Abortion: Always & Forever
*While the term “women” is used in this piece, this essay implicates people of all genders who have uteruses, can give birth, and have abortions.
In 2024, I started to get involved in Reproductive Justice (RJ) and abortion advocacy. This started when I attended the Planned Parenthood Generation Action Summit that February in Massachusetts where I went to college. At the summit, there was a presentation given by staff at SisterSong (a Southern-based collective made up of and led by women of color fighting for bodily autonomy), and that is where I first learned about the history of the Reproductive Justice movement. Over the next few months, I dug more deeply into Reproductive Justice – what it is and how I could get involved and contribute. After a lot of personal research and watching countless YouTube videos, I ultimately fell in love with the Reproductive Justice framework.
By September, I was grounded in the RJ tenets, mission, and vision, and was moving toward taking action to contribute to the movement. I joined Advocates for Youth’s “Youth Abortion Support Collective” and began attending their free virtual Self-Managed Abortion Support Trainings. I had just finished attending their December 2024 training a few days before when I discovered that someone I personally knew had an abortion. This was my first time hearing an abortion story that wasn’t from a YouTube video or Instagram reel, but then again, as the saying goes, everyone loves someone who’s had an abortion. Now, a year later, I sat down to interview Marie Octavie Germain, inviting my loved one to share her story in the Reproductive Justice lineage of storytelling as resistance. Marie Octavie Germain is a Black woman who had an abortion in May of 1994 in the Northeast United States after getting pregnant with her boyfriend at the time. The following interview was edited for length and grammar, and a pseudonym has been selected to protect her privacy.
Nadia: Did you face any barriers in accessing your abortion, whether it be financial, emotional, physical, mental, etc.?
Marie Octavie: Financially, no because my boyfriend at the time paid for it. I don’t know how he came up with the money. Emotionally yes, because for a hot second I really did consider keeping it. In the end I was 23 at the time, and my boyfriend and I were both starting our careers. What I was doing then at the time I am not doing now. That career would not have worked out, it was too fluid.
Nadia: How were the medical providers who administered your abortion?
Marie Octavie: I can’t picture their faces, but I remember nurses in the room. The doctor was a male doctor and the one thing I remember was him saying “stop crying, stop crying”. I was extremely emotional about it, and he was kind of harsh about it and I remember not liking that feeling.
Nadia: Why is abortion access and the right to have an abortion important to you?
Marie Octavie: Because I had one. I was able to make that decision to have one and at the time I was very young, nowhere near ready. I wasn’t even ready when I had my first child six years later. You’re never prepared to have a child and in this day and age, I wish young people truly understood that. I’m happy I was able to make that decision because I’ll always remember and know it was the right decision to make at the time. Also, I am actually the daughter of an OBGYN who worked at an abortion clinic. She worked there in the 80s and at the time abortion was still largely unaccepted. She had to walk through protest lines to get to work and inside the clinic, she had to wear a bulletproof vest often. I got to read countless letters of how she saved many women and gave them back their lives by allowing them to have an abortion. I appreciate that my mom basically risked her life to do this for women.
Nadia: What advice do you have for people, particularly Black people and women, who are about to experience an abortion or recently had one?
Marie Octavie: It’s an extremely important decision, and you’re kind of taking back your life. Children are an enormous responsibility, so the fact that you’ve made the decision not to have this child, go forth with your life and whenever/if you’re ready, have a child.
While preparing for and conducting this interview, I couldn’t help but think about the 2010 billboards in Georgia targeting Black women who have had an abortion. Whether Black people who have abortions never have children or decide to have multiple, their decision to terminate their pregnancy will always be valid. Black women and birthing people deserve bodily autonomy in a world that tries to give us anything but.
Abortions have existed since the dawn of time, and they will continue to have them in 2026 and beyond. Abortion is an act of care. It’s an act of resistance, it’s an act of autonomy, and it’s an act of love. Abortion has always been here, it’s still here, and it will always be here.
Nadia L (she/her) is a reproductive justice and health equity advocate born, raised, and currently based in Northern New Jersey. She is a Spring 2024 graduate …
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