You or Someone You Love

Reflections from an Abortion Doula

By: Hannah Matthews

Narrated by: Hannah Matthews

Named an ALA 2024 Feminist Rise Book Project Winner * Glamour Best Nonfiction Book of 2023 * theSkimm Favorite Book of Summer 2023 * NPR Science Friday Best Science Book of Summer 2023

An eye-opening, transformative, and actionable journey through radical and compassionate community abortion care and support work: what it looks like, how each and every one of us can practice and incorporate it into our daily lives, and what we can imagine and build together in a post-Roe v. Wade United States.

Abortion touches all of our lives. While statistically nearly everyone knows someone who will receive an abortion in their lifetime, limiting narratives flatten our understanding and assumptions around abortion, while stigma and criminalization stifle discussion. What we lack are the language and tools to provide care and support to all of the members of our communities who receive abortions, before, during, and after them.

Now, Hannah Matthews—abortion care worker, doula, journalist and essayist, and reproductive rights advocate—breathes depth and nuance into the oversimplified narratives surrounding abortion, presenting an accessible guide to the emotional and physical realities of providing and supporting abortion care for our own communities. Featuring stories of real abortion experiences, including Matthews’s own, You or Someone You Love offers a glimpse into the stunningly diverse landscape of abortion care across gender, race, and class lines, while illustrating how we can better support and protect the people who seek abortion in a country that increasingly promotes secrecy and shame.

©2023 Hannah Matthews. All rights reserved. (P)2023 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

A touch read

I loved that this was narrated by the author. I felt drawn in knowing that the author herself was telling her story in literally her own voice

Finally, a book that can help us talk and connect about abortion

For so many people, the issue of their abortion or need for abortion, is so stigmatized, politicized, and moralized that they may feel forced into silence by shame, guilt, fear and so many other emotional and physical hurdles, which can cause them to feel demoralized, traumatized and isolated.

The Supreme Court decision on Roe v Wade was exactly 50 years ago, during my late teens. And now, as of my reading of this book, and in my post childbearing years, I am stunned and heartbroken that our country has been plunged back in to chaos around abortion and pregnant people’s human rights with the overturning of Roe. During these past 50 years there was for many of us a sense of legal security for abortion, but we did not go far enough to create the necessary vocabulary, affirmations and support that would have helped to normalize and protect abortion rights. So now, as the U.S. moves forward in a post Roe environment, I believe that it is more important than ever for people to have the resources and vocabulary to better communicate about abortion, support pregnant people and their choices and demolish the violent laws that are criminalizing abortion and denying pregnant people their basic human rights to make their own decisions regarding their bodies.

Through the writing of this book, Ms Matthews has given us some of the necessary tools, resources and vocabulary to aid in normalized conversations about abortion. She is an artful writer who helps the reader experience a wholistic view of abortion, the stories, the raw emotions, the community, the humanity and most of all the love around abortion. I am deeply grateful for her insights as I feel more empowered now to use my own voice in this conversation.