No, you’re not a hero for “shouting your abortion”

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

March is Women’s History Month. Last week, just in time for International Women’s Day on March 8th, I flipped on the news and was greeted by a very angry blonde shouting, “I will never stop talking about my abortion!”

My first thought — well, after “is that Anna Nicole Smith?” before I reminded myself she’s been dead for many years — was, “It doesn’t look like anyone’s stopping her, but okay.” Indeed, actress Busy Phillips, who has probably gained more fame in the last week for her abortion rant than any of her film roles, was greeted with cheers from the friendly crowd. As the demonstrators waved Planned Parenthood signs in support, Phillips proceeded to brag about how awesome her life is — all because of an abortion she had at age fifteen.

“”Here I was sitting in Los Angeles in my beautiful office of my own late-night talk show. Soon, I would be driving my hybrid car to my beautiful f — — -g home, to kiss my two beautiful and healthy children and my husband who had taken the year off to parent so I could focus on my career,” Phillips raved. “And I have all of this, all of it, because because I was allowed bodily autonomy at 15!”

For all her boasting about her material goodies, Phillips doesn’t sound as if she loves her life. She sounded extremely angry and bitter — hateful, really. In any event, her comments struck me as tone-deaf and self-absorbed: as a dedicated pro-choice activist, she must know the statistics showing that a disproportionate number of women who terminate their pregnancies live in poverty, before and after the abortion. Many cite financial stress and domestic abuse as motivating factors for getting an abortion; they’re often more concerned about keeping the electricity on this month than making payments on a “hybrid car.” Regardless, Phillips vowed that she will “never stop talking about my abortion or my periods or my experiences in childbirth, my episiotomies, my yeast infections, or my ovulation that lines up with the moon!”

Uh, great? How exactly does an actress oversharing about her “yeast infections” advance women’s progress?

Is this what feminism has to offer in the way of role models?

I’m the mother of an eight-year-old daughter. In order to celebrate Women’s History Month with my…