Do your friends talk openly about abortion? If you've had an abortion, do you discuss it? If not, why not? According to the Guttmacher Institute's latest stats, three out of 10 women in the U.S. will have an abortion by the time they turn 45, which means it's a very common procedure that's still treated as a taboo.

Kate Cockrill, 36, and Steph Herold, 26, are the activists and entrepreneurs behind Sea Change, a new nonprofit that seeks to tackle the stigma around abortion and other reproductive experiences, such as adoption and infertility. "A few months back we got a package from a woman in Georgia," Cockrill said. "In the package was the sweetest letter thanking us for our work. This woman had never told anyone about her abortion but had written a whole book about the isolation, shame and judgment she felt. She didn't know who to send it to, so she sent it to us. The saddest thing about it: Her abortion was more than 25 years ago."

Cockrill and Herold spoke with about the "living room revolution" they're launching to help women across the country connect about their experiences of pregnancy, sexuality, and parenthood.

What was the impetus to start Sea Change?

Kate: We have been really inspired by the changes in norms and attitudes around queerness and mental illness. We wanted to create a program that could draw on culture change successes but was focused on pregnancy and parenting decisions.

What is abortion stigma, and how can we spot it?

Steph: Abortion stigma is the shared belief that abortion is socially wrong and/or morally unacceptable. We know it's there because of the silence about abortion in our culture, the isolation that some people feel when they have abortions, the judgment from communities towards people who have abortions, and the fear that abortion providers experience on a daily basis. Each of these things suggests that abortion is deeply taboo and stigmatized even though it is a legal and common procedure.

Kate: My first encounter with abortion stigma was in high school when I had a pregnancy scare. I didn't know you could just go to Rite Aid and get a test. A friend told me there was a place across from the mall, so we went there. In the hallway, there was a statue of the Virgin Mary. I didn't know then that you could get the results of a pregnancy test in two minutes. The counselor made it seem like I had to listen to her 30-minute lecture for the pregnancy test to work. I was in a really positive sexual relationship, but this woman, who was in her 50s and pulling rank on me, made the relationship seem like it was illicit. She started showing me pictures of what the fetus would supposedly look like. I understood then that those pictures were punishment for having sex, for considering abortion. I'd told the counselor when I came in that if I was pregnant, I would think about having an abortion. It turned out that I wasn't pregnant, but I had learned a lot about what happens to girls who need abortions.

Later, when I took a women's health class in college, I wrote about the experience. The instructor told me, "What happened to you wasn't right." Then I realized that it was predatory, that the whole point is to make women feel bad about their sexual lives.

Your first initiative was the Sea Change Book Club. How did the idea come about?

Kate: In developing projects for Sea Change, we looked at other pro-choice groups that were trying to get conversations going online about abortion: storytelling sites, videos, Facebook and Twitter campaigns. But we think an important first step to culture change is being able to share with a few intimates, test the waters, and see how it feels. The stereotype of abortion is that it happens to young, poor, high school girls. People don't realize that nearly one in three women in the U.S. have an abortion in their lifetime.

Steph: Or that these women are all ages, races, and religions.

Kate: Or that these women are in book clubs.

Steph: We really owe the idea of the book club to Oprah. Her book club paved the way for a lot of women to engage in open conversations with one another about really personal and sometimes controversial issues: racism, sexual abuse, divorce, HIV. Kate's been a researcher focusing abortion stigma for a while, so she's done several interview and survey studies on abortion. The book club project was the first project that we designed to try to actually change attitudes and behavior around abortion.

Kate: We wanted to know if women in book clubs would be willing to tell their abortion stories to one another, and if hearing those stories help other women be more understanding of abortion. We got 14 book clubs all across the country to sign up for the project: 13 women's clubs and 1 men's club. Each book club read an anthology [Choice] with different first-person accounts of pregnancy experiences including adoption, infertility, miscarriage, abortion, and birth. One member of the Sea Change team attended each club and recorded the conversation, and we used surveys to track the book club members' attitudes toward abortion.

Related: What You Need To Know About the Abortion Pill

What did you learn?

Steph: We were shocked by the openness that women showed with one another. In the first club we visited, there were six women and five had previously had an abortion. Nearly all of the groups talked about how difficult it was just to talk about abortion. They talked about how sharing personal stories can reduce that stigma, but that few women are really willing or able to "come out."

Kate: We also found that women's attitudes toward abortion became more accepting after the book-club discussion. The change was even more profound among the women who were initially the most judgmental. Talking about it emphasizes the complexity of our reproductive lives. The women in these groups are concerned about the future of reproductive rights, for their daughters and sons. What choices will they have? They said, "Maybe we should be telling our kids about our abortions. We need to share this with the next generation."

What was the experience of women telling their stories like?

Kate: In one club, a woman who shared her abortion was very emotional. The abortion was more recent, and the decision had been a difficult one. She was concerned about talking about the abortion in the club because she didn't want to cry in front of her friends. But in the end, it came out as a part of the conversation, and she said that she was glad. She got a lot of support from folks about the experience.

In another club, members had decided to start the discussion by sharing their own pregnancy experiences. No one shared about abortion until the last person. But when she said abortion, two other members piped up. It turned out that there were three women who had abortions in that group. They talked about how difficult and stigmatizing it was to talk about but that once someone else shared it made it easier. That group also had women who had experienced infertility, adoption, unintended pregnancy, and birth. It was a really transformative conversation.

How can we support friends who have had abortions or are thinking about having an abortion?

Steph: The best thing we can do for our loved ones is show up, ask how you can help, follow through, and be considerate of their feelings. If you can do that, you're 99 percent there toward being a great friend for someone who has an abortion. Our advisory-board member Renee Bracy Sherman wrote about how to listen and support a loved one when they tell you that they've had an abortion. She emphasizes that when the topic of abortion comes up sometimes people feel they have to say something, but often stopping talking, dropping our own agenda, and listening to women who have had abortions is the best policy.

What else can we expect to see from Sea Change?

Kate: As an organization, we're just beginning. Right now, we're developing our own reader for the project, made up of stories that women and men are submitting from all over the country. This fall we have a plan to take the project to communities all over the country. We think that book-club discussions offer this great opportunity to explore abortion and other sensitive issues in a safer and potentially less stigmatizing space. Anyone who is interested in changing the culture of stigma is welcome to participate in our campaign: contact us, request the books, host a party and/or sign up other groups, and, most importantly, let us know how the conversation goes!

Steph: We are contacted by other groups daily who want to use art, theater, billboards, movies, dance, and other cultural forms of expression to increase conversation and connection across all kinds of experiences. We know that there is a lot of work to do to change the shame around reproductive choices and experiences in the U.S. Our motto is: "Stigma hurts, let's make shift happen."


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Photo credit: Summer Starling

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