was a young woman who was in her teens. Her mother had kicked her out of the house and she was living on her own; the only thing she had to cook with was a microwave. She was in a metropolitan area in Texas and she was relatively far along already, so it was going to be a very expensive procedure. She told me that she had gone to her boyfriend, the father of the child, and he basically told her, I don’t know who you are, get out of my house. And to this day I don’t know what happened to that girl. I don’t know if she got her abortion, I don’t know where she is now, I don’t know any of that stuff. It was so heartbreaking because I wanted to drive to the city and help her, do something for her. It was awful; I couldn’t change any of this. I imagine that she probably had the child; it was one of those several-thousand-dollar abortions. 

On the other hand, I spoke to one woman who was in her mid-30s, and she was so empowered by the process. We had this really fantastic conversation about access to abortion, she was really grateful for my help and so happy that she had somebody to commiserate [with]. She got her abortion. I asked her to call me back and tell me how it went and she did, and she said thank you so much, it was really helpful to have you to talk to. It was so exciting, I was like I’m doing something good, I’m making a difference. It’s really it’s an emotional roller coaster, it’s the kind of work that’s very – one minute it’s really exciting, and another minute it’s heartbreaking.

One of the biggest challenges for small abortion funds is that our resources are so limited that often we can not adequately train people to deal with some of the hard cases. What I did [was], if there was something that I [didn’t] know how to handle, I would often call one of my colleagues and talk it out with them and debrief and care of myself first, to make sure that I was available to my client, to make sure that I wasn’t doing them more harm then good. I think that if we could do a better job training, people would burn out less. I definitely got to a point where I was like, I can’t do this anymore. The best thing to do is know your limits and use other resources when you’ve reached that point. We certainly have people who answer the hotline who have MSWs, people who do abortion counseling at clinics, people who are extremely well trained, and then there [are] other people that are new. But it’s really important to have as much new blood in the organization, to be drawing people into the community and really having people participate as much as they can, so it’s kind of a balancing act.

It’s interesting to me because Texas is so large, and there aren’t a lot of abortion providers. Certainly they’re out there, but often they’re in the metropolitan areas, so if you’re in a rural area you may have to travel four, five hours. Especially if you’re in West Texas; there, you may have go to New Mexico. It’s frustrating, and also because Texas is religiously and ideologically conservative, the conversation itself is even hostile. I mean, when you’re sitting in the Austin bubble, sure, people are more conversant about it. But I remember speaking to someone on the hotline where she was like, you are literally the first person I’ve told that I’m pregnant and I’m getting an abortion. She would be horribly ostracized and probably coerced, in terms of the way people present the argument, into not getting the abortion at all. And like I said, a lot of these people are already mothers so it’s not like they don’t want to have children, but they want to raise their children in an effective manner so it’s really crazy. With the sex ed stuff, it starts from the beginning: you don’t talk about any of that stuff, you’re not supposed to talk about sex let alone abortion, that would just be the end of the world.

When I talk about this issue with people, [they] have this expectation that abortion is used as a contraceptive method, that people repeatedly get pregnant and have abortions. It’s frustrating because that’s not completely unheard of, but at the same time that’s not the typical story. There are so many more factors and particulars of each story that if you are being sympathetic or even open to hearing someone’s story, you realize that this is never an easy decision. There’s always a host of factors that go into thinking about it. One of the good things that I found, though, is that the Lilith Fund makes sure that the clinics that we are working with are going to do a more holistic look at the situation. They’re going to give people counseling, they’re going to make sure they’re secure with the decision, they’re going to treat the person respectfully. I think that is really lost in the discussion, that even people who are funding abortion are really aware of people’s feelings on the issue and we want to make sure that there’s support throughout the whole process. People don’t get to that level of discussion often, though, because so often it’s like oh, you’re pro-choice, well, you’re horrible.

I absolutely think most people are not aware of what the realities are in terms of barriers to access. They aren’t worried about Roe, they’re not worried about Carhart, they’re not worried about any of these Supreme Court cases that have chipped away at this right. They don’t see it as an immediate threat. When South Dakota had that outright ban [under consideration] most people were like eh, whatever, no big deal. And I’m like no, you don’t understand, they did this on purpose so that someone would sue them and then they would take it to the Supreme Court. This isn’t going to just affect the people in South Dakota –  and even if it did, that’s horrible and we should really pay attention to that because as it is they only have one abortion provider in that state. It’s just frustrating because I think a lot of people don’t think about this issue until if affects them, until that day when they have that pregnancy scare, or their cousin gets pregnant and they’re like, what do I do.

 I certainly think people who grew up post-Roe take it for granted. So many people don’t know of the history, the stories about women who died, the stories that about women who are dying now in other countries because they can’t get an abortion. The conversation about abortion in this country is so black and white, it’s yes or no. [That’s] something I think that we as activists are failing to do, is putting real faces and real stories with this issue. I’m not saying that that’s easy, because you start a conversation and the word “abortion” pops up and all hell breaks loose. [People] also take access to birth control and access to emergency contraceptive for granted in a lot of cases. This is not a stand-alone issue, it’s all interconnected. The reality is that rich women are always going to be able to get an abortion; whether it’s legal or not, people with means will be able to access it. It’s the marginalized communities that are going to be most affected by any of the restrictions on abortion.

Another interesting thing that I’ve been reading about, and a way to turn the conversation around, is when people say that they want abortion to be illegal. Asking people what they expect the punishment should be –  saying ok, so you want this to be illegal, so should we put the doctors in jail? Should we put the woman in jail? Should there be fines? What are the consequences to the people who attempt or perform abortion if it’s illegal? I think that is an interesting twist on the question, what are the implications of this instead of just thinking about this very abstract idea. This is not solved by criminalizing abortion, it just sets off a whole new set of issues. But like I said, people stop at the first question, they don’t dig deeper into the problem.