Original article by Frances Stead Sellers
“Melissa Madera set out across the USA, equipped with an Apogee microphone and an iPad, to record women talking about their abortions. She has travelled to 18 states by plane, bus, train and in her ageing car “to meet women where they are” — in luxury high-rises and on a Christian college campus, in rural towns and at a Harlem housing project.
“Listeners may find evidence in their stories to support one side of the abortion debate or the other, but Madera’s mission is personal, she says, born not of a need to serve a political end but to find others who share a secret she long held. “Telling their truths,” she says, has become her whole life…
“The “pro-life” movement has focused on stories of regrets and self-recrimination that don’t reflect the range of reactions Madera has felt and heard. From the evangelical mother of two who confessed to her children and her church that she’d had five abortions. From the liberal student whose personal regrets sent her on a 20-year spiritual journey.
The stories can all be found in her online Abortion Diary with 129 first-person podcasts at this writing – stories of “relief and grief and every emotion in between”, Madera says, as well as the sense of release that comes from sharing cloistered memories.”
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