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Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'
You're the Only One I've Told: The Stories Behind Abortion by Meera Shah
1 review
yourbookishbff's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
You're the Only One I've Told, by Dr. Meera Shah, is an incredibly compelling collection of abortion stories. Dr. Shah is a physician who provides abortions and reproductive healthcare to patients in New York, but her compilation of stories spans experiences across (and outside of) the US. She highlights a diverse cross-section of people, effectively evidencing the thousands of intricacies in any reproductive healthcare decision. Each story is told in close collaboration with the story's owner, and each story is complemented by contextual details about the specific state/country the patient lived in (and thus, the various legal challenges they faced).
In bringing these stories together in a single collection, Dr. Shah examines the personal, relational, familial, religious, cultural, medical and legal layers in every decision, showing us just how complex pregnancy decisions can be. We hear the stories of single people, married parents with children, nonbinary and trans people, people of color, young and not-so-young people, people seeking care hundreds - and sometimes thousands - of miles from home, people who have had multiple abortions, people who have encountered planned pregnancies with complex diagnoses and people who have encountered unplanned pregnancies and so many more. No two stories are alike, making the black-and-white legal barriers they each face all the more absurd. It is particularly eye-opening to see just how inaccessible reproductive healthcare is to the people highlighted in these stories, and this was written and published BEFORE the reversal of Roe vs. Wade. Abortion access has been steadily eroding for decades, and when you see intimately in these accounts the real people that these mostly state-led restrictions have impacted, it's heart wrenching.
In bringing these stories together in a single collection, Dr. Shah examines the personal, relational, familial, religious, cultural, medical and legal layers in every decision, showing us just how complex pregnancy decisions can be. We hear the stories of single people, married parents with children, nonbinary and trans people, people of color, young and not-so-young people, people seeking care hundreds - and sometimes thousands - of miles from home, people who have had multiple abortions, people who have encountered planned pregnancies with complex diagnoses and people who have encountered unplanned pregnancies and so many more. No two stories are alike, making the black-and-white legal barriers they each face all the more absurd. It is particularly eye-opening to see just how inaccessible reproductive healthcare is to the people highlighted in these stories, and this was written and published BEFORE the reversal of Roe vs. Wade. Abortion access has been steadily eroding for decades, and when you see intimately in these accounts the real people that these mostly state-led restrictions have impacted, it's heart wrenching.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical trauma, Abortion, Sexual content, Pregnancy, Medical content, Miscarriage, Sexism, and Sexual assault
Moderate: Child abuse, Adult/minor relationship, and Racism
Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, and Child death
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