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Verso Reports
We Organize to Change Everything: Fighting for Abortion Access and Reproductive Justice
An urgent collection on losing Roe v. Wade, struggling to provide abortion across the Americas, and how we can rebuild a fighting movement for reproductive justice
The likely loss of a federal right to abortion in the United States is horrifying. But should Roe fall, many things won’t change: even prior to this year’s stunning onslaught of bans and restrictions, abortion care wasn’t available in 85% of US counties. How have we come to lose one of the crowning achievements of the 1970s women’s liberation movement? How can we make sure that reproductive care is accessible to anyone who needs it, legal or not? And how can we win reproductive freedom and justice for all?
A collaboration between acclaimed socialist feminist magazine Lux and Verso, We Organize to Change Everything examines the fight for abortion from the 1970s to the present, bringing together the voices of clinic defenders, health care providers, and the networks of feminist activists helping pregnant people obtain care from Mississippi to Mexico. Contributors also consider the intimate connection of abortion rights to forced sterilization and structural racism, incarceration and criminalization, Indigenous people’s sovereignty, transgender rights, and the growing threat of a white supremacist far right. Looking outside of the US to the Americas, the collection shows how US activists can draw inspiration, lessons, and strategy from the dynamic feminist movement across Central and South America.
Most importantly, this collection describes what a fighting movement for reproductive justice could look like—one that fights for the right to parent as we wish or not parent at all, that rejects the criminalization of anyone’s body, and true reproductive freedom for everyone.
With contributions from: Jenny Brown, Naomi Braine, Verónica Cruz Sanchez of Las Libres, the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, Derenda Hancock and Kim Gibson of We Engage, Amelia Bonow of Shout Your Abortion, Barbara Winslow, Marian Jones, Jen Deerinwater, Raquel Reichard, Amy Littlefield and ReproJobs, Erin Matson and Shireen Rose Shakouri from Reproaction, Cheryl Rivera, Victoria Law, Marie Solis, Dr. Mary K. Bowman, Movimento di Lotta Femminile di Padova, Lizzie Presser, Arielle Swernoff, Mattie Lubchansky, and an introduction from Jessie Kindig.
The likely loss of a federal right to abortion in the United States is horrifying. But should Roe fall, many things won’t change: even prior to this year’s stunning onslaught of bans and restrictions, abortion care wasn’t available in 85% of US counties. How have we come to lose one of the crowning achievements of the 1970s women’s liberation movement? How can we make sure that reproductive care is accessible to anyone who needs it, legal or not? And how can we win reproductive freedom and justice for all?
A collaboration between acclaimed socialist feminist magazine Lux and Verso, We Organize to Change Everything examines the fight for abortion from the 1970s to the present, bringing together the voices of clinic defenders, health care providers, and the networks of feminist activists helping pregnant people obtain care from Mississippi to Mexico. Contributors also consider the intimate connection of abortion rights to forced sterilization and structural racism, incarceration and criminalization, Indigenous people’s sovereignty, transgender rights, and the growing threat of a white supremacist far right. Looking outside of the US to the Americas, the collection shows how US activists can draw inspiration, lessons, and strategy from the dynamic feminist movement across Central and South America.
Most importantly, this collection describes what a fighting movement for reproductive justice could look like—one that fights for the right to parent as we wish or not parent at all, that rejects the criminalization of anyone’s body, and true reproductive freedom for everyone.
With contributions from: Jenny Brown, Naomi Braine, Verónica Cruz Sanchez of Las Libres, the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, Derenda Hancock and Kim Gibson of We Engage, Amelia Bonow of Shout Your Abortion, Barbara Winslow, Marian Jones, Jen Deerinwater, Raquel Reichard, Amy Littlefield and ReproJobs, Erin Matson and Shireen Rose Shakouri from Reproaction, Cheryl Rivera, Victoria Law, Marie Solis, Dr. Mary K. Bowman, Movimento di Lotta Femminile di Padova, Lizzie Presser, Arielle Swernoff, Mattie Lubchansky, and an introduction from Jessie Kindig.
242 pages, ebook
Published June 1, 2022
13 people are currently reading
220 people want to read
About the author
Natalie Adler
3 books6 followersI am a writer, teacher, and editor. I have an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Brown University. I was a Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction and am an editor at Lux, a feminist magazine. I am from New Jersey and live in New York City with my wife and our Pomeranian.
Waiting on a Friend is my first novel. Check out the bookshelf "waiting-on-a-friend-research" for everything I read to write it!
Waiting on a Friend is my first novel. Check out the bookshelf "waiting-on-a-friend-research" for everything I read to write it!
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 25, 2022
6/24/22 --- Currently available for free download from the publisher (Verso):
https://www.versobooks.com/books/4140...
Truly an amazing, insightful, and passionate collection of essays around reproductive rights and the underground groups that are doing the day-to-day work to support women from South to North America, primarily. My ignorance on this topic was even deeper than I thought and there's an unmistakable history of controlling, criminalizing, and exploiting those with the least power/advantages. It's a practical resource, as well, with contact info for various groups and even a chapter on accessing and using misoprostol pills one's self.
From a history of coercive sterilization to the separation of families through federally-funded Indian boarding schools (whose mass graves, found both in Canada and the U.S., have been in the news the last year or so), you get the impression of the enormity of these issues and the way in which dominant culture and institutions fail to protect and empower women and children.
Lux Magazine and Verso Books have done quite a service by pulling this together and making it available for free.
https://www.versobooks.com/books/4140...
Truly an amazing, insightful, and passionate collection of essays around reproductive rights and the underground groups that are doing the day-to-day work to support women from South to North America, primarily. My ignorance on this topic was even deeper than I thought and there's an unmistakable history of controlling, criminalizing, and exploiting those with the least power/advantages. It's a practical resource, as well, with contact info for various groups and even a chapter on accessing and using misoprostol pills one's self.
From a history of coercive sterilization to the separation of families through federally-funded Indian boarding schools (whose mass graves, found both in Canada and the U.S., have been in the news the last year or so), you get the impression of the enormity of these issues and the way in which dominant culture and institutions fail to protect and empower women and children.
Lux Magazine and Verso Books have done quite a service by pulling this together and making it available for free.
"the issue now calls for social mobilization and movement, to rearrange what is in disarray. That’s what a social movement is..." from "Women Themselves Are the Solution" (Las Libres Has Been Helping Women Access Abortion and Human Rights in Mexico, and Now the United States, for Over Two Decades)
by Verónica Cruz Sanchezinterviewed and translated by Elizabeth Navarro
September 16, 2022
This was so good. Free on Verso to read! I highly recommend if you want a deeper dive into reproductive justice movements all around the world as well as in the US. Plus instructions and advice on self-managed abortion. I also really appreciated learning about the historical context around the fight for protecting abortion in medical settings only vs. abortion midwives and herbalists. Just so interesting!
Some essays were certainly better than others and I most enjoyed the ones about repro justice movements in South America and sub-Saharan Africa. Could have used more of this really!
Some essays were certainly better than others and I most enjoyed the ones about repro justice movements in South America and sub-Saharan Africa. Could have used more of this really!
July 27, 2022
There is no wrong time to read this.
February 27, 2023
Absolutely essential reading.
There is so much to learn from reading this, I won't even try to summarize. It needs to be read, not skimmed or paraphrased.
Incredibly intellectual, amazingly emotional, superbly assembled.
We must make Reproductive Access a reality, else humans will cease to be.
Down with Capitalism.
Down with Rights, Up with Justice.
READ THIS.
There is so much to learn from reading this, I won't even try to summarize. It needs to be read, not skimmed or paraphrased.
Incredibly intellectual, amazingly emotional, superbly assembled.
We must make Reproductive Access a reality, else humans will cease to be.
Down with Capitalism.
Down with Rights, Up with Justice.
READ THIS.
unread-nonfiction
June 24, 2022Currently free: https://www.versobooks.com/books/4140...
June 20, 2022
Essential essays in these perilous times on reproductive justice in its many forms, with excellent resources. Available as a free download
https:www.versobooks.com/books/4140-we-orga...
https:www.versobooks.com/books/4140-we-orga...
July 10, 2022
perhaps the best book on abortion in 2022. contributors to this collection are the true experts, on the ground, street level activists, radicals, revolutionaries; the critique is expansive, much more intersectional than previous and oncoming -- pro-choice, vote!!!!, blue wave, liberal class publications singing democratic, anti-working class praises, tiptoeing around even saying the word "abortion," to appease white supremacist, christian extremist feelings (the petite bourgeois will always succumb to fascism). there is -a lot- in 'we organize to change everything,' so i'll highlight chapters that makes this stand out from other works on abortion: "panuelos verdes, acompanamiento, solidaridad" is a look into the struggle for abortion rights in the global south, namely while focusing on "self-managed medication abortion" (SMA), regional abortion networks extend across latin america and sub-saharan africa, grassroots internationalism sharing political and medical knowledge, skills, strategies; a clear map the u.s. can follow that's been around since early 2000s. disruption, direct action, and solidarity works, imagine that. "the attacks on native people's reproductive autonomy" discusses the federal government's abysmal record in keeping a historic trust relationship with native peoples, the obligations to provide meaningful access to reproductive healthcare are not fulfilled, whether through ihs or state antiabortion laws still enforced despite federal obligations (leaving no avenue for autonomy). forced assimilation and sterilization, child removal, alarming rates of sexual violence, infant and maternal morbidity and mortality-- all happen under the trust responsibility. no matter how bad you think it can be, it's worse. "empty choices" might be the highlight of the book. reproductive justice is the essential going forward: "rights are based on the premise that all people are equal, whereas justice emphasizes the importance of achieving equity while recognizing that different communities have different histories and re-distributive needs." jones also goes into the history of reproductive eugenics, sterilizations of puerto rican women (a full, horrifying look in the latter "aborto libre, seguro y accesible"), native people, the disabled, and up to 1990s-present day with the amount of judges who would namely sterilize Black women in favor of avoiding jail time, beyond sickening. very reminiscent of 'killing the black body' (almost 30 years old still important as ever). "labor crisis in the clinics" we talk of clinics closing down and women losing services-- but what about the workers who - provide - the work for the services, thousands of jobs also leave, thousands of families suffer, but we never discuss it. the major clinic/foundations sitting on mountains of funding treat staff just as poorly as any capitalist corporation. "your body is not your own" the 1 a. to "empty choices," the amount of laws designed to help women in danger improperly used to make women suffer is staggering, along with just how far the government goes to create and sustain a criminalized class. excellent marxist critique throughout, depressing as the essay is to read. "abortion behind bars" victoria law-- what else needs to be said, an expert in abolition, great investigating, exposing judges' and prison workers' control over pregnancy under incarceration. again, depressing, but essential. "one struggle, one fight" draws parallels between loss of reproductive rights and trans rights to uphold a patriarchal gender binary, the language in laws sounding nearly identical in criminalizing healthcare. good information on how even simple acceptance (not medical intervention) is enough to curb suicide in trans youth. "maybe abortion isn't as complicated as we've been led to believe" takes us through the underground network of midwives, herbalists, nurses, and activists providing home abortions in the u.s., it's one of the more hopeful (?) moments in the book, the lengths not only people will go to get an abortion, but how far supporters will go to get them done, taking it upon themselves, destigmatizing and simplifying abortion in the process. the remaining chapters act as resources on how to take the abortion pill (along with obtaining it in the first place), an instruction manual of sorts, end capping such a taboo subject with straight forward explanation. it's literally healthcare, centuries old, but 'we organize to change everything' maps out how it's been taken and warped into controlling the working class; economic, social, racial, sexual, religious, geographical affects all intertwined, world wide. well, a large portion of the world. i will say i'm curious to know more about abortion in middle eastern, east and south east asian countries, the places not talked about here, that would be my major complaint. otherwise no doubt 5 star.
July 31, 2022
This is so in the current moment. That means that I have little to say because I never discuss current politics in a review.
One of the essayists in this anthology says she had been a supporter of abortion rights since she was ten years old. I hadn't even heard the word "abortion" at that age. I feel that there is a vast chasm that has opened up between the world of my childhood and the world that I live in now.
It took me a while to get the time to go through my notes and decide what I wanted to put in the blog version of my review.
See my complete review at https://shomeretmasked.blogspot.com/2...
One of the essayists in this anthology says she had been a supporter of abortion rights since she was ten years old. I hadn't even heard the word "abortion" at that age. I feel that there is a vast chasm that has opened up between the world of my childhood and the world that I live in now.
It took me a while to get the time to go through my notes and decide what I wanted to put in the blog version of my review.
See my complete review at https://shomeretmasked.blogspot.com/2...
July 19, 2022
“This is scraping things down to the bone: there is nothing more fundamental to politics than the body.”
“What we are watching in the United States, as this book quickly came together in the spring of 2022, is the victory of a decades-long campaign to turn the bodies of everyone who can become pregnant into weapons used against us”
“For example, the passage of Oklahoma’s House Bill 4327, the most restrictive in the country, bans abortion from fertilization onward and allows private citizens to sue providers and anyone who “aids or abets” a person seeking abortion care”
“We live in a country where nearly 11 million women live more than an hour’s drive from an abortion clinic (likely more than that now, given the recent bans in Oklahoma and Texas), where roughly 1,200 women have been arrested since 2005 for having miscarriages or pregnancy-related problems, and where the eugenic practice of forcibly sterilizing nonwhite and criminalized women continued, in California’s prison system, until 2011.”
“The strategy the mainstream abortion rights movement has followed since winning Roe has been timid and moderate, focused on lobbying and fundraising and legal cases—a strategy directly counter to the loud, visible, angry, community organizing of the women’s liberation movement that won the federal right in the first place”
“This is a strategy, Jenny Brown and Marian Jones argue, that tamed the movement, narrowed it to the question of choice rather than freedom, privacy rather than justice”
“It seems quite clear: with the fall of Roe imminent and talk of an outright federal ban on abortion (and maybe contraception, and maybe LGBTQ rights): this strategy has cost us everything.”
“It has cost us everything because abortion is about everything: to control reproduction is to determine who is a criminal and who is not, who should parent and who should not, whose body is their own and whose is not.
“Another way to say this is: an attack on abortion is never just about abortion”
“ . . . behind the antiabortion movement is an ideology of white supremacy and the right’s terror of the so-called “Great Replacement,” the time when white people will be outnumbered by nonwhite people.”
“This is not a fringe belief but an influential fascist ideology fueled by a well-funded, instutionalized network of think tanks, far-right politicians, extremist activists, and violent vigilantes in the US and around the world.”
“The flipside of protecting white babies is preventing the birth of nonwhite babies, and so the forced pregnancies of white women go hand in hand, ideologically speaking, with the long history of state-sanctioned forced sterilizations of Indigenous women, Puerto Rican women, and Black and brown women”
“ . . . is also about solidifying a strict regime of binary, immutable gender”
“the bans against abortion providers have been paralleled by attacks on gender-affirming health care for transgender people”
“The abortion crisis is, “a labor crisis too,” one in which reproductive clinic workers and providers face ever-diminishing resources, greater restrictions, and mass unemployment.”
“The loss of abortion is also a potential loss of sovereignty for Indigenous communities: the abortion bans not only impact Native people at disproportionately higher rates but also threaten the legal basis for tribal sovereignty”
“ . . . this is part of a centuries-long campaign of diminishing Indigenous people’s autonomy, taking away their right to parent, and breaking treaty after treaty promising Native people the right to their own land and to self-government”
“The criminalization of abortion also expands the purview of the carceral state.”
“Cheryl Rivera here calls “the criminal class,” the population of mostly poor, mostly Black and brown people whose labor has been ruthlessly exploited and whose bodies have long been subject to violent forms of control.”
“The laboring body is also, of course, the body in labor—the birthing body, the pregnant body, the breast-feeding and child-rearing body—and this laboring body is now criminalized too”
“United States policies have long attempted to make one’s identity and perhaps even one’s own body—Blackness, queerness, and non-whiteness—into a criminal liability; now the possession of a womb is added, again, to that list.”
“Luckily, there are many more places in the world than the United States, and the movement for reproductive freedom is a global one.”
“ . . . spread throughout Argentina, then South America, then the world, coalescing and massing with the feminist street protests in Poland after the 2016 abortion ban, and erupting into the global women’s strike in March 2018.”
“Ni Una Menos, the movement was called—not one more person will we lose to gender violence!”
“As the strike call argued,
The strength of our movement lies in the links we make with each other …We organize to change everything.”
“Their cry is our cry.”
“If abortion is everything, then we organize to change everything”
“South America is, today, home to one of the most dynamic feminist movements in the world, one where activists are immediately recognizable, as Naomi Braine
describes, by their trademark
pañuelos verdes,
their green bandanas.”
“Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina have legalized abortion—and Chile may soon—while networks of feminist activists have made self-managed abortions more accessible and created new forms of solidarity in the process”
“Mexican feminists in her organization, Las Libres, have begun to accompany American women through abortion procedures after Texas passed a near-total abortion ban in 2021.”
“ . . . an “abortion underground” has existed in the United States throughout the twentieth century, one that is now composed of midwives, nurses, and activists performing illegal or non-medical abortions themselves.”
“With the rise of the abortifacient drugs mifepristone and misoprostol—colloquially known as abortion pills—the ease of performing a safe, economical, and self-managed abortion, legal or not, has increased”
“one starting point for a revitalized, and socialist, feminist movement, and the beginning of much-needed discussions both political and strategic:
“Does the urgent need for underground abortion care supersede fighting for decriminalization or defending existing clinics?“
“Do we focus on mutual aid in our communities or national and international battles?”
“How do we build a true movement for reproductive justice not limited to personal choice but opposed to incarceration and forced sterilization, one that fights against the destruction of Indigenous sovereignty and the criminalization of trans people?”
“How do we take care of all of us and fight for all of us too?”
“Black feminists in the United States in the 1990s who coined the term
“reproductive justice.”
“The problem is not abortion.”
“The problem is having the possibility to become mothers as often as we want to become mothers.”
“Only when we want to, but whenever we want to.
Abortion is not just about abortion.”
“It is about autonomy, justice, and democracy for us all.”
“Abortion is the tolling bell that warns us, women and men, people of any and no gender, all of us of any race and ethnicity, poor and not-poor alike, of the state of our rights and the prospects for our future”
It’s Time to Fight
“What we are watching in the United States, as this book quickly came together in the spring of 2022, is the victory of a decades-long campaign to turn the bodies of everyone who can become pregnant into weapons used against us”
“For example, the passage of Oklahoma’s House Bill 4327, the most restrictive in the country, bans abortion from fertilization onward and allows private citizens to sue providers and anyone who “aids or abets” a person seeking abortion care”
“We live in a country where nearly 11 million women live more than an hour’s drive from an abortion clinic (likely more than that now, given the recent bans in Oklahoma and Texas), where roughly 1,200 women have been arrested since 2005 for having miscarriages or pregnancy-related problems, and where the eugenic practice of forcibly sterilizing nonwhite and criminalized women continued, in California’s prison system, until 2011.”
“The strategy the mainstream abortion rights movement has followed since winning Roe has been timid and moderate, focused on lobbying and fundraising and legal cases—a strategy directly counter to the loud, visible, angry, community organizing of the women’s liberation movement that won the federal right in the first place”
“This is a strategy, Jenny Brown and Marian Jones argue, that tamed the movement, narrowed it to the question of choice rather than freedom, privacy rather than justice”
“It seems quite clear: with the fall of Roe imminent and talk of an outright federal ban on abortion (and maybe contraception, and maybe LGBTQ rights): this strategy has cost us everything.”
“It has cost us everything because abortion is about everything: to control reproduction is to determine who is a criminal and who is not, who should parent and who should not, whose body is their own and whose is not.
“Another way to say this is: an attack on abortion is never just about abortion”
“ . . . behind the antiabortion movement is an ideology of white supremacy and the right’s terror of the so-called “Great Replacement,” the time when white people will be outnumbered by nonwhite people.”
“This is not a fringe belief but an influential fascist ideology fueled by a well-funded, instutionalized network of think tanks, far-right politicians, extremist activists, and violent vigilantes in the US and around the world.”
“The flipside of protecting white babies is preventing the birth of nonwhite babies, and so the forced pregnancies of white women go hand in hand, ideologically speaking, with the long history of state-sanctioned forced sterilizations of Indigenous women, Puerto Rican women, and Black and brown women”
“ . . . is also about solidifying a strict regime of binary, immutable gender”
“the bans against abortion providers have been paralleled by attacks on gender-affirming health care for transgender people”
“The abortion crisis is, “a labor crisis too,” one in which reproductive clinic workers and providers face ever-diminishing resources, greater restrictions, and mass unemployment.”
“The loss of abortion is also a potential loss of sovereignty for Indigenous communities: the abortion bans not only impact Native people at disproportionately higher rates but also threaten the legal basis for tribal sovereignty”
“ . . . this is part of a centuries-long campaign of diminishing Indigenous people’s autonomy, taking away their right to parent, and breaking treaty after treaty promising Native people the right to their own land and to self-government”
“The criminalization of abortion also expands the purview of the carceral state.”
“Cheryl Rivera here calls “the criminal class,” the population of mostly poor, mostly Black and brown people whose labor has been ruthlessly exploited and whose bodies have long been subject to violent forms of control.”
“The laboring body is also, of course, the body in labor—the birthing body, the pregnant body, the breast-feeding and child-rearing body—and this laboring body is now criminalized too”
“United States policies have long attempted to make one’s identity and perhaps even one’s own body—Blackness, queerness, and non-whiteness—into a criminal liability; now the possession of a womb is added, again, to that list.”
“Luckily, there are many more places in the world than the United States, and the movement for reproductive freedom is a global one.”
“ . . . spread throughout Argentina, then South America, then the world, coalescing and massing with the feminist street protests in Poland after the 2016 abortion ban, and erupting into the global women’s strike in March 2018.”
“Ni Una Menos, the movement was called—not one more person will we lose to gender violence!”
“As the strike call argued,
The strength of our movement lies in the links we make with each other …We organize to change everything.”
“Their cry is our cry.”
“If abortion is everything, then we organize to change everything”
“South America is, today, home to one of the most dynamic feminist movements in the world, one where activists are immediately recognizable, as Naomi Braine
describes, by their trademark
pañuelos verdes,
their green bandanas.”
“Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina have legalized abortion—and Chile may soon—while networks of feminist activists have made self-managed abortions more accessible and created new forms of solidarity in the process”
“Mexican feminists in her organization, Las Libres, have begun to accompany American women through abortion procedures after Texas passed a near-total abortion ban in 2021.”
“ . . . an “abortion underground” has existed in the United States throughout the twentieth century, one that is now composed of midwives, nurses, and activists performing illegal or non-medical abortions themselves.”
“With the rise of the abortifacient drugs mifepristone and misoprostol—colloquially known as abortion pills—the ease of performing a safe, economical, and self-managed abortion, legal or not, has increased”
“one starting point for a revitalized, and socialist, feminist movement, and the beginning of much-needed discussions both political and strategic:
“Does the urgent need for underground abortion care supersede fighting for decriminalization or defending existing clinics?“
“Do we focus on mutual aid in our communities or national and international battles?”
“How do we build a true movement for reproductive justice not limited to personal choice but opposed to incarceration and forced sterilization, one that fights against the destruction of Indigenous sovereignty and the criminalization of trans people?”
“How do we take care of all of us and fight for all of us too?”
“Black feminists in the United States in the 1990s who coined the term
“reproductive justice.”
“The problem is not abortion.”
“The problem is having the possibility to become mothers as often as we want to become mothers.”
“Only when we want to, but whenever we want to.
Abortion is not just about abortion.”
“It is about autonomy, justice, and democracy for us all.”
“Abortion is the tolling bell that warns us, women and men, people of any and no gender, all of us of any race and ethnicity, poor and not-poor alike, of the state of our rights and the prospects for our future”
It’s Time to Fight
April 3, 2023
Great essay collection overall. I really appreciated the essays on Latin American abortion activism, reproductive rights for incarcerated people, and prosecution for pregnancy outcomes, because those were the things I knew the least about coming in. Although the part where she used herbs was harrowing, the chapter on the sex worker who became an underground abortion provider was pretty amazing too.
The disappointing part was that the information on self-managed abortion was not totally accurate. Here are a few notes in case anyone reading this review is interested.
- It describes taking misoprostol "orally" (do not do this, it's not effective - it must be held in the mouth, either under the tongue [sublingual] or against the cheek [buccal], or used vaginally)
- It says not to use tampons or cups during a medication abortion for safety reasons (really it's because the blood flow is simply too great for these methods to reliably handle)
- It states that you should not put anything in your vagina for a week afterward (this is outdated medical information, there is no need for restrictions on sex etc. after a medication abortion)
- It has discrepancies in the illustration vs. the text for how long after a medication abortion you should take a pregnancy test (three weeks vs. four - four is better)
- It doesn't do a good job of explaining why you might still be testing positive on a pregnancy test at 4 weeks post-medication abortion (yes, you might still have some tissue remaining, but this is not something you need to seek medical care for - absent signs of infection, your body is going to shed it. About 20% of people test positive at 4 weeks, and 10% at 5 weeks. You can get a blood hCG test if you're concerned, or even an ultrasound to confirm that the pregnancy has passed.)
The disappointing part was that the information on self-managed abortion was not totally accurate. Here are a few notes in case anyone reading this review is interested.
- It describes taking misoprostol "orally" (do not do this, it's not effective - it must be held in the mouth, either under the tongue [sublingual] or against the cheek [buccal], or used vaginally)
- It says not to use tampons or cups during a medication abortion for safety reasons (really it's because the blood flow is simply too great for these methods to reliably handle)
- It states that you should not put anything in your vagina for a week afterward (this is outdated medical information, there is no need for restrictions on sex etc. after a medication abortion)
- It has discrepancies in the illustration vs. the text for how long after a medication abortion you should take a pregnancy test (three weeks vs. four - four is better)
- It doesn't do a good job of explaining why you might still be testing positive on a pregnancy test at 4 weeks post-medication abortion (yes, you might still have some tissue remaining, but this is not something you need to seek medical care for - absent signs of infection, your body is going to shed it. About 20% of people test positive at 4 weeks, and 10% at 5 weeks. You can get a blood hCG test if you're concerned, or even an ultrasound to confirm that the pregnancy has passed.)
September 3, 2022
Read this to not feel hopeless about the fight for abortion rights. I can't recommend this enough.
January 1, 2023
FREE to download at https://www.versobooks.com/books/4140...
this is a must-read! information is POWER!!!
this is a must-read! information is POWER!!!
January 31, 2024
Incredibly interesting and eye-opening but, unfortunately, the grim realities were not surprising.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews