Beyond Mental Illness: Emotional Health and Abortion

*This post first appeared on Care2Causes in Women’s Rights* Mental illness and disease are not much different than physical illness or disease.  This approach fits squarely in the medical model: there are doctors and hospitals and diagnoses. There are also risk-factors, treatments and morbidity rates. If you have a problem, most likely, it has a [...]

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Overcoming Stigma: Dead NFL Players, Suicidal Veterans and Emotional Women

*This post was first published on the Huffington Post. Dr. Bennet I. Omalu published an article in the journal Neurosurgery in July 2005 that described the new brain disease he found in a dead former NFL player, Mike Webster. Webster, a former Steelers Hall of Famer, died at age 50 after years of increasing dementia-like [...]

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Social Media ≠ Public Exposure: Lessons in Private Networking for Social Change

*I first published this piece on Beth Kanter’s blog. “Many times a call has ended without me being able to give a caller something she really wanted. So many of our callers would ask for a resource where they could connect with other women who have experienced abortion, and I had to respond by saying [...]

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Thank You Law Students for Reproductive Justice

I had the pleasure of speaking at the Western Regional Conference for Law Students for Reproductive Justice (LSRJ) at UCLA on Sunday, January 31st. I started my presentation by doing something I never do, which is to outline what it was I would *not* be talking about. I’m not a lawyer or a policy advocate [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Me on KPFA’s Full Circle (Berkeley radio)

Listen here. Start listening around 25 minutes.

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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 [...]

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Exhale Honors Volunteer Jan with 2nd Annual Rachel Falls Compassion Award

In 2008, Exhale and our community lost a very dear friend and ally. Rachel Falls, the Hotline Director at the National Abortion Federation (NAF), passed away after a long battle with brain cancer. Rachel was many wonderful things to many people. At Exhale, she will always be remembered as one of the first people to [...]

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