As I’ve said to many people many different times, INS is not about me. I created the site, I write the code for it, but in the end it’s about the stories, women sharing experience and wisdom and hopefully helping someone out there who doesn’t know what to expect or believe. Pay no attention to the chick behind the curtain.
But in the six years INS has been online I’ve done interviews with the mainstream media, interviews that I hoped would conquer the bias and myths and just get the message out there that abortion is common, nothing to be ashamed of, do it and move on. I spent two hours on the phone a couple of years ago with a producer from PBS. Just recently I did an hour long interview with an editor from Glamour. “We’ll want to fly you up to New York, do studio time,” said the PBS producer. “My editor is so excited, this will break ground,” enthused the Glamour editor.
I never heard back from either of them. The Glamour article is out now, but instead of the groundbreaking article I was promised it reads like the typical “hardest decision I ever had to make” tripe, the only acceptable mainstream attitude about abortion. I stood in a Costco warehouse, leafing through a glossy magazine with Jennifer Connelly on the cover, and cursed “goddammit, goddammit” as I perused the article tucked in the back between skinny models wearing clothes I couldn’t begin to afford.
Abortion is an extremely common occurence. It is not wrong or bad or evil, it just is, something that the majority of women on this planet will experience one way or another. All I can do is collect the stories, present them, let them speak for themselves. And maybe one day the mainstream will wake up, present as well and end this bullshit. But I just get tired of speaking my piece only to end up on the cutting room floor or the delete bin. Maybe one day …
