inroads Queer Abortions Workbook
Part 2
Workbook Content:
Embodied Abortions for the Queer Community
By Zachi Brewster of Dopo
Agenda
I agree to…
This is a Queer, care-centered, reflective space.
For folks who have abortions, folks who provide abortion care, and those who walk both paths.
Meet your facilitator
Introduce yourself
What’s an abortion?
Abortion can be…
Politically-focused
Pregnancy-focused
Control of:
Woman-focused
Despite this,
how do we experience abortions?
Community
discussion
Suggestion: Create a Jamboard to facilitate the sharing of opinions from this discussion!
The fullness of being human.
The fullness of being a Queer human.
The fullness of being a Queer human who has abortions.
What we can sit with and take in:
What is Embodiment?
Social
In community.
Spiritual
Of the heart + mind.
Sensual
Of the body.
Emotional
Physical
‘You must not imagine that your intellect is all it takes to be able to understand. In its true sense, understanding is not the work of a few brain cells; it occurs throughout the whole body, even in the feet, the arms, the belly, the liver and so on. Every cell in one’s entire body must understand. Understanding is a feeling. You feel and at that moment you understand and you know, because you have tasted it. No intellectual understanding can compare to this feeling. When you experience love, when you experience hatred, anger or grief, you know what it is. If you say, “I know what love is,” without ever having been in love, you are mistaken, you do not know. But if you have felt love, you know it. For true knowledge is this: a feeling.’
Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov
Being embodied:
✨Embodied Abortions✨
‘Embodiment’ is both a personal and communal practice.
Spacious - To feel it all, whatever the all is for you
To receive person-centred care
Encompass the wholeness of the ourselves
Safe:
Move away from the binary of what bodies do
Welcoming internally + communally
Entwine with our previous and future experiences
To be seen
To invite pleasure in
To welcome inner tensions
To state our boundaries + embrace those of others
Embodiment example practices
These can help us to…
Exploring embodiment
Personal
reflections
☕ BREAK TIME 🧁
Exploring embodiment
Personal
reflections
✨Share your reflections✨
✨Share your reflections✨
a brief meditation on breath
By Yesenia Montilla
i have diver’s lungs from holding my
breath for so long. i promise you
i am not trying to break a record
sometimes i just forget to
exhale. my shoulders held tightly
near my neck, i am a ball of tense
living, a tumbleweed with steel-toed
boots. i can’t remember the last time
i felt light as dandelion. i can’t remember
the last time i took the sweetness in
& my diaphragm expanded into song.
they tell me breathing is everything,
meaning if i breathe right i can live to be
ancient. i’ll grow a soft furry tail or be
telekinetic something powerful enough
to heal the world.
An extract…
Writing Prompt:
Embodied in my body, I…
Personal
exercise
A poem, an affirmation, an exploration…
To be Queer is to expand our capacity of wholeness in a very fractured world.
Abortion, when held with tenderness and in safety, can support this by bringing us closer to ourselves.
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN
CDD AND MANODIVERSA:
SHARING OUR EXPERIENCES
IN PERU AND BOLIVIA
FOR DIVERSE ABORTIONS,
FREE OF STIGMA
Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir- Perú
Manodiversa - Bolivia
Brief introduction of
our organizations and
the work that we do to support abortion access and diverse populations
in our countries
Perú
“CDD has sustained 12 years of work in the defense of sexual and reproductive rights of diverse communities (including believers, indigenous, peasants, trans, activists, and neighborhood leaders) from a theological, feminist, secular, and human rights approach.
Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in Peru continues to be a field of confrontation, where the debate is mainly focused on moral and religious issues.
Since 2014, CDD has been working on the dissemination of the Therapeutic Abortion Protocol with health professionals and grassroots social organizations.
CDD also has experience in research, capacity-building processes, political and social advocacy at national and local levels, with intercultural approaches in the regions of Ayacucho, Cajamarca, Lima and Ucayali in Perú.”
Bolivia
“In Bolivia, abortion is prohibited except in some situations, but the law and the Constitution recognize sexual rights, reproductive rights, equality, equity and non-discrimination for cis-women.
The abortion situation in Bolivia is the responsibility of a state that encourages clandestine abortions, especially amongst the poorest populations, rural communities (including indigenous, native, peasant, Afro-Bolivian), and people who live in peri-urban areas.
For this reason, at Manodiversa, we focus on informing the general population about sexual and reproductive health rights. Likewise, our workshops and lectures are focused on empowering diverse populations, since our main weapon is information.”
Why is our struggle for diverse abortions and for abortion rights so important?
Perú
“Although abortion has often been approached from the experience of heterosexual and cisgender women, the truth is that abortion is an experience that diverse communities including queer women, trans men, and non-binary people go through.
This situation makes invisible a series of unattended problems, such as corrective rape, obstetric violence in health services, lack of information on family planning in the LGBTI population, and a lack of openness and health personnel training, which then enhances the discrimination and exclusion of these populations in abortion and healthcare services.”
Bolivia
"Whether we fight at the legislative level, public protest, or case-by-case (what is known as strategic litigation), it is imperative that the right to abortion be recognized as a right for all.
We must keep in mind that when we talk about diverse abortions, we must focus on all people with the capacity to be pregnant, and that is where we come into the conversation, to recognize that bisexual women, lesbians, trans men, and non-binary people also have abortions.
For this reason, it is essential to also talk about abortion within the different organizations that represent these communities.”
What are the strategies that we carry out in the face of fundamentalism in criminalizing people who have abortions?
Perú
“As feminist believers, we disseminate, clarify, and dispute pastoral discourse that is imposed as if they were an absolute and immovable truth, such as condemning the decision to abort.
Our experience of faith, from a lens of love and social justice, drives us to continue to act in favor of the rights of people of all marginalized genders and vulnerable populations.”
Bolivia
“At Manodiversa’s community center, we focus on the needs of lesbian, bisexual women, and trans* men, with an emphasis on indigenous, native, peasant, Afro-descendant, rural, and peri-urban populations, to contribute to achieving access to free and safe abortion.
Often, these populations do not have access to reproductive health services. There are also cases of sexual violence (eg. corrective rape), which produce unwanted pregnancies.
Currently, the LGBT movement and the pro-abortion movement are not working with these populations, so their access to safe and / or legal abortion is limited.”
What are the main challenges in addressing the issue of diverse abortions in our countries and why?
Bolivia
“Here, it is taboo to talk about sexual and reproductive rights, therefore it is even harder to talk about abortion and diverse abortions.”
Peru
“The LGBTIQ population experiences situations of violence and discrimination in a systemic way, due to the stigma associated with their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
The most recent report of the LGBT Human Rights Observatory indicates that the main perpetrators of this violence are state agents, such as health personnel. Thus, the LGBT population has greater obstacles in accessing health care, and particularly access to safe and legal abortion procedures.”
How do you address abortion stigma in your work and what results have you found?
Perú
“Abortion stigma refers to the social process through which societies attach negative attributes or connotations to everything related to abortion: To the procedure, to the person who undergoes an abortion, to the person who performs an abortion, to the person who accompanies the abortion procedure, to the person who supports it. All people involved are labeled and devalued.
When referring to stigma and abortion for LGBT people and others whose sexual orientation or gender identity or expression does not conform to the dominant norm, they face additional barriers and multiple layers of stigma when they require abortion services.”
“This arises due to
the conditioning of
gender mandates on motherhood as a cis-“woman's” destiny …
If it is not fulfilled, abortion is then socially condemned.”
Bolivia
“We promote legal, safe, and free access to abortion as a matter of equality, public health and human rights, through access to information among peers through lectures and workshops. We also work together with the team of Brigadistas at the national level in developing a fully effective team according to our objectives.
We also train and sensitize medical personnel in both rural and urban areas on the issue of the Bolivian Constitutional Ruling, which states that abortion healthcare must be provided free of charge when it involves rape, incest or statutory rape, or when it poses a risk to the life and health of the pregnant person, and also on the critical route of care to a person who has gone through some kind of abuse.”
Why are diverse populations talking about abortion?
Perú
“Abortion is an everyday experience that is rarely talked about, due to the stigma surrounding it.
In the case of the LGBTI population, the issue is only just becoming visible, as a result of experiences in other countries in the region such as Colombia and Argentina.
In addition, due to the double discrimination faced by queer, abortion seekers, we start our research from the assumption that they will resort to clandestine abortion alternatives, exposing their health to a greater risk.”
Bolivia
“When talking about abortion, people usually refer specifically about cis-gender women and forget about queer people with the capacity to gestate, such as bisexual women, lesbians, trans men, and non-binary people.
For example, the constitutional sentence of the ILE in Bolivia only specifies that women can access abortions, not acknowledging that a diversity of people can experience pregnancy for various reasons such as corrective rape, which happens very often in Bolivia.
For this reason, it is necessary to make this issue visible with a diverse approach.”