The following transcript is a brief part of an episode of the podcast Abortion, With Love. The full episode is titled Indigenous Abortion Support with Montse Olmos and can be found here at this link or wherever you listen to podcasts, including iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and more.
In this excerpt beginning around minute 17:10, Montse Olmos shares about her three abortions and the spiritual tradition that informs how she thinks and feels about her abortions. Montse is a Full-Spectrum Birth Companion for QTBIPOC folx and an abortion educator with UK-based DOPO.
I started providing abortion support after I had my own experience having an abortion. I have three babies in spirit world, which means I’ve had three abortions. And after the first experience, that’s when I was called to provide support to others.
It’s the way I have approached everything. Once I experience it, once I have gone through it myself and I know what it’s like, then I am like, OK, I think I want to do this. I want to provide this care for others.
Because obviously when we experience things ourselves it gives us a different kind of insight, a different kind of information and knowledge. But I believe anyone can provide this kind of support. You don’t have to have an abortion yourself to provide compassionate care to others.
Abortion is ancestral. Abortion has always been around. It’s not new. I think that when we hear the arguments of pro-lifers, of people who are against abortion access, it seems to me that they forget that this is not something we came up with yesterday. It’s always been happening.
Abortion has been around since forever, since time immemorial. Since we’ve been able to birth as a species, we’ve had abortion as a reality. That’s where thousands of years of knowing come into play.
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The herbs that we use today, the recipes we know today to have an herbal abortion, they are time tested. They have been used for such a long period of time, before science as we know it. And not just herbs, but body work, and other forms to support the release of a pregnancy.
So it seems to be immature or ridiculous to say abortion is a sin or that abortion is dangerous, because that’s what our traditional midwives were also providing as part of their care. . .
. . . I don’t have this very heavy attachment to abortion as mourning and crying and feeling guilty.
I’ve had three abortions so far, and the first time I was really, really scared to be honest because I had a lot of these negative ideas of abortion, like I can die, I’m going to get an infection, etcetera etcetera. I didn’t have enough information. That’s really what it was. I didn't have enough information.
In that process of choosing to release that pregnancy, I got all of the information I was missing and understood the actual reality of abortion. I soaked it all in and realized I was wrong, there was no reason for me to be scared. I’m OK. It’s going to be fine.
Afterward, the process was very much like, I am sorry that I had to do this. I didn’t feel prepared, I didn’t feel ready. And at the same time I understand what’s happening.
I understand the process of this spirit. I understand that this spirit is going back to the light, to spirit world. And I know what I have to do. I know the offerings I have to give, the altar that I have to set up, the ways in which I can continue talking to this spirit.
I know that these spirits are always going to walk with me and my family. And they are members of this family. But that’s it. That’s it. I am at peace.
It’s just a different perspective than what most people get when I see folks who carry a lot of shame and guilt after their abortions. This is what I offer them, to maybe provide a different perspective.
Listen to the complete interview with Montse Olmos here: