The Gift of Leadership: An Appreciation for Departing Board Members Jennifer Rudy, Julie Davidson-Gómez and Susan Osborne

By Aspen Baker

Julie Davidson-Gómez

Susan Osborne

Jennifer Rudy

“Are all your board members this involved?” Deb, a donor in Seattle, asked me as we both waved goodbye to Julie, a board member who had just co-hosted a fundraising party at Deb’s home in November 2009.

“Yep!” I said.  “It’s very impressive,” she replied.

Impressive is a great word to describe the board service of Jennifer Rudy, Julie Davidson-Gómez and Susan Osborne.  Brought onto the board of directors as a cohort in 2005, Jen, Julie and Susan have recently left the board after successful completion of our maximum board term: two, three-year stints of service.  From their board member orientation to their transition celebration, their leadership has shaped what Exhale is today; and what we will become in the future.

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“FTW: Social Networks, Down and Dirty for Change” at Netroots Nation

On Friday, June 17^th, Exhale Executive Director Aspen Baker participated in a panel presentation at Netroots Nation entitled “FTW: Social Networks, Down & Dirty for Change.” Assembled by 16 & Loved architect Deanna Zandt, the panel also included Cheryl Contee from Fission Strategy, Anita Jackson from Moms Rising, and Rachel LaBruyere from Mobile Commons and explored case studied of social media successes. Aspen Baker presented the 16 & Loved campaign to a standing-room only crowd, exploring campaign goals, media reaction, and lessons learned. You can watch the whole panel discussion below [a new browser window will open]:

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Free to Thrive: Coming out and the transformative power of empathy

Jovida Ross

By Jovida Ross, Exhale’s Director of Programs

I first came out as Queer when I was 17. At first I told a few close friends; when that went OK I told more people. Then I was out socially. I told my parents; moved in with a girlfriend for the first time; and eventually I became a leader in an LGBTQ organization.

Each of those steps brought a new coming out process: mustering my courage, taking the risk to speak my truth without knowing what response I would get, and living with the consequences. I’m fortunate that my experience has been overwhelmingly positive, with very few instances of shaming or overt discrimination.

Yet still, every time I find myself in a context where people assume I am straight, I face the question of whether I should come out yet again.

As ESPN contributor Mary Buckheit recently told NPR:

Most people think of a person’s coming out as one momentous day, or one unnerving phone call home, or one blurted sentence, even. But the truth is you come out a thousand times.

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Taking talkline calls during MTV’s “No Easy Decision”



On the night that MTV’s No Easy Decision aired, Exhale’s talkline lit up! We had fourteen callers in the first hour after the special had finished broadcasting on the East Coast, even though it was midnight in that time zone.

Several counselors took calls that night. Lisa Green was one of those counselors. Exhale Director of Programs Jovida Ross asked Lisa about her experience working with Exhale through the partnership with MTV.

Jovida: What was it like to take calls on the talkline the night that “No Easy Decision” aired?

Lisa: I was ready to listen; I knew that I might be getting calls from women who were learning for the first time that they had a place to call. I consider it sacred space, and I felt like I was a part of something revolutionary that night. The calls I got were similar to calls I’ve taken at other times, except that they said they had just watched the show and were so glad to learn about Exhale.

Jovida: Did you watch the special? If so, what stood out to you about it?

Lisa: I cannot express how brave I think that Markai and her boyfriend are for sharing their experience, as with Katie and Natalia, the 2 other women who sat with Dr. Drew for the interview. I wanted more; more discussion and more about abortion approached in this manner. More stories from real women exploring real experiences that are not black and white, making tough choices that may not be what they imagined but doing what they believe is best for everybody involved; themselves, their families and their future. This is the kind of thing I hear on the talkline, and I have never seen it reflected in the media before.

Jovida: Did you read any of the 16 & Loved posts? If so, was there anything that stood out to you about the site?

Lisa: I loved that Exhale created this site. It was so positive and powerful. I expected that there would be a backlash from the airing of “No Easy Decision”, and I read just about everything I could about the show, and all the posts on 16 & Loved beforehand. Although there was some negative commentary online, for the most part it seemed like there was a great welcoming of hearing real women’s stories. This warmed my soul and made me feel positive and proud to be part of Exhale; for being a part of this important shift in dialogue.

Jovida: Is there anything you’d like to share about the counseling experience, and why or how it is meaningful for you?

Lisa: Listening to women on the hotline has seriously changed my life. Simple listening, simple non-judgmental listening, is so powerful and pure. I am somebody who obsesses about being perfect and this stops me from doing many things; I worry about things I say or ruminate about things that others wouldn’t give a second thought. For the most part, this does not happen with me on the talkline.  I can just listen; listen and help women to see themselves the way I do when I hear them talk about their tough choices and their strength, and listen to them work out what makes sense to them.

I have talked to so many women who simply amaze me with their resilience and wisdom. My favorite calls are when women come to the point where they have concluded how strong they are and they come to feel empowered. I am also always amazed that a call can begin with crying and end with laughter or taking action to seek further support.

One call that stands out in my memory is a caller who came from a very conservative family and community, who told me that this was the first time she had said the word abortion out loud. It felt wonderful to be a part of that moment with her; I got to witness her unburden herself, to release and let go of her pent-up emotion.

These moments are the heart of pro-voice. A friend of mine recently read the New York Times article [about Exhale] and she loved the idea of pro-voice and taking abortion out of the political realm. I’m proud to be a part of approaching abortion in a new way; I feel like I am a part of an emerging pro-voice movement.

I really love how [fellow Exhale counselor] Nat has phrased or defined pro-voice in one of his blog posts: That a pro-voice movement will lead to “a world where the rest of us can see abortion less as a political issue to be debated and more about abortion as an experience lived by a woman we love.”

For me, when I think about pro-voice, I find myself going back to the phrase or notion of the gray area, about breaking free from black and white thinking and embracing the multi-layered nature of most important decisions in life. Most of us live in those gray areas, our lives becoming things we didn’t imagine or living in ways that we didn’t plan for. There can be beauty in those moments. Abortion is a part of that journey for so many women. We deserve respect, and for our voices to be heard.

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Expressing and Receiving Love about Abortion

Our “16 & Loved” campaign opened a forum for people to express their love to the three young women who appeared on MTV’s “No Easy Decision.” We received over 200 submissions telling Markai, Natalia and Katie, and every woman who has had an abortion that they are not alone.  They are loved.

The messages posted were inspiring, uplifting, personal, revealing, vulnerable, strong, determined, and thoughtful.  Some of the messages were simple and to the point, others were more lengthy and intricate.  Some put themselves in another woman’s shoes while others spoke from direct personal experience.  The messages of love were as diverse and unique to each writer as a personal experience of abortion can be to each woman.

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My Magical X-Ray Goggles by Board Member Julie Davidson-Gómez

*Guest Post by Board Member, Julie Davidson-Gómez*

Leading Exhale’s year-end fundraising effort is a lot like having magical x-ray goggles. From my vantage point, I get to see the inner workings of our campaign in amazing and intricate detail. Every day, I witness the little victories and milestones that occur when a volunteer steps out of their comfort zone and reaches out to you to connect, share, and inspire.

Joining the fundraising team requires a big step, and sometimes a leap of faith, toward connecting our individual stories and beliefs to a larger organizational vision: that of a thriving pro-voice movement, financially supported by women and men who care just as much about post-abortion wellbeing, and who share our dreams for a future free from abortion stigma.

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Stigma Researcher Kate Cockrill on Personal Abortion Story-sharing

Kate Cockrill, a researcher who studies stigma and abortion at UCSF, recently wrote about her attendance at the Princeton Open Hearts/Open Minds conference on the blog of ANSIRH (a Pro-Voice High-Five Awardee for New Research).   In contemplating the lack of women’s voices at the conference, Kate poses some good questions about the role of women who have had abortions in public discussion.  She writes:

If 1.3 million women have an abortion every year, then why is it that so few women speak publicly or even privately about their abortions? What would happen if women began to speak up? How would it change the debate? I think that it is safe to say that the prochoice movement is a movement for women who are considering abortions or need abortions. It is a legal movement oriented toward preserving the right to abortion.

Addressing the role of stigma in women’s silence, Kate writes:

Stigma is clearly a major culprit in women’s public silence about their abortions. To talk about one’s abortion publicly is to risk losing credibility on a variety of levels. But there are many other reasons that women don’t talk publicly about their abortions. Maybe the reason for their own abortion is not the reason they are attempting to highlight in their advocacy. Maybe they don’t want to upset a family member or ex-partner who might be sensitive to their decision. Maybe it feels like a private experience that they don’t want to explore publicly at that moment. Maybe it still feels raw. Maybe it just doesn’t feel salient anymore.

No matter the reason, speaking about a personal abortion experience publicly means taking on personal risk. Instead of asking where the voices are, we could work harder to reduce the risk that women incur when they speak from their own experience. We can and should be demonstrating and demanding nonjudgmental listening. We should encourage honesty and should support a range of experiences. We should not discriminate against some experiences while highlighting others. We should support private spaces for women to discuss their experiences with those who can listen and understand, better yet, people who have also “been there.” We should demand that all women have access to emotional care at the time of their abortion and after. In fact, I would argue that when these demands are absent from our advocacy, we aren’t really advocating for women who have had abortions.

Women who have abortions do not live in a world of nonjudgmental support. When their own abortion is at issue they can expect judgment, criticism and rejection.  So many women are very careful about who they share their experience with or who they seek support from. In fact if you do not personally know someone who has had an abortion, it’s most likely because you are not considered a safe person to tell. While politically-motivated public and private disclosure is encouraged by both sides of the debate, the real stories of real women are not adequately supported by either side of the public debate.  So, when women don’t come forward with their stories…we have to wonder if we’re partly to blame.

In relating how she experienced the conference, Kate summarizes:

Conversations like the ones I had at OHOM may not bring us any closer to common ground on the abortion issue; however, I think they do promote a common culture based on values that can be shared by either side. Curiosity. Dignity. Respect. Peace.

Thank you Kate!

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A Digital Storytelling Screening in Seattle

Earlier, this year, Exhale formed a partnership with our Pro-Voice High-Five awardee for Leadership – the Center for Digital Storytelling – to pilot a workshop where women could create their own digital stories about having had an abortion and being an abortion listener.  Through this workshop, we learned a lot about the role stigma plays in public storysharing, what it means to ask women to tell their abortion stories, as well as for an audience to listen to stories, and the experience of sharing personal abortion stories.

As part of our ongoing learning process about public abortion story-sharing, we took the stories on the road last week and showed them to a new audience.  The Abortion Access Project invited us to share our stories with advocates and providers in Seattle.  Exhale leaders, including me, our Director of Programs, Jovida Ross; Board Member Julie Davdison-Gomez, and Pro-Voice Ambassador Erika Jackson, had an engaging discussion about the process of creating the stories, and our collective ideas for what we can all do to promote respectful forums for storysharing.

We asked the audience to record their responses as they watched each digital story.  Here is just a sampling of the dozens of responses we received:

• “Reminded me how much abortion is interwoven into so many other stories.  It’s not just about the abortion.”

• “Made me think about what we gain by being a part of other women’s abortion experiences.”

• “The story exemplifies the duality of regret and relief and transforms it into something new.”

• “It is always such a good reminder that the most powerful thing we can do for someone is to let them be with their feelings whatever they are.”

• “Inspired.  I related to her story.”

Jovida Ross introduces the stories:

Erika Jackson shares her experience of making the story while I listen:

Erika, Jovida, Deb from AAP, and me afterwards:

Thank you for hosting us Seattle!  We had a great time and learned a lot.

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Building Strong Ties to Change Culture by Volunteer Nat Okey

*Guest Blogger*

Nat Okey, Exhale Volunteer:

The recent media attention over the Twitter thread, “#ihadanabortion”, reveals the deep difference between online networking and social change.  I hope that every woman who tweeted about her abortion found the experience to be a positive one, and yet in order to have a lasting effect on the abortion debate, the campaign must be connected to a broader culture change agenda.

Recently, best-selling author and cultural commentator, Malcolm Gladwell, wrote in the New Yorker magazine about the difference between the weak ties of social networking and the strong ties needed for social change. He makes his point that people take on great personal risks, like violence or death, in order to change culture because of strong ties, with examples of the early lunch counter sit-ins and the Freedom Summer campaign. On the other hand, weak social ties, like the kind we have with people on Facebook or Twitter, don’t give us what is really needed to face our own fears and the real risks to our lives or livelihoods.

The problem of weak social ties played out with #ihadanabortion, as it quickly became politicized and was used as another culture war proxy.  The thread digressed to include pleas for people to go sign a Planned Parenthood petition, amongst many other things.   You can’t have a transformative conversation, which is necessary to change the debate, in 140 characters or less with anonymous strangers with constant tangents being introduced.  The multitudes of nuance that the abortion debate contains and which must be respected can not be adequately addressed by tweeting.

Instead of trying to speak to the masses one tweet at a time, we should focus on supporting women who have had abortions, as it is their relationships with their own friends and family that will prove the tipping point to cultural change. When people have strong personal ties to you, they will view an issue differently if it affects you. Where once something was unacceptable, through their prism of you they can see and feel the issue differently.

Sociologists Robert Putnam and David Campbell describe this in their new book, American Grace.  In a recent review in the New York Times, Robert Wright discusses this effect in regards to LGBT people in the U.S. and how our society has become much more accepting with relative quickness:

Putnam and Campbell favor the “bridging” model. The idea is that tolerance is largely a question of getting to know people. If, say, your work brings you in touch with gay people or Muslims — and especially if your relationship with them is collaborative — this can brighten your attitude toward the whole tribe they’re part of. And if this broader tolerance requires ignoring or reinterpreting certain scriptures, so be it; the meaning of scripture is shaped by social relations.

The bridging model explains how attitudes toward gays could have made such rapid progress. A few decades ago, people all over America knew and liked gay people — they just didn’t realize these people were gay. So by the time gays started coming out of the closet, the bridge had already been built.

And once straight Americans followed the bridge’s logic — once they, having already accepted people who turned out to be gay, accepted gayness itself — more gay people felt comfortable coming out. And the more openly gay people there were, the more straight people there were who realized they had gay friends, and so on: a virtuous circle.

Once people realize that their co-workers, partners, friends and family members have had abortions, we can develop our own Pro-Voice virtuous circle.

This kind of bridge-building work won’t happen through Twitter.  As Gladwell writes, online social networking is

“a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections… It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact.”

A Twitter campaign alone will not de-stigmatize abortion.  We need to build more bridges and foster more strong ties.  This approach can give us a world where all the women who’ve had an abortion can speak freely about their experiences, and a world where the rest of us can see abortion less as a political issue to be debated and more about abortion as an experience lived by a woman we love.

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Me and Steph Herold Exchange Ideas in The Nation

Last week, Steph Herold, the pro-choice activist behind IAmDr.Tiller launched a Twitter campaign to get women to come out about their abortions, using #ihadanabortion. Emily Douglas at The Nation invited us both to exchange our thoughts and ideas about the role of public abortion storytelling for changing the debate.

Read our exchange: “I Had An Abortion” in 140 Characters or Less: An Exchange with Steph Herold and Aspen Baker.

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