Today Nicki Richesin , the editor of The May Queen, interviews contributor Jennifer Baumgardner and we get to listen in...
Jennifer is the coauthor, with Amy Richards, of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, Grassroots: A Field Guide to Feminist Activism, creator of the I Had an Abortion project and producer the film Speak Out: I Had an Abortion. Her next book, Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics, from FSG is due out in February.
NICKI: In TMQ, you write about deciding to have a child after years of working as a pro-choice/ abortions rights activist. Ultimately, how much did your experience as an activist affect your decision to have a child?
JENNIFER: I think that I always wanted to have a baby. In fact, I was a really committed babysitter from the age of 8 until 22. But getting pregnant after having broken up with the person who provided the sperm—or, rather, knowing it was okay to have the baby—was a direct result of being an activist for reproductive rights. Having the right to do it without it being some huge statement and making me a social pariah is a result of the feminist movement, obviously. I have read histories of pre-Roe women who got pregnant out of wedlock and the wrenching stories of them being coerced to give the child up for adoption because being a single mother was unheard of—I didn’t have to deal with any of that scorn.
Being pregnant influenced my view of abortion, though—or it continued the evolution of thought. I was giving a talk about abortion one day at Barnard College when I was about 5 months pregnant and I said “baby” when referring to the thing that is in one’s uterus when one is pregnant. A speaker who was going to make remarks after me corrected me and said “fetus—you said baby, but it’s fetus.” At first I was extremely embarrassed for the gaffe, but later I realized that I did think of it as a baby—and I know lots of pregnant women who are going to have an abortion who also think of it as a baby. I think being pregnant made me more confident about using my own language and not imposing pro-choice speak on people.
NICKI: I'm curious what sort of feedback you've received about your story in TMQ? And also from your ex?
JENNIFER: You obviously got the book to lots of people in the magazine industry, because I heard from my friends who are editors and got a couple bites from magazines I haven’t written for before, too. One of my closest friends read it and said, “I didn’t know that was how you got pregnant with Skuli,” referring to my impromptu New Years Eve celebration with my ex. Most people have shown interest in the fact that G. and I seem to co-parent pretty easily together.
I don’t think my ex read the whole thing, and I don’t really encourage him to read things that I have written, but he asked me at one point if I imply in the piece that he isn’t the father. I have no idea where he got that, but it reflects in its way how I think I’m saying something and he hears something else that is radically different. This characterized our relationship when we were dating.
NICKI: Do you have a particular favorite among the essays in the book?
JENNIFER: Well, Meghan Daum and Jennifer Weiner are two of my favorite writers (and I was with them in another anthology last year—Sex and Sensibility—so I feel like I know them even though I don’t) but I think my favorite piece in the May Queen is Sara Woster’s. She’s such a good visual artist that it bums me out she’s also a wonderful and funny writer. She’s probably bad at cooking or has problems with the IRS….
