Jennifer Baumgardner talks about "I had an abortion" t-shirt

July 28, 2008, Fargo North Dakota...

Jennifer Baumgardner spoke in Fargo bookstore, Zanbroz about her latest book "Abortion and Life."

In this clip (which is somewhat quiet, my apologies) Baumgardner reads an excerpt from Chapter 2 which details how her "I had an abortion" t-shirts came to be.

Transcript:

My sister's abortion in the fall of 1985 was a profound moment for me... ... (where audio picks up) ...She was sixteen, I was fifteen, but she came to me for help in raising the $200 that she needed, choosing not to go to my pro-choice parents because she didn't want to risk having them see her in a "different light" -- that is, I think, as a daughter who was sexual. In finding that money on a short deadline and bringing it to her on my bike at the local clinic, the only one in the whole state, was one of the first times that I realized I had the power to help someone else.

Nearly two decades later, in the fall of 2003, I was finishing up a book on grassroots activism with my writing partner Amy Richards, living in my studio in New York City's Avenue B, attempting to break up with my boyfriend, when I had a sudden brainstorm --- break up with your boyfriend (laughter)—no, besides that.... The big march on Washington for abortion rights was scheduled for a few months later, in April 2004. I had attended the 1992 march as a college student and recalled that people donned shirts with in-your-face messages like, "George, Get Out of my Bush!" I decided I would make a t-shirt -- hundreds of them in fact that said, simply, "I had an abortion." It struck me as both quiet and yet the probably the boldest message one could brandish.

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