Choice Words: Writers on Abortion is a landmark literary anthology twenty years in the making. This collection, of poems, stories, and essays, foregrounds essential voices that renew our courage in the struggle to defend reproductive rights.
This is a challenging time to release a new book into the world. But it is clear, given the attacks on abortion access that have been carried out under the cover of this crisis, that we must urgently take back the cultural and political conversation around abortion.
“Silence, as much as anything, is why abortion's such an easy target in America. Stories save lives. We need women to say, shamelessly, I had an abortion. I'm not sorry. I'm not afraid. This anthology is a valuable contribution to this work.” —Molly Crabapple, author of Drawing Blood
It is also true that in difficult times poetry, literature, and art can form a part of the political vanguard and offer expression to our deepest emotions, build connections between us through our shared experiences, and help us imagine and articulate a better world.
As Audre Lourde wrote:
“For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”
