Staged Readings of WHEN SHE BECAME ME Will Support Reproductive Justice

Two staged readings of the updated, pro-choice documentary play When She Became Me, written by Elizabeth Horab, will be held in San Jose on January 13 and 20 to raise funds for the Oakland-based nonprofit, Access Reproductive Justice (aka Access RJ). The updated play uses real stories to demystify the shared experiences of pregnancy termination, and to offer the wide range of reasons and reactions from people who have experienced it. Although the readings are free to the public, donations are welcomed at these readings; donations can also be made at https://www.gofundme.com/f/when-she-became-me-reading-and-fundraiser. The first reading will be held at San Jose Woman's Club, and the second at Urban Sanctuary. Both readings happen just prior to January 22, which will be the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. For more information, the public can call (347) 272-0875.

When She Became Me is being directed by playwright and SJSU lecturer Teresa Veramendi, with Robyn Ginsburg Braverman as Assistant Director. The readings are being produced by Veramendi and Ginsburg Braverman. All participants are volunteers, including the playwright, director, actors, and publicist.

"I want and need to use my skills to fight back against the overturning of Roe v. Wade," said Veramendi. "As a survivor of sexual assault, I know how easily I could become a person seeking an abortion. If I lived in the wrong state at this time, I would be suffering many setbacks in my pursuit of reproductive healthcare. Pregnant people cannot wait for the federal government to make this right. We chose Access RJ because it is the most local abortion fund. We chose this fund over a national organization like Planned Parenthood or NARAL because our goal is to get money into the hands of people in need as soon as possible."

When She Became Me is a pro-choice documentary play comprised of real stories from people who had abortions before and after Roe v. Wade, written by Elizabeth Horab (she/they), whose mother worked at the only abortion clinic in North Dakota in the 1990s. The script has been updated for 2022-2023, with new interviews responding to the overturning of Roe.

Above all, When She Became Me is a play about - and created by - listening to women about their experiences with pregnancy and abortion. Horab interviewed a number of people from 2013-2015 to create the original play, and then conducted more interviews in 2022 after Roe v. Wade was overturned. While some of the content is difficult and challenging, the work is not particularly maudlin or dramatic. It is designed to be a variety of voices sitting in a common space and sharing their stories, allowing audiences to see the similarities and differences in this very common medical procedure. It is a sharing of individual human experiences around the topic: honest, straightforward, and often funny.

Some of the details of these real experiences are almost surreal - like the woman who was told by a psychiatrist that she needed to lie, to say she would kill herself if she had the baby, in order to access a safe abortion. The hospital board and university medical school that unanimously agreed that a pregnant woman should not continue her pregnancy - and yet could not, or would not, help her access an abortion. The woman who knew she wanted the abortion, but whose body generated grief, or guilt, against her will. We hear from people who felt an instant connection with the fetus inside them and people who felt their bodies were invaded by an alien presence. People who didn't want to talk to anyone about their experience, people who wanted to talk to everyone about it; people who needed to talk to someone but couldn't, because of stigma or shame.

According to FiveThirtyEight, in July and August of 2022 there were ten thousand fewer abortions in the United States than the same time frame in 2021. It is a fair assumption that there are currently thousands of Americans needing abortions who cannot afford to wait for changes on the legislative level.

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