Lori Reid is just one of the women who have had abortions featured in a one-night show of photographs at Virginia Christopher Fine Art

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Arts4Choice with Kathryn Palmateer
Virginia Christopher Fine Art
Wednesday, October 28 - Wednesday, October 28

More in: Visual Arts

“You’re having an abortion aren’t you?” accused one of the women sitting in the patient lounge at Richmond General Hospital in Vancouver. It was the early ’70s and a pregnant, 15 year-old Lori Reid was indeed there to have an abortion. After the procedure, her mother, who had originally wanted her to “go away” to have the baby, took her home and told her she was no longer part of the family because what she had done brought shame to the family. Her father didn’t talk to her for three years.

“Even at 15 I knew that having an abortion was my only option,” says Reid, who now lives in Calgary and has two teenage daughters. “I had no problem making that decision, the biggest issue for me was the judgment and the shame that was put on me by my parents and the medical staff.”

Reid’s is just one of the stories being told as part of a project by Toronto-based photographer Kathryn Palmateer, who will be in Calgary October 28, to display her work at Virginia Christopher Fine Art. Her series of portraits of women who have chosen to have abortions, accompanied by their stories, aims to honestly share the experiences of these women who could be your neighbours, co-workers or family members, and to get women talking about the subject.

“There is still a real stigma surrounding abortion,” says Palmateer. “There is still a lot of silence and I think people are afraid to talk about it because they feel society thinks what they have done is wrong. The vast majority of stories out there are anti-choice stories — women who regretted their decision. These are often the only stories women are hearing and I think it’s really important that we respond to that and get our (pro-choice) voices out there.”

For Reid, the judgment and lack of support changed her outlook on life, causing her to lose her optimistic attitude and confidence in herself. She says it took years to accept that she even had an abortion and longer still to “be OK with it” and be able to talk openly about it. Though she reconciled with her parents years ago, it wasn’t until last year that they spoke about her abortion.

By sharing her story, Reid hopes people will realize women who have abortions are everyday women who have to make difficult choices and that the project will evoke compassion and understanding about why women make that choice. “My outcome would be completely different if I had just one person to show some compassion and acceptance,” she says. “I’d like people to take away from this the impact of being judgmental and cruel and what some compassion could do in that sort of situation.”

Palmateer’s exhibition brings back the human element to the pro-choice versus pro-life debate. With the genocide awareness project on the University of Calgary campus garnering extensive media coverage for its controversial photos of aborted fetuses and comparison of abortion to genocide, Reid says the focus needs to be brought back to the woman. “She is freely making a life choice for herself; it’s not about life and death, it’s about the right to choose.”

The women in Palmateer’s portraits come from a wide range of backgrounds and have made the choice to have an abortion for many different reasons. Some, like Reid, were teenagers, others were women accepted into medical school who felt they were unable to raise a child and still others were women who had a number of children already and were not willing to have another. “This project really opened my eyes to the wide range of reasons women choose to have abortions,” says Palmateer.

In many of the cases, the women Palmateer photographed spoke of feelings of guilt and shame. “They had been told all their lives that women who had abortions were murderers, or they were committing a sin or doing something wrong, so when they made the decision they experienced these emotions and had to work through them,” says Palmateer.

She hopes by sharing these stories women who have abortions will feel less alone and more confident about their choice. “If women knew how many women every year have abortions and heard those stories and saw those faces, maybe they’d feel less shame and feel that this was a choice they were making about their bodies, not such a politically charged choice.”

Tickets are $60, with proceeds going to Sexual Health Access Alberta and the National Abortion Federation Patient Assistance Fund.