“Joy is essentially a platform. Every woman knows this”

Editor’s note: Pam Houston is the author. Her latest book is “No Exceptions: A Return to Abortion, Personality, and Freedomtells the story of how her personal and professional life were shaped by access to abortion. It also examines the legal and political history of reproductive rights in the United States. In the essay below, Houston shares her experience of the tour, introducing readers to the book. This is followed by an excerpt from the first chapter of “Without Exception.” — Chloe Axelson

What I didn’t expect was how much laughter echoed through the room.

I expected tears. Confessions.

I knew that in deep blue Marin County, women would be screaming about their abortions. In Colorado’s bright red San Luis Valley, I expected every woman who spoke to look at the door first. I anticipated the horror in the eyes of women old enough to remember what it was like before Roe v. Wade. They had memories of how childbirth was used as an excuse to keep women out of power everywhere, from politics to the halls of academia, from the boardrooms of industry, to exclusion from “best of” lists in the arts.

I knew those same older women would share their frustration: “I can’t believe we’re still talking about this all these decades later.” I knew that for every man present, there were about 30 women, that on some nights there would be no men present, and that the average age of those in attendance would be older than one might expect, given whose freedoms were currently at stake.

I knew that some of these women my age would not want to believe me when I suggested that they let go of shame that was never theirs in the first place. It is the shame that causes them to stay with men who hurt them, that causes high blood pressure and cancer, that prevents them from speaking up and taking action, and from living with clarity and joy.

As I traveled to bookstores and meeting places across the country, I thought a lot about how women, especially women of my generation, have taken on the burden of shame as if it were some new miracle diet. I remember thinking at some point, maybe in the late 90s, that “shame” was the most overused word in the English language. This is a way of saying that I personally resisted this generalized version, at least at first, until I began to feel like I was living on an island of shamelessness alone.

Of course, abortion-related shame is in its own category. This is because of some (but not most) religions. And because vitality outside the womb, although logical, is not irrefutable, like the moment of the beginning of life.

It makes sense here to dwell on the difference between guilt and shame, how guilt, at least in my experience, arises from within me, while shame is imposed from without. I felt guilty that I had had to end three pregnancies in my reproductive life, that my birth control efforts had failed me just that many times. But I still managed to more or less keep my shame at bay until I was 40, when a woman massage therapist told me she could see several “bubble babies” floating in the air around me. She told me that I would never recover until I let them go to heaven. This woman was a complete stranger who worked at a spa hotel. I didn’t tell her about my abortions or anything else. I can’t say for sure now whether she knew the number was three. So this meeting broke me for some time. Not because I believed in the existence of bubble babies, not really, but because she saw that there was shame there that I had not yet admitted to myself.

Two decades later, my No Exceptions study found that more than 95% of women who were allowed to have the abortion they wanted still believed they had made the right decision for themselves and their families five and 10 years later. And even just recently, as I listened to Senator J.D. Vance tell me and the nation exactly what women are for at different ages, I know that my initial resistance to shame was the right impulse. This shame, if you follow it back far enough, always belongs to the patriarchy, which fears all secrets and therefore must quantify them, commodify them, monetize them.

But I’m so tired of talking about all this.

I want to talk about the laughter of women in the rooms and bookstores where my readings take place. Because no matter how big or small the crowd is at these events, there are at least a few women, and sometimes a lot of them, who have let go of their shame or are willing to do so.

Laughter is a powerful expression of independence and sisterhood, the soundtrack of freedom and hope.

These women shake their heads in recognition when I admit that when I sat down to write the book, I wasn’t entirely sure whether I had two or three abortions. They understand that if we live long enough, even our most self-critical voices will dry up, and, looking back on a life filled with equal parts ecstasy and suffering, laughing with our girlfriends often helps us survive. Behind the laughter is the realization that women have a lot of shit to do if we’re really going to save the world, or at least keep it going a little longer. We no longer have time for shame. We no longer have the energy to waste on shame, which prevents us from expressing our full power.

If Kamala Harris wins this election, it will be because of the shining star that millions of women will feel their chest expand every time she laughs in the face of her opponent’s fear-mongering and hatred. This will happen because of her full repertoire of laughter: amusement, happiness, surprise, delight, the one that fills her eyes with tears, and the one that makes her sob.

Joy is essentially a platform. Every woman knows this. Women laugh in the face of adversity and terror because they know that this is the first step towards breaking out of paralysis, the first step towards direct action. Laughter is a powerful expression of independence and sisterhood, the soundtrack of freedom and hope.

---

Excerpt from the book: Beyond Exceptions: Revisiting Abortion, Personhood, and Freedom

Pam Houston

Chapter 1: Duration of a Human Right

For forty-nine years, five months and two days, the US Supreme Court protected a woman’s right to an abortion. In other words, he defended a woman’s right to determine what happens inside her own body, both in the long winding path of her future, and in the shape of her one precious life in the event of an unwanted pregnancy. He defended this right regardless of whether she was twelve years old and raped by her father or another male relative, or whether she was twenty-two years old and date raped after being drugged into a cocktail at a bar when This was her first summer internship. at a nonprofit organization in a big city, was she forty-two years old, happily married, already had four children and the family budget was unmanageable, was she dedicatedly single, completely focused on her career, and had exciting unprotected sex every time with strangers. the chance she got.

These forty-nine years, five months and two days correspond almost exactly to the length of my reproductive life. I got my first period at age eleven, in January 1973, the same month that Jane Roe filed her case against the State of Texas in the Supreme Court. As of last year, I am now, and only now, in full menopause, after what felt like the longest decade of perimenopause in the history of the universe—a decade of joint pain, night sweats, and outbursts of rage so intense they seemed to happen overnight. one minute I was a woman and the next I was a cheetah. It was also the decade I came to terms with myself.

Throughout my reproductive life, the government of the country of which I am a citizen, with the support of the highest court in the land, has protected the sovereignty of my body, more than they protected my mother. And that’s more than they would do for my daughter if I had one, which I don’t, nor a son, because I didn’t want children, I never wanted children, and I was free to have an abortion. More than one. I had the right to have the three abortions I needed during my reproductive life, and I did so: one when I was twenty, one when I was thirty, and one when I was forty-one.

Excerpt from Pam Houston’s book, Without Exception. Copyright © 2024. Extracted with permission from Pam Houston and Torrey House Press. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission.

Follow Cognoscenti on Facebook and Instagram. And subscribe to our weekly newsletter.