Several years ago for my birthday, Nathan got me Chainmail Bikini by Hazel Newlevant and I was hooked by her work. She is amazing and magnificent as all get-out.
When she launched an IndeGoGo campaign for another comic anthology, Comics for Choice I had to back it. In this anthology, cartoonists and illustrators worked together with activists, historians, and reproductive justice experts to create comics with personal stories, history, and current politics that define our country today. Reading this as a pregnant person was tough, I’ll be the first to admit that. But it was also an incredible read that made me realize how lucky I am.
The history of abortion, really over the course of human history, is complicated and fraught. There was a time when it was basically no big deal to rid yourself of an unwanted pregnancy before you experienced “quickening” (when you first feel the baby move.) Over the course of history, advanced medical procedures like ultrasounds reinformed our ideas of when life begins. We are visual creatures, after all. Now there are people who advocate for women to be put to death for seeking an abortion after they see those two lines on a pregnancy test indicating there’s a bun in your oven. Ironic? You bet, but those people (some in my own circle of acquaintance) exist.
What Comics for Choice really drove home for me was how important it is for women to have easy access to safe and affordable abortion procedures. We don’t know why a woman might be seeking an abortion. Through my own privilege, I couldn’t help but think about how Nathan and I would approach getting such a procedure if we discover in the next few weeks that our baby – that is so loved and wanted – doesn’t have a brain stem. Would we have the strength to walk into a clinic, past the protestors who know nothing about what we’re going through, to do what we know is best for our child? It makes me angry that we live in a society where this is even a question.
But more than access to this medical procedure, what Comics for Choice reaffirmed to me was the important of making sure that people who can become pregnant and their partners have the support they need to not become pregnant if they don’t want to be parents, the resources available so that bringing a child into this world does not mean financial ruin for everyone in the family, and the information available to them to make choices that will lead to holistic health for themselves and their communities.
Comics for Choice is $25 and now that the IndeGoGo campaign is over the proceeds to go pay the talented cartoonists and illustrators for their incredible work.
Comics for Choice wraparound cover by Sophia Foster-Dimino
