Abortion is my birthright

Last month, at a pro-choice rally in my hometown located 20 minutes north of New York City, my mother took the megaphone for the first time in her life and said “I’ve had two abortions.” I had known this about my mother since childhood, who would mention the abortions to me and my sister in passing, without explanation or shame. Abortion was part of what allowed my family to be a tight-knit quartet, and this knowledge existed somewhere in the back of each of our minds without ever having to be explicitly said.