A Bold New Conversation On Abortion

Advocates for Youth introduces 40 abortion stories for the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The decades-long effort to secure women's reproductive health and rights has hit a wall. For too long, women who have had abortions have been silenced and in the shadows. But today marks a new day. Today, Advocates for Youth announces the release of 1 in 3: These Are Our Stories, to mark the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.

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One in three women in the U.S. will have an abortion in her lifetime. Abortion is a fact of life. To highlight the experiences of everyday women and to end the cultural stigma and shame women are made to feel around abortion, Advocates for Youth launched the 1 in 3 Campaign in 2011. Advocates recognized the need to provide a counter to the anti-abortion rhetoric and give a true face to the experiences of women to create a culture more compassionate and supportive of keeping abortion care safe and available.

"We created 1 in 3: These Are Our Stories to put people at the center of the conversation about abortion care, and to purposefully create a new conversation," says Debra Hauser, Executive Director of Advocates for Youth. "It is essential that people hear these stories, to put faces to the statistics and to understand that women who seek abortions are sisters, mothers and daughters."

In releasing, 1 in 3: These Are Our Stories, Advocates selected forty stories from the hundreds contributed to the 1 in 3 Campaign. These stories illustrate the complexities of women's lives and the important role that abortion access has played throughout the generations.

"When I share my own abortion story around the country, more often than not women offer up theirs in response," says Hauser. "What always results is empathy for the complexity of our lives, for the commonalities that bind us, and for the need to keep abortion care safe and available."

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