Theo tackles abortion access with a reading of The Turnaway Play

Why does someone decide to abort a pregnancy? What are the impacts of denying this choice?

An audience of about 100 considered such questions on March 18 at Evanston’s Theo, prompted by Lesley Lisa Greene’s The Turnaway Play and an ensuing discussion of abortion access.

Greene’s play, incorporating narratives of women who have sought abortions, draws from her sister Diana Greene Foster’s groundbreaking Turnaway Study. Tracking participants for a decade, Foster explored the long-term effects of restrictive abortion policies on women and families.

Before Foster’s study, little research had meaningfully addressed this issue. Several previous studies noted that choosing an abortion may generate post-traumatic stress disorder—but those studies lacked key comparison groups: people who had sought abortions but had been denied them. These were the “turned-away” people at the heart of Foster’s investigation and Greene’s play.

Before kicking off the presentation and subsequent discussion, Personal PAC CEO Sarah Garza Resnick highlighted crucial but often-obscured facts. Chief among them is that one U.S. woman in four will choose an abortion at some point in her life. Asking for a show of hands, Resnick illustrated the frequency of the choice, as all audience members indicated they knew someone who had had an abortion.

“It’s a choice available to most women in Illinois but not in neighboring states,” Garza Resnick said. Consequently, in 2023 (the most recent year with available data), 37,000 women from adjacent states came to Illinois for abortion care.

“By comparison,” Garza Resnick said, “California and New York took in 5,000 to 6,000 women in the same period, though they are [larger states, with more total abortions]. Illinois is the linchpin in the midwest, the reason more women aren’t dying.”

Foster’s study involved nearly 1,000 women from 30 abortion facilities in 21 states. Some got the abortion they sought; some were turned away. All were recruited from 2008 to 2010 and interviewed semiannually for five years to track mental health, physical health, and socioeconomic consequences.

The study comprised nearly 8,000 interviews.

The principal finding was that getting an abortion does not harm well-being, whereas the denial of a desired abortion leads to worse financial, health, and family outcomes.

In the staged reading of Greene’s dramatization, multiple women described their varying motivations for seeking an abortion. More than half had very limited means, were already mothers, and felt an obligation to protect their child(ren) from the instability that another child would introduce.

“If I hadn’t gotten an abortion, it would’ve been chaos,” one character said. “I could not afford diaper number one.”

Another described the need to hold onto her job to feed her daughter—a job she would lose were she to continue her pregnancy and give birth. “Everything I’ve ever done has been for [my daughter]. I would be depriving her by having to support a second one.”

Portraying “guest lecturer” Diana Greene Foster, actress Lauren Winder asked the audience to consider: “Who do you think steps in when someone is denied an abortion?”

After a pause, Foster answered her own question: “Nobody! Those who are denied generally manage alone, often in poverty. If not alone, they often face violence [from a domestic partner]. But those who got an abortion more often experience a decline in such violence” and a lesser risk of poverty.

Multiple narratives came from women who were turned away, typically because they were too far along in the pregnancy. What were some of the reasons for their delay? One had not gotten her period for many months prior to pregnancy so did not note a change. Another had reason to believe she was still getting her periods, though in fact she was pregnant.

Others who were too late faced challenges getting to the necessary facility—a common obstacle, given that only 10 percent of U.S. counties have such a facility. (The play’s narratives predate the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which magnified the challenges through the curtailment of medical abortion in 19 states.)

Foster, via Winder, did not deny that abortion can sometimes cause emotional harm—an argument famously stressed, without evidence, in a 2007 opinion by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. But she emphasized data showing that, comparatively, “more women experience multiple harms when compelled to carry a pregnancy against their will. There is a depression curve [in both cases], no measurable difference in ‘regret,’ and both sets are doing better after five years—but there are key differences in health effects and ability to cover basic needs. The ‘turned away’ have less food, and worse health is more likely.”

After the characters concluded their narratives, Greene’s play gave way to even more immediate accounts from the nonactor presenters: Garza Resnick, Evanston mayor Daniel Biss, and Dr. Connie Fei Lu, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of Illinois College of Medicine.

Garza Resnick described her own abortion experience as a student abroad in England: “I was so lucky that I had compassionate care at my university and got to a private clinic. I am a real person, and it happened to me—I wouldn’t be the human being I am today if I hadn’t had access to an abortion, and I am so very grateful.”

Mayor Biss told of his grandmother, who got an abortion between giving birth to his mother and his aunt. “Her feeling was [that] it’s not possible to provide just now,” Biss said, adding that he did not see giving up a newborn for adoption as a true alternative. “Imagine the woman giving up her newborn, wondering, ‘Will this child be loved?’ That is where the great emotional cost lies.”

Dr. Lu spoke of growing up in Indiana with an appreciation of pro-choice activism and going east for medical school, not foreseeing she would return to the midwest. “Geography is crucial,” she said, noting that abortion access is easier in northeastern U.S. states.

“But later, [I felt drawn back],” she said. “We hear about conscientious objection to providing abortion care. We don’t talk as much about the conscientious decision to provide care.” She pointed out that even in states with access, 40 percent of medical school programs do not offer abortion instruction.

“Illinois used to be one of the most anti-choice states,” said Garza Resnick. “But now we are one of the most pro-choice,” she said, while noting that care can be weaponized in hospitals getting federal money. “We built this, and we have to fight for it. Personal PAC is the organization holding officials to account. We are not accepting an authoritarian government.” 

Biss complimented the organization’s reputation as “credible experts with political muscle.”

Perhaps the most memorable moment came before the program, when Biss drew attention to a side table where several older women were sitting. “Tonight, we have with us some of the original Janes,” he said, “the underground collective who led the way [prior to the 1973 Roe decision] in providing abortion access in Chicago.” The audience was loudest at this point, standing to applaud.