My colleague Rich Exner, one of the editors in our newsroom, reached out to me Monday to ask whether I’d be open to publishing a first-person account by a reporter about her decisions to have two abortions when she was younger. My immediate thought was, what’s wrong with this picture? Two men were having a discussion about the appropriateness of publishing a woman’s account of her abortions. My second thought was there is no way I’m going to be a male editor who tells a female reporter we won’t publish her personal account on abortion in the week after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed 50 years of precedent recognizing a woman’s right to choose. Abortion is a women’s rights issue, after all. I have complete dominion over my body. With the recent court ruling, women do not. We owe it to our audience to carry their voices. That’s why you’ll find Gretchen Cuda Kroen’s personal account on the front page of Sunday’s Plain Dealer and prominent on cleveland.com. It does something that, if repeated by others, could be a new development in this nation’s agonizing struggle with abortion: removing its stigma. Gretchen, who joined us last month and covers healthcare, matter-of-factly takes us through her decisions to avail herself of her legal right to end two pregnancies, the second involving a medical emergency. She knew she was not prepared to raise children when she had her first. Now that she’s a mom, she told me, she knows with greater certainty of how unprepared she would have been back then. “I have twins. I know how hard it is to raise them. I could not have done that back when I was 25.” Gretchen understands that discussing her history will bring hate mail. She knows some people will use their words like weapons and try to hurt her. She has girded for that. But she said she feels she cannot remain quiet, because the debate about abortion is not a debate about killing babies or not killing babies. She said it’s a debate about bodily autonomy, and now, as a result of the Supreme Court’s unprecedented abridgment of a right, roughly half the people in this country don’t have it. Her account reminds me of two that The Plain Dealer reported in 1969, another age when the nation grappled with abortion. A reporter interviewed two women, one who chose to have an abortion and one who considered one and opted against it. Both accounts covered the thought processes of the women in some detail. We republished them in May as the Supreme Court decision loomed. You can read them here. One reason for our situation in America might be that the stigma attached to abortion prevents a broader discussion of the decisions women face in choosing it. Until a week ago, women had the right to undergo a medical procedure that was their choice. Why should doing something that was legal nationwide and is now legal in parts of the nation make someone feel like they are doing something bad? People don’t make the abortion decision cavalierly. They have well-considered reasons. Why is there shame in discussing them? Rape is similarly stigmatized in this country. People who are raped are victims of a crime, but society has built it into something of shame, making some hesitant to discuss it. Social media has seen more and more women stepping forward in the past week to discuss their abortion decisions. That’s healthy. Estimates are that 1 out of 4 women have had abortions. The more people understand about the choices they made, the more empathy we might build. I’m proud to publish Gretchen’s account, as another perspective in one of the most polarizing issues in our history. If you’ve had an abortion and you’re inclined to discuss it, we’ll carry your voice as well. If you considered an abortion but decided against it and are inclined to discuss your thoughts, we want to hear your story, too. In either case, you had a choice. Before the Supreme Court ruling, women had a Constitutional right to make that choice. They don’t anymore. Gretchen’s account offers insight into what that means. Thanks for reading. |