Behind Every Choice Is a Story

Foreword

ix Foreword Judging from the brouhaha occasioned by my twenty seconds of nudity on the Broadway stage in The Graduate, this country has an anguished relationship with its sexuality. It’s fine to sell cars with sex, but to talk honestly about it, well . . . as Gloria Feldt notes in this moving and momentous book, “What are we teaching our children? That sex is dirty and awful and ugly, so save it for someone you love?” Behind Every Choice Is a Story makes it clear that the movement for reproductive freedom holds the moral high ground despite the din of our detractors, bawling from their “bully pulpits” that teens must learn only abstinence, that contraceptives should be a controlled substance, that family planning is classified information, and that choosing abortion is wrong no matter what the circumstance. To me, the right to make our own reproductive choices is as fundamental as the right to raise our voices in the public square. We actors are often asked to lend our familiar and forceful voices to promote causes. But I don’t consider reproductive rights a “cause”—it’s a calling . I am raising my voice in support of those who have dedicated their lives to that calling, so that my daughter will have the most basic free- x • Foreword doms as she sets forth in life to realize her dreams. It is about time, and Gloria’s book inspires us to heed the clarion call, tell our stories, and raise our voices together. There’s an old saw in show business that if you want to send a message, call Western Union. Those of us who make our living on stage and screen know that engaging the hearts and minds of audiences is not about messages, it’s about stories. Behind Every Choice Is a Story will change how America talks about reproductive rights. In my view, the pro-choice story is the truly life-enhancing story. Choice, after all, is about the whole panoply of reproductive decisions we make as we go through our lives. How true it is that behind every reproductive choice is a story. It was true for me. I can honestly say that when I was a college student, a Planned Parenthood clinic saved—and changed—my life. I know you will identify, as I did, with many of the accounts chronicled here, and with Gloria Feldt’s own life-affirming story as it threads its way through these arresting pages. Every story in this book, no matter how uplifting or sad, in the end is a story of triumph and courage, because in a climate often hostile to reproductive freedom, just talking about sexual fulfillment or sexual abuse or sexual ignorance or life before the Pill or life before Roe v. Wade is an act of bravery. But we all become stronger when we tell our stories—the individual stories that make us special and the shared stories that make us brave. Kathleen Turner ...