In defense of Facebook

Through facebook I have reconnected recently with several people from my past who have been part of my ongoing project of reconciling my various selves. Tonight I have dinner with a friend for high school. In keeping with my new telling policy, as we are catching up I disclose that I have had an abortion. My old friend shares that she has as well. We have dinner and then she asks why I had my abortion. We talk extensively about it. She tells me that although her abortion occurred 13 years ago our conversation is the longest she has had about her experience.

I think about what the world would be like if every woman could be open about her abortion whenever she wanted. If the literally millions of women who had abortions could break their silence, would the discourse around abortion be transformed? Would individual women feel differently when facing the choice to have an abortion? I think about the sort of bookends this discussion represents in my effort to bring the various selves from different epochs of my life together. This person tonight remembers me as a super geeky high school student. We meet, decades later, and discuss experiences from our twenties and thirties. I like the symmetry of someone who knew me way back when sharing something that has happened so recently.