Jessica Valenti's new abortion book
This could be the most consequential publication this year
Jessica Valenti’s new abortion book could be the most consequential to the U.S. this year (although the PR around Sally Rooney’s would suggest otherwise).
As an avid reader of Valenti’s Substack Abortion, Every Day, I knew this book would offer an insightful look at what is one of the top issues in the upcoming U.S. election. But if anyone who is against abortion bothers to read it, I am convinced it would sway them toward freedom. And for people like me, who don’t need to be swayed, it is a call to arms and a playbook to winning back our rights and more.
For those who do read the newsletter regularly, the book is a brilliant distillation of the themes present in the newsletter, including the anti-choice movement’s careful co-opting of language and invention of fake medical terms. It catalogues anti-abortion activists’ strategy and talking points, clearly rebutting each one. This refresher course on abortion rights does what it says on the cover: it gives us the truths we need to win this debate once and for all. Indeed, as Valenti writes in her book, abortion is not a controversial issue; Americans have supported it for decades. It has been portrayed by the right as a controversial issue because shame is a major part of their strategy.
“It’s a lot less controversial to strip away a long-standing right if you can convince the public that half of the country agrees with you.”
As one of many examples of broad support, Valenti references a PerryUndem poll that offered two hypothetical ballot measures on abortion, and voters chose the one without restrictions by 15 percentage points. The other hypothetical measure would restrict abortion after “viability” (which Valenti notes is not a medical term), but as she explains it, the horror stories coming out since Roe was overturned has shown time and again that abortions after viability are vital.
Still, I would prefer to see much more deliberate explanations in the media about how so-called “common-sense” viability and term restrictions impact the options for pregnancies that are putting women’s live in danger (and taking lives, too). Through my personal conversations with friends and family, I am not convinced these stories truly drive home the uselessness of the viability argument. Many people who I consider reasonable have told me something to the effect of, “Of course a pregnant person with a baby who won’t survive should be able to have an abortion to save her life,” or “Of course a rape victim should be able to have an abortion,” BUT “you shouldn’t be able to get an abortion just because you didn’t plan to get pregnant or it’s inconvenient.” Theoretically, laws that allow abortion until viability contradict all of these preferences.
Of course the reason to support abortion is much simpler than all of that, anyway: It is a personal decision that is nobody else’s business. And, as we’ve seen, there is no way to legislate for all the things that can happen in pregnancy. But we aren’t quite there yet.
I’ve had other conversations with people supportive of abortion access for all, but who think I am overreacting when I worry about where this debate can take us. For example, many people think that there’s no chance contraception will be outlawed. Valenti explains, “When I tell people that Republicans are banning birth control — not in the future, but right now -- they don’t always believe me. That’s because they’re imagining a singular law explicitly outlawing contraception…” But she provides examples of how contraception is inaccessible to many, even now, due to workarounds that don’t require that kind of law. There are “religious affiliation” clauses and insurance company issues and simple budgetary constraints that make it inaccessible to many people right now.
The scariest theme, to me, were the many examples Valenti provides of anti-choice rhetoric that place women in two categories: those who deserve care, and those who don’t. Those who don’t deserve it are the ones who don’t want to be mothers, or to have more children. The explicit categorization of women is terrifying. It has always been present culturally (as I’ve written about at length), but the fact is that kind of categorization is now being legislated. Who gets to put women into categories? Who gets to decide which women deserve to live and die?
Valenti provides several examples of anti-choice rhetoric that places women in two categories: those who deserve care, and those who don’t…[and] we are seeing this kind of categorization legislated. Who gets to put women into categories?
But Valenti’s book isn’t about how we argue with the other side. She notes, “spending activist energy trying to sway those who will never be swayed -- especially when we already have the votes we need -- is exactly what anti-abortion groups want us to do.” While anti-abortion legislators spend their time trying to stop pro-choice ballot measures and come up with new phrases to distort their policies, she says, their real problem is that those policies are gravely unpopular. Time and again, abortion rights ballot measures win.
That’s the good news. So how do we win? This is Jessica Valenti’s greatest strength. In addition to holding an encyclopedic knowledge of abortion rights issues across the country, she has written a book that is as inspiring as it is practical. Abortion is the only tool we need to speak up confidently for our rights. When we tell the truth, we stop anti-choice lawmakers and lobbyists from getting away with their lies.
I think the biggest lie Valenti identifies in her book is that abortion is controversial. And she proves that it is not. We don’t need to convince the anti-choice side that abortion is health care. We are the majority. We just need to own it.
“We have the chance, right here and now, to change the conversation…to build something bigger and better, both legally and culturally”