Abortion Diaries: Using Pregnancy to Stigmatize and Shame Women

The Abortion Diaries

Directed by Penny Lane (2005)

Film Review

The Abortion Dairies features twelve women discussing their personal experience with abortion. Their reminiscences reflect their resentment and anger over the stigma, shame and utter absence of support they felt struggling with an unwanted pregnancy that threatened to destroy their lives.

One women, who genuinely desired to keep her baby, is also highly critical of welfare reforms introduced by Bill Clinton that make it virtually impossible for young single women to raise children on their own.

All deplore taboo around public discussion of abortion despite its prevalence  (annually 1.3 million US women undergo the procedure). Thirty-four percent of teenagers will fall pregnant before age twenty.