My Top 10 Leadership Highlights at Exhale in the 000’s.

I founded Exhale in 2000 with four other women. I was 24-years old and a recent college graduate with a resume that included 14-years worth of jobs doing newspaper delivery, babysitting, waitressing, hostessing, baristing, bartending, housekeeping, and a short stint running the front office of an Alaskan bush-flying service. After completing 5-years of college (from three schools in two states), I was ready to continue with my life’s adventures and was working on landing a new job in Antarctica.

But, then, something I did not expect happened. I got pregnant. Then, I had an abortion. And I personally experienced how the politics of the debate had left women and their loved ones behind. The debate seemed less to do with exploring the role of abortion in our lives and more about trying to prove the other side wrong. I wondered what was possible if this trend was abandoned and replaced by efforts to build something positive and life-affirming.

I decided to try. The something eventually became Exhale and ten years later I am proud to continue serving as its Executive Director.

The story of my abortion and how it led me to found Exhale is well-documented, but this story is just one small piece of what has led me to build an effective organization with such a unique mission. The last ten years have been filled with enormous challenge, breathtaking inspiration, rigorous work and intense self-reflection towards my goal of practicing sustainable leadership with impact.

I have learned a lot about leadership. Leadership is not a paid position, a reward for doing something special, or another way to describe being in charge. Leadership is earned when we take responsibility and give top performance in everything we do. It has been a rewarding ten years of leadership at Exhale and I am thrilled to share some of what I’ve learned, overcome and celebrated.

Here are my Top 10 Leadership Highlights at Exhale in the 000’s.

#10: My first paycheck and every paycheck since. Exhale was founded in 2000, began operating in January 2002 and I got my first official paycheck in February 2003. I haven’t missed a paycheck since and neither has any other staff member. Exhale has not had a single layoff, furlough, or salary cut due to financial reasons and while we can’t predict what may happen in the future, I credit my partnership with the board for our sound financial management and our shared recognition that Exhale’s small staff is our most important financial investment. And frankly, there is something tremendous about being paid to work on what started out as just an idea in my head. An anti-abortion advocate once called me an “entrepreneur” in an attempt to degrade my work and all I wanted to do was give her a hug and celebrate because someone finally got it right!

#9: Every talkline call answered by a well-trained volunteer. When we launched the talkline in 2002, we had $1,000 and our commitment: that there would always be a well-trained volunteer able to pick up the phone and listen. Because what we were doing had never been done before and because we had no idea if anyone would ever want to support it financially, and because we knew we had to do it, no matter what, we built an organizational model that was sustainable forever, with or without funding. The result: a continuously operating talkline where well-trained volunteers are able to listen every day of the week, in 5 languages, to women and men living throughout the nation. We never bit off more than we could chew and the standards we established continue to guide our decision-making on whether we take on new projects today: is it useful in meeting a real need for women post-abortion? And can it be sustained for the long-term?

#8: Turning our perceived liabilities into strengths. At the outset, everything about Exhale was deemed suspect and dangerous from some of the most influential feminists and pro-choice leaders in the Bay Area and across the nation. The stories I could tell! Let’s just say the new public conversations and media coverage about the emotional experience of abortion brought on by the launch of our talkline service were not immediately embraced. Add-on a volunteer-based service (not operated by professional therapists or social workers), a transforming oppression model (what we called reproductive justice before it had a name), and a focus on the need to promote emotional wellbeing (after years of public statements discounting feelings other than relief), and Exhale looked like a barrel-full of liabilities without a chance of survival. And, every one of these perceived liabilities was central to our core mission and our goals. To abandon them would be to abandon our vision of what we thought possible. Instead of letting go, we deepened our commitment to each one of our liabilities – our volunteer program, our transforming oppression model and our advocacy on post-abortion wellbeing – and turned them into our most noteworthy strengths. Our volunteer program was awarded for excellence this year, the reproductive justice movement is a leader on the most important reproductive health issues of our time, and referral to Exhale is now standard practice in abortion clinics nationwide. Today, Exhale is recognized for our unique and valuable contributions to the abortion discussion.

#7: Pro-Voice News Features. Over the years, Exhale has received a significant amount of media coverage and I have generally been pleased with how our services and mission are represented. But the stories and appearances that I love are the stories that make our pro-voice mission real: the ones that make the voices and experiences of women who have had abortions the center of the story. In the first couple years of Exhale we were honored to be a part of Laura Flanders Roe v Wade anniversary show on NPR where she turned the show over to women telling their stories. This happened again on NPR’s Talk of the Nation with host Neal Conan in 2008. And most recently, it took place in the pages of Glamour magazine. These are the stories that make me feel like not only is change happening, but that Exhale is leading it. Each story alone is not enough, but the more we grow these stories and these approaches, this approach will become the new norm.

#6: Ford Foundation Grant. Every grant Exhale has received has a special meaning. I remember the conversation with the donor, or how it came at a critical time or the kinds of battles I know a program officer took on with their colleagues in order to fund us. The Third Wave Foundation gave us our first one ever, the California Endowment was the grant that got me paid, and the talkline has been supported year-after-year by the California Wellness Foundation. I can go on for every grant. Yet, it is our most recent Ford Foundation grant that is one of the proudest markers of my leadership over the past ten years. Because persistence pays off and I have been talking to the folks there for more than five years with no real hope that we may actually get funded. Because it is Ford and Ford offers credibility and prestige which is really important when you are raising the kind of money that Exhale needs to raise to accomplish our goals. Because the advocacy and support of our allies were critical to Ford taking us seriously and it is quite a thing to have groups who could easily position themselves as competitors chose instead to be your biggest advocates. Because I knew I wouldn’t sacrifice Exhale’s strategic goals in order to secure Ford funding and because I didn’t have to. Because the grant supports exactly what we believe to be the critical growth direction for our mission and goals. We were funded for being Exhale and that is my greatest achievement of all. I don’t know if we will ever get another grant from Ford or not, but I know that this one is yet another reminder for how important it is to stay true to our mission. Not only can we turn our liabilities into strengths, we can get those strengths funded. Now we get to strengthen our strengths.

#5: Saying NO is the biggest YES of all. Sometimes it feels like my biggest job as Executive Director is to say “no.” Most of the “no’s” are in response to what could be seen as a great opportunity for Exhale, but in reality, the opportunity presented comes at a great cost, mostly involving our most precious resource: time. Exhale tracks and spends our time more carefully than we do our money. It is our bread and butter and if we squander it we might as well sign our own death certificate. Bye bye Exhale. Bye bye Pro-voice future: “It was nice to know you!” A “no” is the biggest promise I can make to my allies, colleagues and peers: “I will never saddle you with the burden of Exhale’s demise or my own feelings of bitterness and resentment.” That’s why we won’t take on more work than we can sustain, accept less than our true value, or hide the financial costs of our work. We refuse to ever feel taken advantage of by others or stressed-out and overwhelmed because we didn’t know how to say no. This is why saying NO is the biggest YES of all. It is a YES to knowing our true value, a yes to believing we can achieve our dreams and a yes to partnerships based in mutual respect.

#4: When Rush Limbaugh became my favorite person. On March 12, 2007, I sent out a press release announcing the launch of Exhale’s new post-abortion e-cards and took off to my scheduled lunch meeting. By the time I came back from lunch I had messages waiting from the Associated Press and a local news station whose news van was already on the way over to our downtown Oakland office. First thing the next morning, Rush Limbaugh, took me, Exhale and our e-cards to task on his radio show and our email inbox was flooded with hate mail from his listeners. Over the course of the next week, all I did was respond to media requests and conduct live radio and television interviews, culminating with a national appearances on CNN’s Headline News. But, the real leadership moment was in the first 24-hours, when, sparked by Rush’s rage conservative networks and commentators kept calling to request an interview. I sent out a variety of mayday calls to media experts and communications strategists from throughout the country and asked for their advice – “should I do these interviews,” I asked? I got every answer you can imagine and I quickly came to the conclusion that there was no right answer – there was only what was best for Exhale and not a single expert knew that answer better than me or our board. I called my board president and said, “here is the expert feedback I’ve received and this is what I want to do: I want to get good at doing live, media interviews and the only way to get good is to practice and right now, I have lots of opportunity to practice. The risks are great. I could be really bad. It could hurt Exhale. It could hurt our callers. But, I want to try and I want to take the risk, but I’ll only do it if the board has my back 100%. Will you support me?” The board discussed and gave me the green light. Every media appearance became an opportunity to talk about Exhale, our mission, and what we hear from women on our talkline. It was the most fun and excitement I’ve had as the Executive Director of Exhale and it has had long-lasting positive benefits for our mission and our reputation as an innovative, risk-taking organization. If being personally attacked by Rush Limbaugh isn’t a badge of honor then I don’t know what is. Thank you Rush!

#3: Learn From the Best. Running a nonprofit organization is always difficult – from fundraising and management to program delivery and organizational development – the multiple responsibilities and needs of an organization are complex and difficult to achieve. Given this reality, it is common cultural practice that when nonprofit leaders and executive directors get together, we tend to bond over what’s hard. This was helpful in the first few years. I learned that I wasn’t alone and that other leaders faced similar struggles. But, after a time, I didn’t only want to talk about what was wrong. I wanted to find out what works and what works really, really well. I began to look to leaders who had achieved their dreams, leaders who built successful organizations with real results and leaders who looked at what was hard as a great and exciting challenge to overcome. I had one-on-one meetings, found mentors and coaches, read books and built a network of people who shared their winning strategies. Talking about our inspiration, the possibilities for change, innovative models, and new ideas with people and leaders who had made their dreams a reality has opened up doors in my own mind and in the minds of people throughout the organization. We continue to learn from the best.

#2: Lead from Strengths. In the beginning of Exhale, most of the leadership development models I encountered were very skill-based and deficit-based: Learn what you don’t know and try to become more like someone else. The idea was if you knew all the “how-to’s” of running an organization and you spent a lot of time working on your weaknesses, that somehow you would become a solid Executive Director in charge of a sustainable organization. But, once I read and practiced all the “how-to’s” (I could lead a process and write a strategic plan in my sleep at this point), I found that what inspired me about Exhale and got me excited about my job had been forgotten. It was then that I learned a new kind of nonprofit leadership model, a model that supports leaders in working from their strengths. Of course! If you are a great Olympic skier, you should work more on being a great skier, not work on your snowboard skills. Now, sometimes when I talk about “strengths,” people think about what they like to do or what they don’t like to do at their job and I get questions like “are you saying if I don’t like fundraising I don’t have to fundraise as an Executive Director?” Ahhh…..no. Every Executive Director has to fundraise, but there are many models and strategies to raise money and every leader and organization has to pick the revenue model and the strategy that works best for them. It has to be a mission-match for the organization and a strength-match for its leaders. A strengths-based perspective suggests we use what we’re good at, our strengths, in the way that we fundraise. If you’re a good writer, write more in fundraising. If you’re a good talker, do more talking. If you’re a good networker, do more networking, etc.., etc… This strength-based perspective now permeates every-level of Exhale. Individual board, staff and volunteers know our individual strengths and how to put them to use for Exhale. We know our organizational strengths and how to maximize them for our mission. We lead from our strengths.

#1: “Oh, Shit!” is All-Right: Many people know about my paid sabbatical, which I was granted and took in 2007. I can go on about the benefits to Exhale – including how much I enjoyed the time off, how Exhale was able to strengthen our internal systems as a result of the information we gained through the process, and how staff had an unprecedented opportunity to step into leadership. This is all true. But the biggest benefit for my leadership was in the asking, because, well, it went against every nonprofit and movement norm that exists. And, there were no guarantees that the board would grant me a sabbatical. It was the most intense negotiating process I’ve ever been through and it lasted several months. It was not a done deal by the time I presented my case to the board and I will never forget the two-hours I spent waiting for the call from the board president to tell me about their response to my request. I felt vulnerable and strong: vulnerable because I had laid my cards on the table and strong for exactly the same reason. It’s what I now like to call an “oh, shit!” moment. The “oh, shit!” moment is a leadership moment when I have to do something – make a decision, take a stand, ask for a need to be fulfilled – that has very big, significant risks and yet it is critical to the future and mission of Exhale. I only arrive at this moment after I’ve checked my list: is this ask/decision/stand critical to the mission of Exhale? Is it a match to our values and culture? Is it time well spent? Have I learned from the best? Am I leading from my strengths? If I answer yes to all of these questions, and it still feels scary to move forward, then I know I’m on the right track, even if – and especially if – I can’t predict the outcome. It is in this “oh, shit!” leadership moment that I know it’s All-Right. That our Pro-Voice Future is closer than ever.

Time Is Money. Spend it Wisely.

Recently CNBC hosted a townhall forum at Columbia Business School with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Mr. Gates said: “business schools teach people about value.” And, we know that in the business world, time is money.

But, what about our nonprofit world? Often, we give our time for free. Sometimes as volunteers, or board members or in pro-bono arrangements. We give our time for free because we share a belief in the cause. In return for our time, we accept the opportunity to be a part of something important to us, something that fuels our soul, or fulfills our need to contribute to the world.

What about the times we, as nonprofit staff and representatives, give to other nonprofit organizations? Are collaborations always free? Who bears the brunt of the costs and how do we recognize the value contributed?

In the nonprofit sector, time, knowledge and experience are often our most important assets. We should spend our assets even more carefully than we spend our money and their exchange should be negotiated rigorously. The truth is, nothing is free. Someone is always paying. There are always costs. And our value, our assets, should never be underestimated, least of all by ourselves.

The better we understand the true costs of doing business and the real value we offer our partners, the better we will be able to leverage our assets towards our organizational and collaborative goals.

Our time is not free. Time is money. Spend it wisely.

Come & Join the Pro-Voice Conversation In New York!

I’m thrilled to be speaking at two upcoming Planned Parenthood events this month. I hope you can come and check them out!

In Westchester
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
6:00 Wine and cheese reception
6:30 Conversation with Aspen Baker
Reid Castle, Manhattanville College
2900 Purchase Road, Purchase, NY
Suggested donation $10. Students $5
RSVP by January 24 or call 914.467.7311

In Suffolk
Thursday, January 28, 6:30- 8:30p.m.
6:30 Wine and cheese reception
7:00 Conversation with Aspen Baker
Huntington Cinema Arts Centre
423 Park Avenue, Huntington, NY
Suggested donation $10. Students $5
RSVP by January 25 or call 631.240.1126

Hope to see your face in the crowd!

In Support of Wellbeing, Abortion Matters to Women and Families (a fictional editorial by Cheryl Straight Stobilt)

On November 28, 2009, the New York Times Sunday edition featured an editorial “In Support of Abortion, It’s Personal vs. Political” in the Week in Review. While there were some things I liked about this editorial, there was much to dislike. First and foremost being the fact that Post-Roe women are defined only by what we have NOT experienced, not defined by what we have experienced. Instead of going on and on about what bugged me about this article, I decided instead to re-write it, the way that I believe it should be written. This article reflects elements of my vision for how the changing landscape of the abortion debate should be investigated and reported. This is a work of fiction, which means I have created new lines of dialogue and quotes from actual people listed in the original article – what I wish they would say from a strength and asset-based perspective, instead of the deficit-approach featured.

Enjoy.

“In Support of Wellbeing, Abortion Matters to Women & Families”
By Cheryl Straight Stobilt

In 1999, an airline pilot’s daughter named Aspen Baker was attending college in Northern California when she had a safe and legal abortion at a local hospital. She had been raised a pro-life Christian in Southern California and while she never believed she could make a pregnancy decision for another person, she never believed she would have an abortion herself, until she did. While she was relieved when the procedure was finally over, she found herself with a lot of difficult emotions about the experience and because of the stigma and politics surrounding her decision she was unable to find someone who would listen to her, without judgment or bias.

Today, Aspen Baker is the Founder and Executive Director of Exhale, an organization whose mission is to create a more supportive and respectful social climate around personal experiences with abortion and which runs a national, multilingual post-abortion talkline. At 33-years old, Baker is a member of what many feminist leaders call the “Third Wave,” though Ms. Baker rarely uses the term herself.

The Third Wave has been working overtime for more than a decade on issues long-ignored by the previous feminist movement, which focused almost exclusively on defending abortion rights. At the intersection of social justice and reproductive rights, Third Wave feminists fight against environmental toxins plaguing poor communities of color and the shackling of pregnant incarcerated women during childbirth. Their efforts have paid off: they have policy wins on issues like comprehensive sexuality education and safe schools for LGBT youth. Recently, Third Wave feminists celebrated an important victory when they successfully advocated that the Center for Disease Control reverse a decision which forced immigrant young women to receive the HPV vaccine, something that is not even required of American citizens.

It has been nearly 37 years since Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that established a right to abortion, and in that time, an entire generation – including Mr. Obama, who was 11 when Roe was decided – has grown up with their own unique experiences of legal abortion in a very hostile political climate. The result is a generation of young women and families whose voices and experiences with abortion are ignored, silenced or actively manipulated for political purposes.

“Here is a generation that has only known a time when abortion has been legal,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who studies attitudes toward abortion. “For many of them, their own personal experience with abortion is more significant than what gets reflected by the rights-based political debate. So when we send out email-alerts saying “Oh my God, write to your senator,” young people wonder if there will ever be more to the dialogue than the constant recruitment to join the fight.”

Polls over the last two decades have shown that a clear majority of Americans support the right to abortion, and there’s little evidence of a difference between those over 30 and under 30, but the vocabulary of the debate has shifted with the political culture. Ms. Baker, says women like her, who came of age when abortion was legal, tend to view it in more nuanced terms – abortion is something many have personally experienced and yet felt silenced by the political debate over the decision and they don’t want to be a part of the problem, silencing other women. But older people tend to view it as a right to be defended, like freedom of speech or freedom of religion.

The 30- to 40-somethings are concerned with educating their children about sex, and are active in causes that they believe will benefit the health and wellbeing of their children’s children – like reversing climate change and finding a cure for cancer – and the 25-and-under crowd connect more deeply to complex issues like gay marriage bans or the Darfur genocide. Given that nearly one in three of the people in these age groups have had a personal experience with abortion – either their own abortion or someone they love had one – many wonder why they don’t get politically involved in the issue. Exhale, which listens to the voices of women and men who have had abortions through their national, multilingual post-abortion talkaline, understands that the simplified political rhetoric around abortion rarely addresses the full spectrum of real, lived experiences with abortion.

“The language and values, if you are older, is around the right to control your own body, reproductive freedom, sexual liberation as empowerment,” said Ms. Greenberg, the pollster. “That is a baby-boom generation way of thinking. Now, more women have had legal abortions then women had illegal ones and each one of their experiences is unique – some have experienced a sense of empowerment and control while others have felt real emotional pain or sadness. There is no one-size-fits-all abortion experience and so continuing to talk about abortion only as right leaves behind many of those who have actually had one. And millions of women have had abortions.”

Abortion opponents were first to pick up on the negative emotional experiences many women have had with abortion and they use these experiences to make arguments against abortion. “Not only is this the post-Roe generation, I’d also call it the post-sonogram generation,” said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, who notes that baby’s first video now occurs in the womb, often accompanied by music. “They can take the video and do the music and send it to the grandmother. We don’t even talk anymore about the hypothesis that having an abortion is like having an appendectomy. We know many women have regretted their abortions and we want to prevent more women from going through this horrible experience.”

The pressures relating to abortion had seemed, for a time, to go dormant. Mr. Obama, who campaigned on a vow to transcend “the culture wars,” even managed to win confirmation of a new Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor, without the usual Washington abortion uproar. Most of his political energy around abortion has been spent trying to forge consensus on ways to reduce unintended pregnancies.

The quiet was shattered this month, when the House — with surprising support from 64 Democrats — amended its health care bill to include language by Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, barring the use of federal subsidies for insurance plans that cover abortion. Lawmakers who advocate for abortion rights found themselves in the uncomfortable position of voting for the larger health bill even though the Stupak language was in it.

Proponents of the Stupak language say they are simply following existing federal law, which already bars taxpayer financing for abortions. Democratic leaders want a less restrictive provision that would require insurance companies to segregate federal money from private premiums, which could be used to purchase plans that cover abortion.

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida and chief deputy whip of the House, understands the need for creating a new abortion dialogue that reflects people’s lived experiences and knows the real challenge of our current political climate which allowed Mr. Stupak to prevail. At 43, the mother of three children, she has taken up the abortion rights cause in Congress, as she did as a state legislator.

But if she had to round up her own friends “to go down to the courthouse steps and rally for choice,” she said, she is not certain she could. Even though abortion is incredibly common, “the stigma and politicization of the abortion issue and the simplistic, militaristic tone of the debate has left my generation and younger wanting a different approach. We want to fight for something positive and life-affirming for women and families, not just rally against hated opponents.”

That is not to say all younger women feel like they have to choose between either joining the fight or creating new ways to engage others on the abortion issue. In fact, young women are leading the way, bridging new and old models of activism on issues of reproductive justice. Serena Freewomyn (a name she adopted to reflect the idea that “I don’t belong to any man”) is a 27-year-old administrative assistant at an H.I.V. service provider in Tucson who was inspired, she said, by reading “The War on Choice” by Gloria Feldt. When George Tiller, a doctor in Kansas who performed abortions, was killed in May, she started a blog, Feminists for Choice.

“I am so glad younger women have been able to come of age in a time of post-Roe v. Wade, where they have access to lots of different birth control options,” Ms. Freewomyn said. “What a great political win for feminism and the choice movement. Now, younger women are mobilizing in different ways than what people in current leadership positions are used to.”

On Wednesday, a coalition calling itself “Stop Stupak” will hold a “National Day of Action” to lobby lawmakers. It will include abortion rights advocacy groups that have sprung up in recent years to reach out to younger voters. Law Students for Reproductive Justice, founded in 2003, will host an Internet seminar to educate law students on the fine points of the House and Senate bills. There’s also Choice USA, which targets people under 30. Kierra Johnson, the group’s executive director, is pairing up with counterparts in the immigrant rights and gay rights movements — tactics she says are critical to those movements shared goals of justice, equality and dignity for all. “The same young people who are fighting to keep anti-abortion language out of the health care bills are also fighting to insure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people fit in to broader health care reform, making sure that immigrant women don’t fall through the cracks,” she said. “They’re coming at these issues in a much more complex way.”

The question now is whether the Stop Stupak coalition can succeed. Ms. Wasserman Schultz sees the debate as a chance to rouse women of all generations, and Ms. Slaughter warns that if Mr. Obama signs a bill including the amendment, it will be challenged in court. Yet, she knows, that the debate must – and will – eventually change because when “her generation is gone the new generation – which has already wracked up a slew of political victories important to women and families and is leading the way on new models of activism – will succeed in creating an abortion dialogue that reflects and supports each person’s lived experience with abortion.”

At the moment, her faith in the future is strong. “Right now, I believe we have a vision for wellbeing that women and their families from across the country will stand up to support because it is relevant to their every-day lives,” Ms. Slaughter said. “And abortion matters to women and families.”

Stupak: Win or Lose, We Need Culture Change

Feminist blogger Kate Harding often takes issue with how cynical the progressives on Daily Kos write about abortion politics, but on Nov. 10, they found some common ground. Two days after the House voted to approve health care reform and the Stupak Amendment, which seemed to catch so many by surprise, Kate wrote on Salon and David Waldman wrote on Daily Kos that the passage of Stupak was entirely predictable. Not a shock. Not a surprise. Disappointing, frustrating, and infuriating, perhaps, but certainly, they agreed, everyone should have seen the Stupak Amendment coming.

According to David, the “lavishly-funded national network of professional abortion rights advocacy groups … somehow found themselves blindsided and rolled by a situation that was 100% predictable (not to mention 35 years in the making).” And Kate wrote, “We were rolled with, like, 35 years of advance warning” and she decried Democrats who “will sacrifice pretty much everything they claim to believe in, just because the words ‘Democratic majority’ sound so much better than the alternative.”

Let’s all get over our collective surprise and admit we need an entirely new strategy. The Stupak Amendment represents our decades-long national reality: deep political divisions about abortion rights and moral judgments against women who have had abortions. If we really want different results, we need different strategies. We can’t count on a president, professional lobbyists, or politicians to transform the abortion conflict or assure justice. We can’t even count on ourselves if our only strategy is to “get angry and gear up for a fight.” What we need to do is change the conversation about abortion.

If we don’t fundamentally and proactively change the conversation we risk deepening political divisions and forcing more people to their own sides, leaving out, yet again, the silenced voices we need most: the voices of women who have had abortions.

If we want to transform the conflict, the voices of these women need to take center stage. A true conflict-transformation approach, according to Eyal Rabinovitch, an expert on this approach, “focuses less on solving the conflict than changing how we engage with one another when we are in it. [It works by] giving voice to all affected by a given conflict and enabling open communication between them.”

Note that it does not work by giving voice to those “who speak on behalf of” or “advocate for” a particular group; those speakers certainly have not been silenced in public discussion. Neither are their voices the ones who need reassurance of open communication. Conflict transformation does not try to force opponents to comprise or agree with each other.

A conflict transformation approach on abortion enables open communication for those who have personally experienced abortion, the people whose voices have been silenced most as a result of the Abortion War. Today’s abortion conflict replaces their voices with stigma, isolation, judgment, myths, stereotypes, and the belief that women are best used as case studies to “prove” that one side or the other is right. Every day at Exhale, the organization I lead, women and their loved ones call our national talkline after an abortion to find the nonjudgmental comfort and support they are unable to find in their everyday lives. At Exhale, we witness the personal impact of this war on a woman’s life and her well-being.

Conflict transformation ensures that every story, every voice, is heard, and that each person’s dignity and humanity is respected.

We transform conflict when we take a public stand for each and every woman who has had an abortion, despite how uncomfortable her story makes us feel, or how inconvenient her truth may be to our position. We humanize the issue of abortion when we create room for those who have had abortions to feel supported, respected, and connected to one another.

Personal stories have the potential to change the way we think about abortion and the women who have them, and we must elicit them with openness and an authentic desire to learn. Because it is through personal stories that we can explore the real impact of abortion—positive, negative, and everything in between—in the lives of women and their families, and find new solutions to promote their health and well-being.

We should expect this new strategy to be messy—in fact, we should hope for that. Thelar Pekar, a communications expert, writes: “Story sharing, if done correctly, results in chaos. … Story begets story, which begets story, which eventually … begets chaos. [We should be] surprised, delighted, and frightened by what [we hear.]. Only then, out of chaos, will clarity, innovation, and/or change emerge.”

The impact of this approach on our cultural conversation about abortion will not be predictable like the Stupak Amendment or the political motivations of Democratic leaders. It gives us a real choice with real consequences, just like abortion: we can choose the same battles and get entirely predictable results or we can take a risk and try different strategies with unpredictable outcomes. Listening to personal abortion stories and enabling communication between women who have had abortions is messy, and it grows the possibilities for peace.

This is Pro-Voice.

If you want to be a part of transforming the abortion conflict and building peace, start by being pro-voice in your online discussions about abortion. Here are 5 simple tips:

• Be Authentic—Speak from your own personal experience.
• Be Respectful—Be aware of times you’re reinforcing an “us-versus-them” mentality.
• Avoid Jargon—It tends to be alienating at worst and boring at best.
• Remember Your Readers—Online, your readers could be your friends or family, even your daughter or mother. What would you want them to read?
• Practice Self-Care—If you find yourself drawn into a frustrating or infuriating online discussion, take a deep breath. Allow yourself to back away.

Whether or not you have personally experienced abortion, you can be a champion for women’s voices. Speak from your own personal experience and tell a story about a time you felt heard, truly heard. How did it change the conversation? How did it change your life?

The Abortion War today needs this pro-voice strategy. Instead of seeking only political solutions—where we end up “blindsided” by political sacrifices like the Stupak Amendment—we need a strategy for deep, fundamental culture change. We need to transform hearts and minds.

We start by taking the idea of the Abortion War seriously. Very, very seriously. We must recognize that we are a nation deep in conflict, and instead of trying to win with politics, we must work towards building peace. I believe we can do that by being pro-voice.

Vote for Exhale & Help Us Win a New Website

A woman who has had an abortion and who goes online in search of support and connection will undoubtedly find everything that is wrong with the abortion debate in this country. Shame, stigma, anger, violence, and judgment around abortion are the status quo online. Imagine if instead each woman found what she really needs: respect and understanding. Exhale envisions a better online world for women and their loved ones post-abortion and we need your help!

Exhale is in the running to receive a free, new website through the Free Range Youtopia Grant program, worth $15,000! There are more than 400 great ideas competing for the prize, and we need your vote!

Vote for Exhale today and you will take us one-step further towards our goal of a new social website that champions listening, promotes storytelling and builds empathy for every woman who has had an abortion.

Vote!

About Rape

I live in Oakland, California and I love it. Lake Merrit is one of my favorite spots. Because I grew up on the ocean I need to be around water and so I always pretend the Lake is the ocean. It works, especially on hot summer days.

If you haven’t been here, you should check it out the next time you visit the Bay Area. There is a gondola, a bird sanctuary, and it’s regularly used for exercise. Families, women, men, couples, and people with dogs, strollers or on bikes take the 3-mile journey around the Lake on a daily basis.

Sometimes, driving by at night, I will see a man running, alone, listening to his music on an ipod. And I will be jealous. So jealous.

I will be jealous because that man is doing something that I will never in my life have the chance to experience. I will never run, alone, around the Lake at night, oblivious to my surroundings while enjoying music on my ipod. Never. Not a chance.

Not because it’s Oakland. Because I am a woman and rape is always a threat.

I was probably about 12-yrs old the first time I took a self-defense class. I learned a lot of tricks to stay aware of my surroundings and how to fight back. But the thing that sticks out most in my mind all these years later is what I was told to scream, should I ever find myself attacked.

“Never,” the instructor said, “should you yell RAPE. Always, yell FIRE.” If you yell RAPE, no one wants to be involved, but if you yell FIRE, everyone wants to be a hero.

To this day, if I ever find myself walking to my car at night, alone, I repeat “FIRE, FIRE, FIRE” in my mind over and over in case someone attacks me. I want to be ready with the right word. I want someone to want to be a hero.

The fact that I haven’t been raped has everything to do with luck. It could happen at any time, in any city, day or night. These are the statistics. While never running alone at night or being prepared to yell FIRE may make me feel better and more in control, I don’t know that it’s actually lowering my risks of being attacked.

When I look back on life, especially all the times I was drunk in high school hanging out with the guys, I’m actually quite amazed that I escaped without assault. How sad is it, that I see this as lucky, instead of normal? I know it’s not normal. Almost every friend of mine from high school has a story, a story of a time when they felt threatened, when they went farther than they wanted to because they were afraid, and when they were forced to perform against their will. Almost every friend. I don’t think a single one of them ever reported it. We probably just avoided those guys in the future. We didn’t go to their party.

When I think about how lucky I am to have escaped rape on those drunken nights in high school, I know that I have yet to escape the threat of rape. No one really does. Even if I make it to 90, rape-free, and end up in a nice, quiet nursing home, my chances of being abused may have actually increased. Sexual assault and abuse of elders is on the rise.

This is what it’s like to be a woman in a rape culture.

When I think of the young woman in Richmond who was attacked, it is hard for me to describe my feelings. Pain. Agony. Sadness. Horror.

I think of all the women I talked to when I was a sexual assault counselor at BAWAR, and I know that healing is possible, and I know the road can be long.

I think about her family, her friends, and her community. I think about the family members of those young men who attacked her and how mortified and disappointed they must feel and I know that healing is possible for them too and that their road is also long.

Rape is not only a product of urban environments. Neither is being bystander. It is not just young black men perpetuating violence against young women. Rape happens in every community, in every environment, within and between every race. It is worldwide.

Rape, as every anti-violence advocate knows, is never about sex and always about power and control. It is used as a weapon. It is used to intimidate and to hurt others. It can be used by a husband against a wife, a famous celebrity against a promiscuous groupee, an uncle against a niece, a militia against a community, a prisoner against a fellow inmate. It knows no bounds across race or sexual orientation – straight men can rape other straight men.

It’s about power, not about sex.

None of these forms of rape are acceptable. It will not be OK for these young men to have done to them in jail what they did to the young woman. Violence as revenge, to exert power and control, is not the way to transform a culture from one that accepts rape as the status quo into a culture that supports bystanders willing to intervene when someone yells – or sees – RAPE.

Most of all, it does not help to have people like Deepak Chopra say on national television that these rapists and bystanders are emotionally retarded. This makes my stomach hurt. If one in six women will be assaulted in their life, we are all bystanders. We have all stood by and watched, and laughed and took pictures because if we haven’t done something to end violence against women and communities of color, then we may as well have. Because we’re standing by, letting it happen.

So, what do we do? We do as Akua Jackson, Director of Programs for Youth Together said in her CNN interview: we all take responsibility. Parents, teachers, youth, organizations, law enforcement, elected officials, clergy, community members. Preventing rape, stopping rape, is everyone’s responsibility.

Each of us can stop being a bystander. We can be an ally. An advocate.

What I remember most from my days as a rape-crisis counselor was how few women who are raped are believed, and how few report (and often, for good reason). The primary thing we did on the BAWAR hotline is believe callers when no one else would. Rape is so horrible and unimaginable in most of our minds that we would rather play tricks on ourselves than deal with the reality of a rape of someone we love, or of the truth of someone we love being a rapist.

That night in Richmond, it seems that every single person made the wrong choice. The wrong choice to rape. The wrong choice to watch. The wrong choice to laugh. The wrong choice not to act.

Luckily, we get to make the right choice.

We can start by showing our support for this community and these families and the many people, leaders, youth and organizations who have made significant progress in creating a safer, more just community in Richmond. We can let them know we are with them and we believe.

Community Healing Event and Candlelight Vigil at Richmond High School

What: Community Healing Event
When: Tuesday, November 3, 2009, 3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Where: Richmond High School (back Football Field), 1250 23rd Street, Richmond, CA
Who: Students, Teachers, Community Leaders, and Public Officials

Then, perhaps, I can achieve my dream. To run at night, alone, without fear. And a smile.

I Was Wrong

“Abortion is not the go-to gag for a laugh,” I wrote last year in what I thought was an edge-pushing issue of Our Truths-Nuestras Verdades, Exhale’s bilingual abortion zine. After past issues on such heady topics as stigma, family, pregnancy and feelings about the fetus, Exhale decided it was time to branch out. We chose humor.

At the time, we had been laughing about, “smashmortion,” kind of, and had laughed, maybe, with Sarah Silverman. We didn’t imagine a censored Family Guy episode or that Cartman would fall in love with abortion.

I thought it was safe to say that abortion was not the center of very many jokes. I am here to say: I was wrong.

Not only is abortion funny, it is quickly becoming the new go-to-gag for a laugh.

And, herein lies the problem. Abortion humor, like abortion politics, seems to have nothing to do with the actual women who have had them. It’s like the weird dancing baby of Ally McBeal or Tom Delay shaking his rump on Dancing with the Stars. Abortion humor feels like a very strange, alternate universe where it’s normal to have a pet robot and drink your food.

Abortion humor treats abortion as if it’s something you buy at the seedy store with blacked out windows at the end of the dark ally and carried stealthily home only for you to hide it in the back of your pantry beside your secret stash of chocolate and vodka, hoping that no one will ever find it and know its yours.

But that’s not abortion. Abortion is an often emotional experience that involves a physically invasive medical procedure that happens inside a woman’s body and which, if done correctly, removes a growing fetus that would otherwise become a baby.

Abortion is not that funny. But, the women who have them certainly can be!

In our Humor issue, we did not want to make abortion something to laugh at. We wanted to find out what made women laugh about their own experiences. We wanted to know what they found funny.

A woman thought it was funny that after telling her boyfriend she was pregnant, he said: “Man, I didn’t really think I could get anyone pregnant because I’ve done so many drugs.” Another woman laughed that while she was waiting nervously in stirrups for her procedure to begin, a nurse came in and said: “your socks match your eyes.” When she founded out that after her abortion that her “dude wanted a receipt,” a woman found humor in the ridiculous.

Instead of abortion, Our Truths-Nuestras Verdades made women’s voices and stories the centerpiece of abortion humor. We weren’t laughing at them. We are still laughing with them.

But next time, I’m going to use all the money we spent on printing and mailing to go after Chelsea Handler or Margaret Cho and entice them with cookies (or sex toys) in exchange for a Funny or Die abortion video.

That should be really funny.

Me on KPFA’s Full Circle (Berkeley radio)

Listen here. Start listening around 25 minutes.

Open Letter to Irene Vilar, “Abortion Addict”

Dear Irene,

I was alerted to the pending release of your book, Impossible Motherhood, by a friend and when I read the summary, I thought: “Wow. That’s intense.”

I read in another article that you feared your “self-described ‘abortion addiction’ will be misunderstood” and that you only scheduled “closed-door interviews and will not do a book tour.” You also had to make “sure all public property records do not reflect [your] name, so [you] cannot be targeted at [your] home.”

You are quoted as saying: “I am worried about my safety and the hate mail.”

I just want you to know that I’m sorry you had to take these steps to protect yourself and your family (though I am very glad that you did) and I want to let you know that I’m thinking about you and wishing you well.

Beyond the real threat of physical violence that you undoubtedly face, I want to acknowledge the impact of how it can feel to have so many people judge and ridicule you for telling your story, in your own words, in your own time, in your own way. For an issue as fraught with controversy as abortion, where the only language we have is one of blame, defense and attack, talking personally about how you experienced one, or in your case, many, is unfortunately, not something most of us are used to. Most people really have no idea how to respond.

I know this is true because I too have had an abortion. This experience made me realize how ill-equipped most of our culture is to talk about the personal experience of having one which led me to found an organization called Exhale. We provide women and men a place to talk without fear of judgment. For nearly eight years, we have listened to thousands of women and men share their stories, their feelings, their needs, fears, and the hopes and dreams associated with an abortion experience through our national after-abortion talkline. Time and time again, we hear how the silence and stigma, how feeling alone and isolated, and how having no one and nowhere to turn to for comfort or care is one of the biggest obstacles for emotional wellbeing. We have found that the chance to speak one’s truth, to be believed, to be heard and supported, can be a transformative, empowering and healing process.

Another thing we have learned is how important it is for women to hear the stories of other women. Abortion is so common, but because we rarely talk about it, we lose the opportunity for connection with those who share this experience. Across the range of feelings, backgrounds, perspectives and values, something that women who have had abortions often talk about is their feeling of being alone. And yet, if they take the risk and reach out for support really bad things can happen to them (not always, lots of time people surprise us in great ways!). Things like being cut off from family and friends. Being targeted and harassed in the workplace or being shunned by your religious community are some of the experiences we hear about on our talkline. As I read the blog posts and articles (which I refuse to link to here) I can see that some pro-choice and some pro-life people think it is their right and their duty to shame, pity or judge you.

In this, you are definitely not alone. Many women have shared this experience.

This is why Exhale is pro-voice. We take a stand with every woman who has had an abortion and serve as a witness to her truth. We know your story is important and you deserve to be heard. We stand with you, Irene.

Irene, I don’t know if you’re crazy or sane, a truth-teller or an attention-grabber. I don’t know if you habitually put yourself in situations to be victimized or if this is a symbol of your personal healing and growth. You might be all of these things, or none of them. I have not even read your book.

I do care about who you are and your emotional wellbeing, and that is why it matters to me how you are treated as a woman who has had abortions and who has chosen to share her experiences publicly. While your story of repeat abortions may be shocking and your language of “abortion addict” controversial, any woman who tells her story with abortion publicly, including those stories which may be seen as sympathetic, risk similar kinds of attack. One abortion or thirty, rich or poor, brown or white, abused or safe, public abortion storytelling is never accepted.

I am very sure that is not a surprise to you. And yet, you did it anyway. For taking this risk, I cheer for you. I can’t imagine it was, or is, easy.

I don’t know that sharing our personal abortion stories will ever be easy, but surely the reactions can become a little more supportive and a little more respectful. One in three women will have an abortion in their life. It’s an incredibly common experience. For some it was the best decision, for others, the worst. Women can feel grief or heartache or hopeful and confident. There is no right or wrong way to experience abortion. It’s unique to every person.

Unfortunately, our public dialogue has not made room to hear these stories or to learn from them. It’s our mission at Exhale to change this. We seek to replace judgment with understanding and stigma with support. Not agreement or endorsement of someone’s decision or life choices. Only recognition of the very human need to be heard, and our own individual ability to meet that need.

We can all chose to listen.

I wish you and your family safety and wellness, Irene

Aspen Baker