different argument. >> thank you very much. [applause] "the pity party" is on sale in the lobby. . [applause] [applause] if. >> good afternoon i have a

great pleasure to root talk with katherine who is roaming around our great nation promoting her new book. then schaede the way we talk about abortion rights today and changing hearts and minds. i went like to invite her to read for a bit then we will have a discussion if there is time we will take a few questions from the audience. . .ere on this beautiful but rather warm day. i am going to read the introduction to this book which is called "pro: reclaiming abortion rights" because it gives you a taste of what is to come in the book. i never had an abortion, but my mother did. she did not tell me about it, but from what i pieced

together after her death from all line in her fbi file, which my father, the old radical, had requested along with his own color it was in 1960. so like almost all abortions back then, it was illegal. the agent to counter file wrote that she was in the care of the physician for gun logical problems below which i like to think was his chivalrous way of protecting her from further investigation. perhaps he, too, was in the dark and only put down what the for a while i was angry at her, the way one is angry at the dead for keeping their secrets until it is too late to ask questions, and angry at one's mother for having a life outside her child's can. i thought she owed this woman-to-woman realism and honesty instead of, or at least in addition to, tales of the nine marriage proposals she had received by the time she met my

father, and falling in love with him at first sight and eloping later. knowing about her abortion might have helped me, it might have given me a truer sense of life as a young, very row romantic woman. when i asked myself why i've been so preoccupied with abortion rights for so long, i wonder if learning about my mother's abortion -- the fact that she didn't tell my father, the unknow about of her feelings or the experience itself -- i wonder if that's part of the answer. i find myself wondering, was whoever performed the procedure a real doctor? was he kind to her, respectful? did he do his best not to cause pain? did she take someone with her? i remember her talking with her friend judy about how another women they knew had had a d and c which was often a euphemism for abortion back then, so maybe her circle of women steered her to a good practitioner.

maybe her friend judy sat in the waiting room, if there was a waiting room, and took her home in a taxi afterwards and made her a cup of tea. it would have been so wrong if my tender, fragile mother had had to go through that all by herself. what did it mean that my mother had to break the law to end a reasons? it meant -- a pregnancy? it meant that america basically said to her, it's the 20th century, so we're going to let you vote and go to college and have a family and a job. not a great job, not the one you wanted because, unfortunately, that job is for men, but you can have your own charge accounts and your own subscriptions to the heritage book club. but underneath all that normal, forward-looking, mid 20th century middle class new york life is the secret, underground life of women. and that you must manage outside the law. if you are injured or die or are trapped by the police, you'll

have only yourself to blame, because the real reason you are here on earth is to produce children, and you shirk that duty at your peril. i wonder if my mother knew that her own grandmother died of an abortion after bearing nine children back in russia during the first world war, or if her mother kept that family secret from her as she kept her secret from me. women's lives are different now, so much so we're in danger of forgetting how they used to be. legalizing abortion didn't just save women from death and injury and fear of arrest, it didn't just make it possible for women to commit to education and work and free them from shotgun marriages and too many kids. it changed how women saw themselves, as mothers by choice, not faith. as long as abortion is available to her, even a woman who thinks it is anticipate mount to murder

is making a choice when she keeps a pregnancy. she may feel like she has to have that baby. jesus or her parents or her boyfriend is telling her she has to do it, but actually, she doesn't have to do it. she is choosing to have that baby. roe v. wade gave people a kind of existential freedom that is not always welcome. indeed, it is sometimes quite painful. but it has become part of what women are. one thing roe v. wade didn't do, though, was make abortion private. sometimes i look up from reading about the latest onslaught against abortion rights. louisiana passed laws like those forcing dozens of texas clinics to close, missouri legislators passed a 72-hour waiting period requirement for its sole remaining clinic, and a montana health center that performed abortions as part of a family practice was trashed beyond repair, allegedly by the son of a prominent local abortion

opponent. and i think, how strange. just as harry blackman's majority opinion in roe v. wade was all about privacy, that the most private parts of a woman's body and the most private decisions she will will -- ever make get to weigh in. even her employer. if the ceo of the hobby lobby craft store chain, a secular business, decides that emergency contraception and iuds are banned by god, he is entitled to keep them out of her health care coverage, even though he's wrong about how these methods work. it's religion. facts don't matter, especially when the facts involve women's liberties. maybe blackman's mistake was thinking that a woman could claim privacy as a right in the first place. a man's home is his castle, but a woman's body has never been

wholly her own. historically it's belonged to her nation, her community, her father, her family, her husband. in 1973 when roe was decided, marital rape was legal in every state. why shouldn't her body belong to a fertilized egg as well? and if that egg has a right to live and grow in her body, why shouldn't she be held legally responsible for its fate and be forced to have a cesarean if her doctor thinks it's best or be charged with a crime if she uses illegal drugs and delivers a stillborn or sick baby. denying women the right to end a pregnancy is the flip side of punishing women for conduct during pregnancy. and even if not punishing, monitoring. in the spring of 2014, a law was proposed in the kansas state legislature that would require doctors to report every miscarriage, no matter how early

in pregnancy. you would almost think the people who have always opposed women's independence and full participation in society were still at it. they can't push women all the way back, but they can still use women's bodies to keep them under surveillance and control. that thought gives rise to a wish. surely, i find myself day dreaming, there is something, some substance already in common use that women could drink after sex or at the end of the month that would keep them unpregnant with no one the wiser, something you could buy at the supermarket or maybe several things you could mix together, items so safe and so ordinary they would never be banned, that you could prepare in your own home that you could flush your uterus without you ever needing to know if you were pregnant or about to be. a grew of earl grey, tea and

ground cash monoor coca-cola with a dusting of cayenne pepper. things you might have on your shelves right now just waiting for some clever person to put them together, some stay-at-home mother with a chemistry degree rattling around her kitchen late at night. something like the herbal concoctions. when i was a child growing up on an island in the caribbean, an island whose inhabitants were mostly descendants of people force forcibly fraught there from africa, i noticed my mother and her friends would gather together at some spot in our yard and talk and sip and drink some very dark, hot drink that they had made from various leaves and bark of trees that they had gathered. without them telling me anything directly, i came to understand that the potions they were drinking were meant to sweep their wombs clean of anything in it that would result in them being unable to manage the day

to day working of their lives; that is, this clearing of their wombs was another form of housekeeping. think of it -- that's the end of the quote -- think of it, no pharmacist refusing to fulfill your prescription for birth control, no religious fanatics following you through the parking lot screaming baby killer and taking down your license plate number hoping to raise your blood pressure so high that you won't be able to have your procedure that day, no need to notify your parents or get their permission. the whole, elaborate framework that governs abortion today gone. ru486, now better known as misprison tone, was supposed to accomplish that. any doctor could prescribe it in his office, and no one need be the wiser. a 1999 new york times sunday magazine cover story called it the little white bombshell that may well reconfigure the

politics and perception of abortion, pushing abortion earlier and reintegrating it with regular medical practice. it's the age-old hope that a single technological or scientific exam will once and for all resolve a social issue. a fantasy that means forgetting that the new thing will be embedded in the existing system and involves the existing human beings. been. for a variety of reasons difficulties obtaining the drug, laws that made medication abortion heavily rhetoric -- regulated, few doctors not already involved took up the challenge of prescribing in. did they want early abortion? to many prefer medication to surgery? especially in rural areas it would be simple and cheaper and less stressful for women to get a prescription from their local ob/gyn or gps and to travel long distances

from the but it would be a good thing to free women from having to run a gun when the protesters. none of that mattered. what women want is simply not important. trust women is a popular model in the movement. it sounds a little sentimental, doesn't it? part of that old sister of the powerful feminism. but that does not mean that every woman is wise or did or has magical intuitive powers. it means that no one else can make a better decision because no one else is ruling her life, and since she has to live with the decision and not you or the state legislature or the supreme court, chances are she is doing her best in a tight spot. dr. george tiller who provided abortion carrying cans is and was one of a handful to perform abortions after 24 weeks were a trust woman.

he did not assume that a woman's body ceased to be a room because she was pregnant. you see what that got them. in 2009 he was gunned down. when roe v wade was winding its way through the courts have measures in that left women unprotected. she feel the qualifications would be a stir in the

difficult to get judges and legislators to drop later. it was blank. maybe she was on the something. what seemed at the time to be small details have prevented the critical fall lines. the deference to physicians and their judgment preserving the idea that a woman's desire to end a pregnancy was not enough in itself. had to be approved by respectable figure, in that they normally a man. furthermore, the germ of the idea that the fetus have rights that trump's those of the woman. is not hard to see how these small seeds blossomed into the hall regular all we have

today which is all about his respecting women's capacity to make an independent judgment about the pregnancy parental notification consent, a judicial bypass, waiting periods, government mandated propaganda. but it a had the supreme court agreed in the 1973 that the proper abortion law was not at all, we would probably have ended up close to where we are today because of the power and determination of the anti-abortion movement and the qualms and headsations -- hesitations and lack of education of most or who are nominal hi pro-choice. and yet -- oh, it is just that hard as seeing women as belonging to themselves. and yet women keep trying. they put off the rent or the utilities to scrape together the $500 for a first trimester abortion, they drive across whole states to get to a clinic and sleep in their cars because

they can't afford a motel. they do not do this because they are careless sluts or because they hate babies. they see the alternatives all too clearly. we live, as ellen willis wrote, in a society that is actively hostile to women's ambitions for a better life. the unwillingly pregnant woman faces a terrifying loss of control over her fate. abortion, wrote willis, is an act of self-defense. perhaps we don't see abortion that way because we don't think women have a right to a self, they are supposed to live for others. qualities that seem normal in men are perceived as selfish and aggressive in women, especially once they have children. perhaps that is why women's privacy has so little purchase on the abortion debate. only a self can have privacy, and only a self can have

equality. many feminist legal scholars have argued that the supreme court should have legalized abortion on grounds of equality rather than privacy. pregnancy and childbirth are not only physical and medical experiences, after all, they are also social experiences that in modern america, just as when abortion was criminalized in the 1870s, served to protect womens' ability to participate in society on equal footing with men. would we be live anything a different world -- living in a different world today had blackman based abortion lights on the need to balance, or would the same people who don't accept women's privacy rights say, well, if women can't be equal without abortion, they'll have to stay this their place. as i write, reporters describe the return of illegal abortion in states where clinics have closed. in texas women in the rio grande valley now hundreds of miles

from a clinic, they're going over the mexican border to buy a drug which causes miscarriage and is sold over the counter there as an anti-ulcer medication. some women can't or won't get to a clinic. they're undocumented immigrants and fear arrest, they have no money, there's too much shame around abortion to risk being seen by someone who knows them. but now with clinics disappearing, more and more women will have no choice but to turn to pills, as women do in ireland and other countries where it is illegal for a woman to end a pregnancy. some will end up in emergency rooms. some will be injured. some may die. this is what law supposedly intended to protect women from dangerous clinics will have accomplished. this is what the so-called pro-life movement will have done for life. as e mentioned earlier -- as i mentioned earlier, a single

discovery or invention rarely leaves up to its promise of social change. each the birth control pill, an immense event over the clumsy, infallible methods that preceded it have fallen short. half of all pregnancies in the united states are accidental. still, i imagine my mother sitting at the kitchen table in her pretty bathrobe with the blue and yellow flowers on an ordinary day in 1960 cutting out articles from "the new york times" as she loves to do. she lights a benson and hedges and sits her very dark, hot -- sips her very dark, hot drink. i wrote this book because i wanted to put real women, women like my mother, back at the center of the way we talk about abortion. abortion to points have been -- opponents have been very effective at shifting the focus of moral concern onto the contents of women's wounds. even an unimplanted, fertilized egg is a baby now. women who seek abortion have

been pushed back into the shadows. it's one thing for a rape victim to speak up or a woman with a wanted pregnancy that has turned into a medical catastrophe. but why can't a woman just say this wasn't the right time for me, or two children or one or none are enough. why must the woman apologize for not having a baby just because she happened to get pregnant? it's as if we think motherhood is a default setting for a woman's life from first period to men to pause, and she needs a note from god not to say yes to every zygote that knocks on her door. even if, like most women who have abortions -- including my mother -- she already has chirp. has children. is deep contemptd disregard for the seriousness of mother as well. [inaudible] >> in just a few minutes. in five minutes we will move into q&a.

>> what happens to this? >> we had 45 minutes set aside, and with the last 15 minutes for q&a, and we are very close to that. >> that was not what we were told. >> actually, we have almost half an hour. >> but in the last 50 minutes of that committee if we could set that aside for q&a and welcome back and give you a little bit of advance notice in front of that so the you can wrap up where you are so that we can move into that if that is okay with >> well, okay. so anyway, that's a taste of the book. and which, you know, this introduction concludes with a rousing call for virtuous people to start speaking up and getting active. because the other side is very active and very vocal. and i hope this book encourages people to do that. >> well, then right off the pat let me just -- off the bat let me just say, first of all,

again, it is such a thrill to get to talk to you, and i wish we had a long, long, long, long time to talk. but i have to say i can't remember a time the last time i read any book i found as exciting and engaging as i found "pro." i have never made a book that made me feel like -- i never read a book that made me feel like abortion is a good thing for women. that to me -- when i read that, that just felt extremely liberating to me as someone who has had an abortion, to be able to think about that experience in a way that isn't shameful or, i can tell you i've never said that to a group of people, obviously. i don't know, it just feels huge, and it feels important to me to have this kind of conversation. and i felt exhilarated reading this book. i felt empowered reading this book. and i thought to look at

abortion not just as a woman's issue, but as a human issue and not just a moral issue, but an issue of justice. it's really extraordinary, and i'm enormously grateful to you for writing this book. [cheers and applause] and it's funny! and it's funny! [cheers and applause] >> thank you. >> but, no, i tell you, if you read this book, you will feel like you can say that. you will feel like you can say that, that we have every, we have a right the our bodies, we have a right to make these decisions, and this book, um, will have you on your feet. i don't know how many of you have read it, but if you haven't read it, i guarantee you as soon as you finish, you will be on your feet, and you should be writing out a love note for her, baking some brownies and putting them in the mail.

[laughter] i wanted to say though it's also very funny -- >> thank you for saying that. >> which is sometimes the only way you can write about material that is to deeply important and profound and serious, because people don't really want to have the conversation. >> it's so true. what i tried to do in this book is i wanted to split the paradigm a little bit. instead of abortion is the marker of our terrible, decadent society and everything going to hell in a hand basket, i want to say, no, abortion is a good thing for society. it's good for women to be able to plan their families, and it's good for women to be able to have their education and their work and their dreams. we lose so much social, you know, capital, so much talent because women have children too early or when they're not in a good situation to have them. and it's good for men, obviously -- not to be distantly connected to children they don't want to be connected to -- and it's good for children to be wanted. and it's good for society just

to have families that are, you know, able to structure themselves in a kind of calm and rational way. i mean, planned parenthood, yes. and abortion is essential for that. it's just e essential for that. and that is why one in three american women will have had an abortion by menopause. this is not something that's just about sluts. it's not about sluts at all, i should say. [laughter] >> not just the sluts this time. >> the stereotype, you know, the sluts, the cold-hearted, child-hating career woman, this flourishes because our side has been intimidated. >> also you make the wonderful point in the book that most women who have abortions are either mothers, or they will go on to be mothers, right? >> yes. >> and that woman who has an abortion and the woman who has children, they're the same woman, just at different points in their lives. >> those things are not diametrically opposed. >> it's so true. and this has all been lost, i

think, as the anti-abortion movement has been able to focus the debate on, you know, unimplanted fertilized egg or that mythical day before birth abortion that roe v. wade supposedly permits women to have which, of course, everybody is signing up to do. you know, and i think that it's really important that we put abortion back into a real-life, practical context of everybody's life. can you tell us how to talk about it in a better way? reading the book, i was realizing -- i am pro, always been pro-choice, pro-abortion on demand without apology, and yet i found when i was reading it that some of the people that you describe as being pro-choice but kind of middle, mushy-mouthed people, that when someone asks me or i talk about abortion, i say, oh, yes, but abortion is a really awful thing, and the worst possible thing, you know, no one wants to have an

abortion. saying all this stuff i don't mean, i but i don't want to appear to be rude or negative or take too firm of a stance. i need a new way to talk about abortion. i want to know how can i reframe the discussion so that i sound powerful and say what i mean? >> uh-huh. >> and don't sound middle of the road? because i think that's part of the problem. a lot of people are pro-choice but don't know how to really express that as strongly as they are. and i think that's an issue. >> well, abortion has been made such a shameful thing to do that it's like, it's like the wonderful columnist, ellen goodman, said a long time ago. feminism has advanced so far that women can do anything they want as long as they feel guilty about it. [laughter] and i think that there is a lot of guilt and shame attached to abortion because of the way we talk about it and because of the

pushback from the anti-abortion movement which our side has not been able to really successfully counter. there is the idea, for example, that -- well, one reason you might feel really terrible about having an abortion is because you were careless with birth control, and now everybody knows it. even if you were careful, because birth control is not perfect. but think about this way, from the time you have your first period when you're, like,11 or 12, to the time you have your last period which could be as late as 50, you have to be preventing pregnancy every single month except when you want to get mr. president -- >> a -- pregnant. a little more than 30 years. >> an enormous time to practice everything. i talk about that in the book, this hypervigilance we demand of women, this perfect performance.

at the same time, we demand women be incredibly hypersexual. young girls are supposed to be hot virgins, they're supposed to go all the way and then not do it. how does that work out? >> it doesn't work out well for anyone. >> so i think, you know, we're at a -- someday, i don't know, maybe they'll be better, definitely better birth control than now. there'll never be perfect birth control, and we just have to accept that. i think that women who have abortions should not let themselves be put in this position of someone else judging them as careless or having too much sex or not loving children. this is ridiculous. most women have children. and the ones who don't want to have children shouldn't have children. they shouldn't do it. it's a really big commitment. [applause] >> do you think it's important for women who have had abortions

or who are very supportive of abortion rights to stop trying to make a case for having had that abortion? should it just be enough to say i needed an abortion? >> well, you know what i would like -- >> i think that's a big thing. stop apologizing for it. >> yes. but i think it would be a really good thing that women to the extent they can do that given their own personal situations could talk about it. i mean, that helps so much with gay and lesbian rights. when people could see, oh, i thought gays were spending their lives having anal sex in their bathhouses, but now i see it's with colleagues. [laughter] now i see my cousin is a lesbian. i think that -- i mean, not my cousin, i'm imagining someone else saying that -- >> her imaginary cousin. >> my imaginary cousin. and it really changed how people saw gays is and lesbians. and i think these serious types

flourish in the silence that we have left. for example, when they're not saying women who have abortions are sluts or cold-hearted career women, they're saying women who have abortions are confused. they're confused. they don't know what they're doing, and they're being coerced and pushed around by other people. that's why we need all these restrictions. and i think women really need to say i wasn't confused. i'm -- i wasn't pushed to do this by anyone else, you know? i made a decision and, you know, the idea -- another thing is the idea about regret. you know, this is a huge thing now. okay. well, we all regret things we did in life. most women do not regret their abortions. most women feel a sense of relief and that they've done what was best for them. [applause] but there are women who regret their abortions, and they go to state legislatures, and they tell their stories, and the state legislators who want to ban abortion anyway are very

happy to hear from them. but the point is, look, we all regret things we've done. that's not a way to make the law. >> right. >> you know, there are people who regret their divorces. nobody would say, yeah, you know, mary over there regrets her divorce, so we should make divorce illegal for everybody. that's ooh not the way the world works. you make a decision, and if you're unhappy afterwards, you have to deal with that. >> you know, we're only going to have another 12 seconds, i feel, for me to ask you a question. i'm wondering, what would be the one thing that you would like people to take away from the book, if there was one thing that you wanted people to leave her knowing or feeling or believing, what would you like that to be? >> i would say abortion is now and always has been part of the fabric of american life, and we should acknowledge that and live with it and stop giving women such a hard time and instead help women with what they need to be both, you know, not have children when they don't want to have them with good birth

control and sex ed and help them when they do have children which we do so little of in this country, less than almost anyone. [applause] >> [inaudible] >> yes. okay. so we'd be happy to take your questions. >> if anyone has questions that they would like to ask of ms. pollitt, please come and stand in line here, and we will get to as many as we can. >> hi. i happen to know a woman who became pregnant from being raped, and she had the child, and she is the first person to stand up and say no one should make that decision for someone else. and her daughter is now an adult

and feels the same way. but they have had people tell them that they should be opposed to abortion. and is you touched on this a little bit, but it just amazes me that women are being told how they should feel about something. and i was hoping you could just kind of address that part of it. >> well, that's -- you raise an interesting question. there is a lot of social coercion around abortion. you are supposed to feel a certain way, as you say. you're supposed to feel regret, you're supposed to say it was the most difficult decision you ever made. but how realistic is that, you know? you don't want to have a baby. you're a college student. you get pregnant. all of a sudden, oh, it's the most difficult decision i ever made because maybe i should have that baby. i don't think that's the way it works. i think most women who have abortions come to the decision pretty quickly, they have an

abortion as soon as they can -- something all these restrictions make harder than ever -- and they should not be made to feel, oh, i have to, you know, i have to sort of summon up all this guilt and shame after the fact. it's horrible that women are saying to this woman who was raped and had a baby -- and that's fine, if that was her choice -- but saying, oh, you should be anti-choice because really we should be forcing all rape victims to have babies. that's a very different thing than someone who does that voluntarily, for whatever reason. >> you were talking about the maintainingaway for the book, but -- main takeaway for the book, but for me affordability is a huge issue with having a child, and there's such hypocrisy with the legislators who are so pro-life, yet they are against maternity leave. in this state that we're in right now, it leads the nation in child uninsurance. most families can't afford a pediatrician, yet these women who are seeking an abortion

simply because they do not have the economic means to raise a child, that's considered such a selfish act. you know, how do we sort of combat that, that hi hypocrisy? >> well, i talk a lot about motherhood in the book because i think one of the things that the anti-abortion movement says when they say, oh, you're having an abortion as a matter of convenience, they're really saying, well, having a child is no big deal. anybody can do it, a 12-year-old can do it. somebody was, you know, somebody living on the streets can do it. and they do say that. and the fact that we do so little to help mothers and children and families and children is just a disgrace. you know, we don't have paid maternity leave, we don't have daycare. um, there's cut, cut, cut everything that would benefit mothers and chirp. and you know where -- and children. and you know where that happens the most is in the states that are the most anti-choice. and there is a complete

correlation -- [applause] there's a complete correlation between the states where the status of women is the lowest and where restrictions on abortion are the highest. so that if, you know, a state with few women in the legislature, a state where the gap between men's and women's wages are particularly high, a state where they do very little for women's health and children's health, etc., etc., that's where these restrictions are happening. so it makes a picture, doesn't it? that abortion is a piece of let's just push women back. we don't care about mothers, we don't care about children, we don't care about you. that, i think, is the message there. >> hi. you know, i've been marching around this issue for 30 years now, and i feel like i've never been more depressed about where we are. and one thing i would ask you to expand upon is that i've come to

the conclusion it's one of our challenges, it's not a women's issue. there was a man there at the beginning that started the problem too, but yet i still continue to see -- [applause] that men are not included in this conversation. [applause] >> right. >> and short of, i mean, i've literally encouraged people to just post on a web site who impregnated them when they were in college, because now they are the deacons of my church, the pillars of society. but somehow it still carries 20 years later that she had the abortion, and there isn't any conversation about who impregnated there. [applause] and i mean that as -- how do we bring men into this conversation? >> well, i think you've done a great job, and i love your idea of the who impregnated me web site. [laughter] >> let's get that going. let's get a kick starter. >> see, this is another way, this is another piece of evidence that this is really all about women and women having

sex. because there is no sanction for minnesota. and -- for men. and, you know, abstinence-only classes, it's all about the girls staying virgins and if they have sex, they're dirty forever like an old kleenex that everybody sneezed into or whatever. [laughter] there's no comparable thing about men being virgins til they marry. and you're completely right that the burden on, is specifically on women, the shame and the guilt is specifically on women, and taking care of that child is probably specifically on women too. >> hell elope, thank you. >> hi. >> when i graduated from college, i didn't know i was pregnant, and i decided to have an abortion. and i did it, i understood what i was doing, and i knew that if i didn't do it, i felt like i was going to have to be burdened with the responsibility of living with my parents forever. i felt like i was going to have to make a choice to live in a

certain level of poverty and be supported by my parents, and i didn't want to do that. i didn't tell anybody except the gentleman that was part of the part -- [laughter] he was, he was fine. so he was supportive with it, and we did it, and i went by myself, and i asked very dumb questions at the clinic, and people looked at me very crazy. well, how old was it? i wanted to know, i'm a biology major, and it wasn't -- i wanted to know. and when i left and i went home, i managed it very carefully. it was my decision. i would have made a great mother. i still believe i would have made a great mother. but i still belief that my choice was the right choice at the right time. and like you, i think i've told maybe one other person, and i was drinking very heavily. [laughter] so there you go, guys, it's on tv now. [cheers and applause]

i think my question would be how do we get these young women to feel like it's their responsibility and that they should carry the responsibility with dignity? >> i don't understand the question, i'm sorry. >> do you mean the responsibility to, you have a responsibility to yourself to if you do not want to have this child, you should have, you should have an abortion. wanting it is enough reason to have the abortion, and they should be, perhaps, more vocal about that? i mean, we were talking earlier about part of what the problem is here is that so many people who have had abortions don't feel like they can talk about it, and therefore, there's an enormous part of the population that thinks they don't know anyone, who's ever had an abortion. but they do. >> but they do. one in three women. >> yeah. >> so maybe that was -- >> i want to just tell one little story which is when i

began this book tour after i read from a book, a woman came to me, a middle-aged woman, i had an abortion, and i've never told anyone except for you. and i said, well -- she said, i never even told my best friend. i said what do you think would happen if you told your best friend? she said, i think she'd probably tell me that she had an abortion too. [laughter] so i think, you know, all our secrets are the same, that there are ways in which we are locking ourselves up in silence when if we reached out a little bit, we might learn that we're not so alone. >> i'm always for that. >> hi. there's always talk from the anti-choice side that women are going to regret it, that depression is caused by abortion, that you'll never be able to get pregnant again. what -- have there been any

studies comparing the depression and the anxiety and the difficulty of raising children versus having an abortion? >> yes. [laughter] yes. very good point. [applause] i think that was more a comment. [laughter] but it's an excellent point. abortion is always compared to some rosy, you know, never-never land. but life isn't like that. so anyway, i want to thank everybody for coming today and elissa for those great questions. the book festival for having me. [applause] >> thank you all very much for being here. thank you all very much for joining us. ms. pollitt will be in the book signing tent shortly after she

leaves here if you all would like to get your books signed. we need you to move over there and, again, thank you all very much for joining us. >> you're watching booktv. television for serious readers. you can watch any program you see here online at booktv.org. >> next on booktv, marin ca tuesday saw argues that vladimir putin's dream is to restore russia's past glory by dominating the world's energy supply. if putin achieves this goal, the u.s. and other g7 countries will find themselves playing second fiddle economically to countries like russia, brazil, india and china. this is about an hour and ten minutes. >> i'm very pleased to introduce our speaker, marin katusa, who is the chief energy investment strategist at case i