This is Skyler. I pop into the commune podcast about once a year, usually sometime in May to muse about mothering.

So it only feels right that I should ask Jeff to lend his better half the mic to reflect on how motherhood has recently

been seismically altered in America.

Every August, I travel up to Northern California to visit my parents and I asked my mom

to write down her own reflections on abortion.

She, like me, has been tracking the slow erosion of abortion rights in the

U.S. and both of us found the Dobbs decision shocking and at the same time, not at all surprising.

If you're a regular listener to this podcast, you know that one of Jeff's core beliefs is that it's through story

that we have a better chance at navigating a path through the vitriolic wilderness of politics.

And though I'm more of an extremist by nature, I do in the end usually follow him down life's middle path.

So if you don't share my pro-choice stance, I hope you will still consider listening and with an

open mind. And I welcome your stories and ruminations in return.

This is abortion stories in gray scale.

What is identity and collective family identity, but a collation of stories, a fluid narrative of heroism, loss, passion, betrayal, unrequited love, perseverance, disaffection, solidarity?

Stories about abortion are filed in the libraries of most families. Legal, illegal, secret,

tinged with relief or with regret. They certainly are in mine. The night that Phoebe, our first,

was conceived, I had a sense, both physical and psycho-emotional that I had gotten pregnant.

It's hard to explain, but I truly felt it.

And she was indeed born on her due date, pegged to that night.

So you'd think after a few pregnancies and a generally well-developed awareness of my body

that I'd have cultivated an instinct about being pregnant,

but not so for round three.

...