The A-word

Mon, 20 Sep 2004 16:39:00 +0000

"It was the safest place, but I felt vulnerable," admits 34-year-old author and "professional feminist" Jennifer Baumgardner, between bites of panini at an East Village cafe, in New York. She is referring to the sole occasion -- April's March for Women's Lives in Washington -- on which she wore one of her controversial T-shirts, which read, simply, "I had an abortion." Eight months pregnant, Baumgardner mentions the piles of hate mail she has received since producing the tees, and half-jokingly whispers about a fear of getting shot.

Baumgardner, who created the shirts in 2003 when she began work on a film also called "I Had an Abortion," insists that she didn't design them for shock value, but to spark discussion about abortion and help "personalize" the still-taboo subject.

Still, why would anyone advertise something so personal? "To destigmatize what's still known as the A-word," says Jane Bovard, 61, president of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, who with her staff at the Red River Women's Clinic, in Fargo, N.D, have "once or twice" sported the shirts en masse to after-work happy hour. "No one has said anything at all," Bovard notes. (Not everyone is so tolerant of the shirts; when singer Ani DiFranco donned one in Inc., the magazine received several angry letters and lost some subscribers.)

Salon.com > Laura Barcella

The A-word