This week on All The Best we wanted to create a space for women to talk about abortion without shame, judgement, guilt or politics, and were particularly inspired by this beautiful feature in New York Magazine, published last year. You can stream or download the full episode here.
We hoped we could start conversations and reduce some of the stigma around an experience that statistics show is really quite common, with 70,000 terminations performed each year, or 1/3 Australian women estimated to have an abortion in their lifetime. And we did. We had those conversations with our mothers, friends, partners and colleagues.
This episode did what we wanted it to do before it even went to air. One of our producers was telling her mum about what she was working on over dinner one night, which happened to be a story for the show. They had a long conversation where mother told daughter the story of her own abortion, and that’s how we were able to share Gen’s story.
You can listen to the other stories in full below, and you can read Marisa’s story here. She didn’t want her name or voice on the show but was willing to share a beautifully written piece with us. Thanks also to the hugely talented Leah Goren for allowing us to use her artwork for this episode.