My Mom Had An Abortion

by Beezus B Murphy, Amelia Bonow (Afterword), Shout Your Abortion (Producer)

My Mom Had an Abortion is a unique coming-of-age tale told by a self-described dyslexic-asexual-lesbian-feminist teenager and illustrated by body-positive comic artist Tatiana Gill. We follow our protagonist Beezus B. Murphy as she chronicles her evolving understanding of menstruation, reproduction, and abortion and finds her place in a confusing world. Initially influenced by harmful narratives in pop media such as the “the pregnant teenager” cliche, we watch Beezus’s ideas change as her body changes and as she learns more about the intricacies of her family history and her mom’s own reproductive experiences. She grows from a confused, out-of-place kid into a self-assured, empathetic, and strong-willed activist teen. As Beezus says, “People shouldn’t be shamed for getting or not getting abortions. Young people absorb the information that we gather from our surroundings. Sometimes it’s good information and other times it can be harmful. But now I realize abortion is perfectly normal and should be kept safe and legal.” Sprinkled with pop culture references, hilariously apt descriptions of unwanted body changes and menstruation like the chapter “Blood, Bath, and Beyond,” and instantly understandable revelations of growing-up, this beautifully illustrated short graphic novel crucially fills a cultural gap around complexities of abortion, pop culture, body changes, and finding out where we fit in.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Memoir, Nonfiction, Feminism, LGBT, Comics, Queer

64 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 2021

Reviews

[Alex Nonymous · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC of My Mom Had an Abortion in exchange for an honest review.

While I liked My Mom Had an Abortion for its honesty and openness about a usually tabboo topic, it was a lot shorter than I think the topic deserved. This felt more like a section of a graphic novel than a graphic novel itself and I wanted more.

[Colleen Frakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoughtful story that has been well translated into comics

[Meepelous · Rating 4 out of 5]

Content notes for starting your period, parental enthusiasm about starting your period, and Beezus' journey from anti to pro abortion.

What keywords came to mind reading this relatively short memoir: coming of age, slice of life, puberty, reproductive rights, generation z, living and learning.

A bit word heavy at times and definitely highly sincere, I found this teenage perspective of someone who is a couple decades younger then me to be really interesting. Not to mention that I grew up in an incredibly antiabortion culture. I don't exactly remember when the tables turned for me, my process of going from passively antiabortion to proabortion (and now actively proabortion) was probably a somewhat slow and steady process. At some point in my late teens and early twenties I started learning more about a feminist perspective on rape culture and eventually I think that just lead to realizing people should have ultimate say over what happens in their body .

Side note, as I hope you've already heard a couple of times abortion is not a woman's issue. Not all women can get pregnant and some men and nonbinary people can. It's a health and body autonomy issue.

Finishing this book I've felt pretty inspired to see if I can track down some more comics/graphic novels that are pro abortion of all kinds. I'm assuming they are a bit thin on the ground, but I know there's at least one more. Not that I need another reading project, but this is important!

As far as diversity goes, obviously with memoirs things can be understandably one note. That said, I really appreciated how Beezus not only brings up her disability and sexual identities but also takes some time in the book to explain her journey of self-discovery in these areas.

We also get some insight to some of the other ways that Beezus is involved in activism including Black Lives Matter and shout your abortion. I was a little surprised that (assuming I remember this correctly) not too much gender stuff came up.

Class was probably the very least touched on of all.

To conclude, I think I'm going to go with four out of five stars.

[Kait · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had really high hopes for this graphic novel but it ultimately didn't deliver. The chapters and the story did not feel cohesive and I found the storytelling very lacking. I expected there to be more of an illustrated narrative, but the meat of the storytelling was done in paragraph form that was supposed to complement the graphic aspects. I feel like this story could've gone so much deeper, but it glossed over the points which I think could've made this a strong piece -- and at the same time it went too deep into pieces I felt should've been more of a minimal focus.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book the other day. I want to share this with my 11 year old daughter but may wait until I feel the moment is right. I loved that a young person wrote this very personal book about her own experience. Taking the stigma and shame out of abortion will help us to continue to fight for this right. I cried when I read this book and I think the Shout Your Abortion movement is an important one.

[Shan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up at the PM Press table at a recent book fair. The title had me hooked. Such an important topic. However, this fell flat with the writing. There was so much thrown into what actually amounted to a zine more than a full out graphic novel.
I did learn a ton from this book but that's about it. The story was disconnected, even giving grace for it being written by a 16/17 year old teenager. Beezus does seem like a very strong young person who will do the world a great deal of good.
I had never heard of the Shout Your Abortion movement but I LOVE IT! Much like mental health, this topic is highly stigmatized and definitely should not be. It shouldn't even be a "thing" cuz it is a medical treatment that some might like to keep private. It did make me think about how people who are pro-life seem "forgiving" for miscarriages but when it is the "A-word" they flip out. Brass tacks, a miscarriage is a "spontaneous abortion". My body, my choice.
*tucking my soapbox away*

[Leah]

My first graphic novel ever!

[Alyssa Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an impactful read from youth author, Beezus B. Murphy, who discussed her own views on abortions and the stigma surrounding them. I would utilmately rate this book 3.5 stars due to its brief content, but it is also the reflections of a young author coming to terms with her mom’s abortion and rationalizing her own opinions on pro-choice. I really enjoyed the resources provided in this book and the discussion of stigmatizing media representation of abortions.

[Mark Robison · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two things that I would've liked to know before I started reading this. First, the author was born in 2004 (with the book published in 2021). Second, it's short and — if published in the 1990s — would've probably been billed as an illustrated zine rather than a graphic novel. It's text heavy and has occasional simple panels without much detail.

All that said, I enjoyed this. The book follows Beezus figuring out who she is. Writing this at age 16 or 17, she ends up describing herself as a woke asexual lesbian feminist. I'll be interested if/how her self-description changes when she's 26 and 36. Regardless, I like seeing people of any age delve into why they believe what they believe — and even trying to understand their own bodies — and I appreciated Beezus sharing her efforts.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed, but didn’t love - it felt too short and rushed. While I obviously respect that this was written by a teenager, and won’t be as fully formed, it left me feeling like there was more. The way the sections were laid out also jumped around in a strange way. I think this would still be a good resource for teenagers, but I’d like to have seen it edited a bit better.

[Marilou Rickert · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have a pre-teen or teen-age daughter, do yourself a favor and read this book! If you were ever a teen-age woman, do yourself a favor and read this book.

[Person · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I was going into the book, I had hoped it was solely about the perception of someone dealing with an issue that felt personal to her - such as in the case that she could have been aborted as well or she lost someone she could have felt close to more than her parents, the latter somewhat shown at the end of chapter three. From what I understand, it's almost as if this book has an identity crisis from such a misleading title to the approaching of the issue of abortion. Then there's Chapter Four, which goes into the aspect of a growing women, just before continuing talking about her mother's early life between her parents. Not only does it have an identity crisis shown in the first five chapters, but the tone of it seems inconsistent as the fourth ends with a joke about not holding her breasts, then it talks about the mother's early life. Chapter six somehow brings Beezus back as the titular character instead of her mother or the issue that is mentioned in the title and on the 'A Shout Your Abortion Project' on the cover. It almost feels as if this isn't really about someone's life, instead it's about something that is talked about on the moment - as shown with how there's only two pages of the mention of the writer being a lesbian before moving onto another chapter.

Outside of a supposed preamble into social movements and everyday acts of resistance, it doesn't quite get better in any way in the rest of the chapters. The question that keeps circulating my mind is 'What intention did the author really have with this book that couldn't have been put into their own seperate sections instead of in a book about abortion or in between chapters not about her?' Again, the book has the identity crisis of not extending anything beyond just the discovery of something, which I'm quite sure anyone who can read is able to consume more information than what's presented. One final mention of how inconsistent the tone and purpose of this book is through mentioning how "woke" Beezus B. Murphy is before somehow adding more text about abortion as the final chapter.

As someone that does understand the hardship of writing, especially when it's about postmodernism for an essay I should have gotten more than just a ninety-one percent; but after reading this book in an hour and ten minutes, I still have no idea what was going through the head of the writer. Sure, I can respect her and critique with reasonable reach, but she should have taken more inspiration from other books that are either more popular or intellectually scintillating than a book show that the hardest part was just trying to remember certain events.

-

Overall, my review isn't the best, but I wouldn't say I can't recommend this to anyone that is around ten years of age. It does have some capability to be an introduction, even if it's one-tenth of what it should have been, since it can be useful for periods, recognizing the necessity of accessible abortion and understanding family member's lives more than just the shell of who they are. Also, I thought Beezus looked nice with those heart glasses and that red hair.

[Jaclyn Hillis]

This is a short coming-of-age graphic novel on how Beezus handled her mother telling her that she had an abortion. Beezus also discusses her period and her thoughts on other taboo topics.

I loved her thoughts on the television show ‘The Secret Life of the American Teenager.’ Did anyone else watch this? It was one of those shows that was pretty terrible but I couldn’t stop watching! Anyway, Beezus made a great point about how tv shows like this portrayed abortion so negatively. Thankfully our media is getting a bit better on these topics.

I hope Beezus writes a longer, more in depth graphic memoir - about these topics and more - in the future because this one was definitely too short.

About the author — Beezus was born in 2004 in Seattle. She is dyslexic, asexual, a lesbian, a feminist, a writer, and an activist. She didn’t learn how to read until she was 8 because of her learning disability.

[Andrew Eder · Rating 2 out of 5]

I mean it was definitely a book. With sentences. And pictures. Other than that, there’s not much to it. I’m not sure what the purpose of this book is or the audience, but it didn’t really follow any structure or have much development. I feel like I was just reading a list of thoughts the author had. And while I appreciated the openness and honesty of the author and their experiences, it wasn’t anything unique or stand out. I had a lot of excitement for this one and I feel let down.

It was fine. I would recommend reading it, but not buying it. This is a “borrow from a friend” kind of book.

[Fadilla Dwianti Putri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm giving this book three stars not because it is unimportant, but because this book is so important there are a lot more to explore and unpack. The book is too short to cover issues such as abortion, menstruation, SRH and other stuff that you can never talk about in public without leaving ppl feeling uncomfortable and awkward. This book is also important because it's written from a young adult pov, whose voice sometimes dismissed in these narratives.

[Rocio · Rating 2 out of 5]

I understand the message and the importance of it but this comic book was just bad. The illustrations were not great but what was more jarring were the huge walls of text all over the book. Giant speech bubbles that were basically paragraphs. There could've been a better way to organize all that text; or simply minimize it.

[Cal | slug wife reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had really high hopes for this graphic novel after donating to the fundraiser for publishing with PM Press. However, the story felt really clunky and had very little to do with erasing abortion stigma and mostly felt like an unedited collection of journal entries. Hearing from young people about their lives and ideas around abortion is SO important, but this fell flat for me.

[Katlyn Ellis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Earc received via Edelweiss+ in exchange for an honest review. I was unaware that this book was in the form of a graphic novel, but I did not enjoy the artistic style of the graphics and also just found it to be very short and too the point. I appreciate the oportunity.

[Harry Palacio · Rating 5 out of 5]

This graphic novel is one the most astonishing and brilliant works I’ve encountered especially with such á humanitarian slant that one wonders why currently we are floundering- although, we may as a society not come to terms always FREEDOM is essential

[Bob McBobbersan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and sweet.
Loved the art.
Storytelling could have been a bit better. All the story’s were short blurbs and didn’t seem to flow together in a smooth flow.
Over all I enjoyed it. And loved how it talked about hard to talk about subject matters.

[Emma Caterine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t think enough people understand how powerful it is for teenagers to read things by other teens. Great book that I’m definitely going to be giving to my niece and nephew when they’re old enough.

[Andréa]

Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good discussion of a topic that shouldn’t be taboo. The format is accessible, which is important for this topic as well. Easily able to be read in a single setting

[naga]

"... people are capable of remarkable transformation."

[Sobe Hollis · Rating 3 out of 5]

#shoutyourabortion

[Alysha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly I feel like I would give this book a 2.5. There were just a few too many things here and there that left me feeling a bit meh or let down from what I was hoping to get from this title.

[Kasia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[SerenaBeReading · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this. At times it felt a bit disjointed but I loved the overall message of not judging people for having abortions.

[Greyson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad this book exists but it didn't feel cohesive at all. The chapters are random and a lot of them have nothing to do with the title at all. A little disappointing but I did like the chapters invidually.

[Tutankhamun18 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great message