Stories Project aims to remove abortion stigma
Megan Rubenstein was 16 years old when she felt waves of nausea and asked her Mormon father to take her to the doctor, but he did not. He said, “Oh, it’s probably just nerves.” Luckily, she had a prescheduled doctor’s visit with her mom in Virginia, where she found out she was pregnant.
“I kept thinking, ‘That’s not me,’ ” Rubenstein said.
After hearing the news, she and her mother went to grab coffee to discuss her options.
Her mother offered two options. She could go away, live with her aunt, have the baby and put it up for adoption. The second option was she could go away, live with her aunt, have the baby, and her mother would raise the child as her own.
Rubenstein responded, “There’s no decision. I am having an abortion.”
Her father still does not know about the abortion, and Rubenstein is 37 years old.
Twenty-one years later, she shared her story for the second time at the Tennessee Stories Project news conference Tuesday.
The Tennessee Stories Project, in partnership with Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region and Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee, is an effort to remove the stigma of terminating a pregnancy by having Tennesseans share their personal experiences about abortion, organizers say. Those stories are captured at TNStories.org.
The project has been in the works for about a year, said Francie Hunt, executive director of Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood.
“The Tennessee Stories Project rejects the premise that abortion is morally wrong or socially unacceptable and is working to promote a culture of compassion in Tennessee,” said Ashley Coffield, CEO of Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region. “While one in three American women will have an abortion during her reproductive lifetime, many of them experience silence, fear, shame and a sense of powerlessness. As a result of the stigma related to abortion, many Tennesseans don’t talk about the experience.”