I am not ashamed. And ~we~ are not alone.
A guest blog by Planned Parenthood National Speaker Board (NSB) member, Kim Jorgensen Gane
(photo caption: Kim Jorgensen Gane (right) with Sen. Debbie Stabenow (left) at the Power of Pink training)
I am a mother-by-choice. Four times actually. There’s the generation of girls I raised to married adulthood, my daughter and my stepdaughter. And now I have two fifteen-year-old boys in my house, one of whom is our nephew. I’ve been a mom since I was twenty years old. I chose my daughter. I chose motherhood. And I raised her alone for the first six years of her life with no child support.
But motherhood is complicated.
Before we gave birth to you, believe it or not, we were fully formed human beings with hopes and dreams and futures of our own. And for me that includes an abortion story, too. I was nineteen when I had my abortion at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1985. The following year that clinic was firebombed by anti-abortion terrorists. I remember clearly hearing the news on my car radio. I had to pull over to collect myself and all I could think was, ‘Thank God. No one ever has to know.’
I never once regretted my abortion. It was the right choice for me at the time, and it made me a better mother to the children I did choose.
But for years I was silent because of my religious upbringing. I sang my first solo in church when I was five-years-old. And until I was fourteen and my parents divorced, more Sundays than not, my family and I sat next to my grandmother in the front pew of our church.
But when November 2016 happened, silence was no longer an option. I knew my story was important, but I didn’t know how important it was until I was back in Kalamazoo for a Planned Parenthood event and I heard Reverend Nathan Dannison say, “NOWHERE IN SCRIPTURE IS ABORTION CONDEMNED.” I had to choke back tears. His words were a catalyst for lifting the cloud of shame I’d carried with me my entire adult life.
Our shame and our fear are exploited and politicized to keep us silent and to keep us powerless. But we matter. Our stories, big and small, matter.
When women prosper our families prosper, and abortion care is about prioritizing women’s lives, and children’s lives and families over the potential for life. And knowing that that’s okay, knowing that we can forgive ourselves, whether or not we ever choose motherhood in any of its complexities, is a gift I want to pass on to you.
I am 1 in roughly 4 women who has accessed abortion care by the time she is 45. And I’m a mother-by-choice. And I’m a sister and a wife and a daughter. The more we can pull back that curtain and reveal our struggles and our truths, the more people will go into that booth and vote to save Roe.
I believe that telling my story is Divine work.
I am not ashamed. And ~we~ are not alone.