The Lumberjill: Abortion is not a four-letter word

By Jen Jackson Quintano
Reader Columnist

“Abortion is health care.” 

These words came from the lips of Sandpoint’s own Dr. Amelia Huntsberger, as she testified to the Senate Finance Committee last week about the harms of anti-abortion laws nationwide. Committee Chairman, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon — where Huntsberger now lives — invited her to speak at the hearing, which was meant to explore our nation’s current reproductive health care crisis.

This crisis was made starkly evident recently by the reported deaths of two Georgia women who couldn’t access legal abortions. It’s been visible for two years with myriad stories of care denied to pregnant patients in dire need.

“Abortion is safe,” she continued, “At no point in pregnancy is any politician more qualified to make health care decisions than a patient and their doctor. Government interference in health care must stop.”

Huntsberger shared her story of practicing obstetrics in Idaho and fleeing, fearful for her safety and future in a state hostile to and ill-informed on the need for abortion care. She explained how anti-abortion legislation ties physicians’ hands, morally harming them and mortally harming the pregnant patients they serve.

Dr. Amelia Huntsberger testified before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee at a Sept. 24 hearing titled, “Chaos and Control: How Trump Criminalized Women’s Health Care.” Courtesy screenshot.

Huntsberger is a skilled orator, and she is especially passionate about this topic. Her testimony was powerful. However, it was the simple phrase abortion is health care that caught my ear. At the moment of its utterance, my inbox was abuzz with controversy about that very expression. 

As you may know, I now run a reproductive rights organization called The Pro-Voice Project. We focus on abortion storytelling programming across Idaho, building empathy and challenging stigma around an experience that is greatly maligned and little understood. Among our merchandise offerings are yard signs reading “Abortion Is Healthcare.” We have nearly 1,000 in circulation throughout the state.

Though the signs have been available since March, they became a source of controversy just last week, with several residents suggesting the signs were problematic. Some bristled at the mention of the word “abortion,” feeling that it was off-putting, not socially acceptable and too “in-your-face.” The sense was that using the word “abortion” drives away the very people with whom we need to build bridges.

Others challenged equating abortion with health care, especially as it pertains to “elective abortions” (a term I hate, freighted as it is with sanctimony), where the pregnant patient’s health is not imminently on the line.

Nearly all of those chafing at the sign asserted that they agreed with the restoration of reproductive rights, but that they were most concerned with how others might perceive the slogan. Such is the perennial objection to the yard sign: “What will other people think?”

Guess what? The only way to find out is to start a conversation about it. And the yard signs are doing just that. More people in Sandpoint are talking about abortion this week than before. Isn’t such public discourse a win? Especially with a taboo topic?

The idea that we can advocate for the restoration of abortion access without saying the word is anathema. I know we would rather dance around the word with comfortable euphemisms like “pro-choice” or “reproductive health care,” but that’s how we lost the right in the first place. The things we’re not talking about, we’re not fighting for. And our inability to say the word “abortion” is what helped silo it from all other forms of health care, orphaning it and making it susceptible to loss.

I know it’s hard to say the word “abortion” in mixed company. I know it might trigger people rather than win them over. But when the other side has no compunctions about using the word and defining it as they see fit — largely as a procedure reserved for selfish and morally bankrupt women — why shouldn’t we take back the term and make it as expansive as the experience is? Because the experience is expansive. Each of you reading this knows someone — loves someone, even — who’s had an abortion. And those abortions happened for compelling reasons, worthy of our compassion. So, why are we willing to let the definition of abortion become so narrow that it only applies to people easily despised?

I will not let this definition go unchallenged. When we allow abortion to be defined as an amoral endeavor, we invite retribution against those seeking them and providing them. It is in these dark soils that violence takes root. We need to say the word if for no other reason than to create safe harbors for providers like Huntsberger — who left this area, in part, due to fear of retaliation for speaking out — and for seekers and advocates like me.

Say “abortion” for your daughter, who might need one someday, or for your wife or sister who’s already had one and is too afraid to talk about it. Say the word and reclaim it so that the danger surrounding it evaporates; so that I stop getting asked if I’ve been shot at for my advocacy. So that the word becomes as normal and common as the experience is. 

I had an abortion when I was 25. At the time of conception, I was scared and lonely, estranged from my parents and in an abusive relationship that would soon further isolate me. My abortion is defined as an “elective” one — I didn’t need it for physical survival — but in the unfolding of my life, it doesn’t feel so much elective as it does redemptive. To be able to take a pill that saves one from depression and isolation, from abuse and financial insecurity — that seems like a form of health care verging on the miraculous.

It was also, by definition, a medical procedure. I went to a clinic. I spoke with a provider. I had an ultrasound. And then I was given medication. Just like any other form of health care.

Furthermore, my “on-demand” abortion is little different from your “on-demand” knee replacement, one that contravenes the natural deterioration of your joint due to age. Deterioration, I might add, that was exacerbated by your pleasure-seeking on the pickleball court (tsk, tsk, you hedonist). Why not embrace what the Creator meant for your body? It’s natural to need a walker or wheelchair at age 70. Come back to us when that knee replacement is necessary to save your life.

(Sucks to have someone tell you what’s best for your body, right?)

I use the word abortion not as provocation but as an evocation, forcing us to feel and respond, thus hauling the procedure out of the silent and shame-filled shadows where it has resided for generations. Abortion must be liberated from that dark space if we are to return it to the arsenal of reproductive health care where it belongs. 

It belongs in clinics, not in our moralizing. It belongs in the hands of physicians, not in those of legislators. It belongs within the grasp of women — all the women for all their well-considered reasons — not locked within our dogmatism and worrying about the opinions of others.

It is easy to believe that the work of groups like mine is to win over the other side, but I refuse to change my messaging to accommodate people who will never agree with me. Instead, my work is about reaching the exact people who are currently filling my inbox, the people who ostensibly support reproductive rights but are too afraid to say the name of the thing they’re fighting for. 

Polling shows that, in Idaho, we have numbers on our side. We don’t need to magically transform abortion abolitionists into allies with clever wordplay, shrouding our true ends in euphemisms. Instead, if we can encourage the more than 60% of Idahoans who agree that government has no place in the exam room to say the word, to speak of it with family and friends, to normalize it and put a face to it, then we can fortify and amplify the extensive army we already have. 

Dr. Amelia Huntsberger did not shy away from the word “abortion” within the halls of Congress. She said it two dozen times in her testimony, and for that, I commend her. She defined herself as, among other things, an abortion provider. She defined abortion as health care. She declared the procedure to be safe. She stated clearly that abortion preserves health and lives. 

Mine included. My abortion safeguarded my freedom to pursue a hopeful and happy future. And I can think of no greater form of compassionate health care than that.

Jen Jackson Quintano writes and runs The Pro-Voice Project, a reproductive rights organization, in Sandpoint. Sadly, neither requires much in the way of chainsaw use.