EDITOR’S NOTE: Trust Women Week overlaps with the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and reasserts our firm commitment to reclaiming the future of reproductive decision-making in 2012. Throughout the week, Amplify will be honoring women’s experiences and voices by featuring a different story from The 1 in 3 Campaign January 21-27.
WATCH: 1in3Campaign.org: Alex from Advocates for Youth.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
ALEX: I had my daughter and then nine months went past and I got pregnant again. And that was a big shock. And I wasn’t contemplating keeping the baby but this would have been my first abortion and I was very scared. And me and my daughter’s father didn’t have any money. Abortions cost money. A lot of money. $350 is not cheap when you’re 19 with no job and a new baby and the baby’s father is halfway trying to support us.
I ended up calling a friend of my mom’s who had gone through… Who was an older woman, but she related to young people and she knew, you know, certain people who knew certain people who knew certain people who could help me with terminating the pregnancy. So she referred us to a clinic.
And before that, we had to go borrow money from two different family members to get the abortion done. We didn’t even have any money… We didn’t even have any money to get the abortion done, and that’s just… Like, how could we not have any money to do that, but we would have money to raise another one? You know what I mean? Like there woulda just been no way. So that day, we rushed around, we got our money, and we went to the clinic. Read More





Capitalizing on The Capitol?: Hunger Games Hype
Last November, sometime between a ten hour marking session and a term paper, I promised myself I would read The Hunger Games trilogy as a reward for finishing my first semester of graduate school. I had heard some good things about the books in the blogosphere, and who am I to resist an addictive young adult series when I need a break from all that thinking? My boyfriend, the wonderful guy that he is, even had a copy of the first book waiting on the seat of his car when he picked me up from the airport for Christmas break. I subsequently ignored him for the five days it took me to finish off the series (Sorry!). Like others out there, I love that a popular young adult novel features a strong, intelligent female protagonist who does not need romantic love to define her. Yet, what is most interesting about the book is the world in which it is staged; a world of inequality and narcissistic consumerism/voyerism that leads the protagonist, Katniss, to become – whether she wants to be or not – a symbol of resistance.
The way the self-centered, exploitative and superficial ‘Capitol’ is portrayed in the book and disdained by Katniss is a large feature of the book, which is why I am struggling with THIS:
Capitol Couture
It’s a teaser Tumblr for ‘The Hunger Games’ movie to be released in March. With all of the interesting dynamics of the book, why choose the fashion of The Capitol to whet our whistles? Read More »