policy

Impurity Culture: Learning to Support Reproductive Rights When Your Religion Doesn't

Hello. I’m glad you’re here. I first just want you to know that I see you. I see you showing up here and maybe elsewhere, trying to learn, being open to new information and being willing to change and to grow. Intelligence, Stephen Hawking famously reminded us, is the ability to adapt to change. You’re smart, you’re doing your best and I believe in you. I know what it’s like to go your whole life being told one thing is true only to find out that actually, it isn’t. That’s happened to me so many times, on so many different topics, I’ve lost count. I know what it’s like to feel angry and disillusioned. I felt angry and disillusioned, too, when I began to realize that what I had been told about abortion was a lie.

Rebel Well: Why We Made This Guide

Rebel Well: a Starter Survival Guide to a Trumped America for Teens and Emerging Adults: A letter from Heather about why we've created this guide.

Do you know what your civil/legal sexual rights are?

Obtaining Abortion When You Need Funding and a Judicial Bypass

FaithS
asks:
I am 16 years old and already have a 7 month old baby. My son has a lot of health problems, he was born with a lung disease and has holes in his heart. I recently found out I was pregnant again and I'm not for sure how to go about it. I've only told one person and that's my older sister....

Words Matter: Cheers to the FBI for Recognizing How Much

As some of you may know, I experienced two different sexual assaults when I wasn't yet in my teens within just one year of one another. The second time I was assaulted, my experience ticked all of the boxes there currently are in our culture for what is so often -- now, anyway, easily considered a "real" or "bonafide" sexual assault, or what Whoopi Goldberg, to my great disappointment, would call "rape-rape."

The first time around was different.

It's a Powerful Thing

Earlier this week, in the context of another conversation, one of our users at Scarleteen mentioned that her feelings on abortion had changed to a negative when she learned that her mother's pregnancy had been unplanned, and that her mother considered abortion. She said that upset her, because she really liked existing. She did say she was still pro-choice, but her sentiment bothered me all the same. Some of why it bothered me was political, and also about the work that I do and have done. But in thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that the ways it bothered me most were intensely personal.

The truth is, I envy her. A lot. I envy she was able to have a discussion in which her mother made clear she had the right to choose and she chose to remain pregnant and parent her.