Follow-Up to WATERtalk

 

“Voices from the Silenced: Pre-Roe Abortion Stories”

Co-writers and co-directors Victoria Rue and Martha Boesing

Wednesday, April 16, 2025, 1 PM ET

The video of the WATER program can be accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZIHYfK6o8Q&t=5100s&ab_channel=WATERwomensalliance

These notes are meant to augment the video. They are not a verbatim of the program nor meant to be exhaustive. We encourage people to watch the play and the documentary (as well as this WATER program) to get the full impact of the lives explored and the challenges offered. Post Dobbs, in many places it is as if Roe never happened.

WATER is profoundly grateful to Victoria Rue, Martha Boesing, and all of those who were involved in the play, the video, and the documentary

“Voices from the Silenced: Pre-Roe Abortion Stories.” This is a stunning project, a must-see for people concerned about the usurpation of US women’s right to make reproductive health decisions for ourselves. We highly recommend sharing these materials with friends, colleagues, students, and reaching out to the creators for more resources.

WEBSITE for the project: https://www.voicesfromthesilenced.com/

WEBSITE for the Documentary “VOICES”: https://voices-the-movie.com

TRAILER of the DOC:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyEWAArAy5M

DOCUMENTARY: “VOICES: Our Stories Before Roe v Wade” (28 minutes)

https://vimeo.com/824401504 Password:  voices

THE PLAY: “VOICES from the SILENCED: Pre-Roe Abortion Stories” (57 minutes)

https://vimeo.com/875095743 Password: view

Mary E. Hunt’s Introduction to the speakers:

I am meeting you for the first time here Martha Boesing. But that you come with and collaborate with Victoria Rue is all I need to know to welcome you with open arms and full confidence in what you bring.

I turned to your bio to understand who you are. Let me quote from it, with no attempt to be comprehensive. Martha writes:

“I began this lifelong career in theater — which includes performing, directing, playwrighting, administrating, designing, teaching, and doing odd jobs — as an apprentice in summer stock when I was sixteen…

A few years after moving to Minneapolis I became the co-director of the Moppet Players, before it morphed into the world-famous Children’s Theater of Minneapolis. But it was at the Firehouse Theater, an iconoclastic, experimental theater ensemble with connections to the Open Theater of NYC, that I got my wings. It was the sixties. Through the years, my work has remained true to the ideological concerns of that time…

Over the years, I have written or co-created forty or so full-length and one-act plays, which have been produced throughout the country and in Europe.

I have been an activist on the front lines of the major movements of the last century: the Civil Rights, the Anti-war, the Women’s, and the Environmental movements, all of which have changed the face of the world, and continue to this day. I have been a student, teacher, and practitioner of Buddhism for the last twenty years, and am the proud grandmother of four grandchildren, who all live in the East Bay, where I now live with my beloved partner, writer Sandy Boucher.”

Welcome, Martha. Please give my warm regards to Sandy Boucher whose work has grounded my own thinking. Her Turning the Wheel: American Women Creating the New Buddhism (1993); Opening the Lotus: A Woman’s Guide to Buddhism (1997); and Discovering Kwan Yin: Buddhist Goddess of Compassion are foundational feminist texts in religion.

Victoria Rue is quite simply a rock star. She is a writer/director/actor, not to mention a theologian and priest. She graduated from Union Theological Seminary in New York City (M.Div.) and from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley (Ph.D.), where her dissertation was a play about women with cancer.

Victoria has spent significant time in Palestine, where she crafted another of her creative works, Maryam: A Woman of Bethlehem, which is based on an interview with Christians and Muslims from Bethlehem in Palestine. Victoria writes: “The play toured eight towns in Occupied Palestine, prompting reflection about the diverse perspectives of Mary and the un-interrogated role of gender in Palestinian religious, cultural, and political life. The play is performed by two actresses who play twenty-two characters.” Victoria brought two Palestinian actors to the US to perform the play to great audience response.

In addition to her artistic work, Victoria is a Roman Catholic Woman priest from the Region of the Holy Margins. She is now not-retired in California where she lives with her equally creative and rock star quality wife, Kathryn Poethig. Victoria is a clinic escort and a wonderfully supportive presence at a local Planned Parenthood clinic.

You begin to see the pattern here: women living lives of spirituality and service, dedication to the toughest issues that marginalize the most vulnerable people, and a flair for the arts that bind us together, instruct us, and edify us all at once.

Victoria Rue and Martha Boesing, thank you for your work and your lives. Thank you for this play and film, “Voices from the Silenced: Pre-Roe Abortion Stories.”

Major themes that Victoria and Martha lifted up in their remarks which followed the playing of the trailer for the documentary.

  1. Victoria Rue had a dream after the Dobbs decision was leaked. She did what she does, namely, create theatre. So she invited Martha Boesing, who has a long history in activist art, to collaborate with women at Rossmoor in Walnut Creek, CA. They listened to women’s stories of having had abortions before Roe, and then created the play that tells their stories of abortions 50 years ago. 7 actors, 2 musicians plus a crew developed the project. The 13 women developed a community as they developed the play in 2022-2023. All worked pro bono and gave any additional funds to Planned Parenthood and other groups to use as a fundraiser for themselves.
  2. Shame is a major factor in abortion. Now, in 2025, surveillance, indeed the surveillance state, has been added to shame as a real threat. Interstructured issues of poverty, class, race, and more made abortions for some women even more difficult than for others.
  3. A ritual of grief is included in the film/play.
  4. The process of writing, performing, and filming was community in action. It is not just a project of two brilliant women, but much more. It is a communal response, without one key leader but with many actors collaborating.
  5. A character named ‘Jane’ runs through the play. She represents the Janes in Chicago who helped women access abortion pre-Roe.
  6. The project is proof of the power of community to make change happen.
  7. Watch the film. Gather friends to watch it at home or in a synagogue, church, mosque, or elsewhere. It is free, but it is useful to raise money and donate it to your local Planned Parenthood or other group.

Q+A/Discussion

            WATER sends our thanks to all involved in this project. We pass on the fruits of several generations’ efforts to meet today’s challenges.

  1. It is a hard film to watch because it is so powerful in the best sense. In-person audiences have included people across all age and gender spans. It helps dismantle the black and white narrative of abortions and brings awareness to the complexity of women’s choices in our complex world.
  2. Some men reacted by saying they didn’t know what happened, or that they didn’t realize that it was like what is depicted here. Many did not accompany women in the process.
  3. One hospice chaplain commented that she was moved by women’s sense of shame. Women have told her their abortion stories, sometimes for the first time. She told of one man who worried about his wife’s “eternal salvation,” not her experience of abortion.
  4. Health care professionals from the American Medical Women’s Association collaborated on the project. AMWA receives donations for the project. Women in religion need to think about promoting this project. One person is sharing it with the American Academy of Religion Women’s Caucus. Rebecca Todd Peters, who has written extensively on abortion, is President of the Society of Christian Ethics, so there may be a way to collaborate there.
  5. Abortion is expensive for poor women; lack of access to sex education and contraceptives plays a role. Jessica Valenti (https://jessica.substack.com/)
  6. Surveillance is new in many forms. “Keeping water healthy” in TX is proposed to detect the presence of mifepristone and the hormones found in birth control.
  7. Pro-choice women in ministry groups are a good idea for sharing this resource. One woman offered to show the film with her group.
  8. Ireland recently changed laws to permit abortions. Telling stories makes all the difference. The complexities of women’s life experiences are clear. The theo-ethical work of feminist Margaret Farley is useful. The movie: “La teta asustada” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1206488 ) about women raped in war breastfeeding babies raises important issues.
  9. Canada handled abortion rights through a Supreme Court case in 1988.
  10. Argentine women were protagonists in Latin America with the green kerchiefs.
  1. Brigit Alliance pays for food, lodging, travel, and more for people who are pregnant (https://brigidalliance.org/).
  2. A trigger warning and social help hotlines could be included with the movie. Women who have abortions might suffer from moral injury and or PTSD, so it is important to talk about this aspect. The issue is not that one is morally or psychologically traumatized by having an abortion, but by the reaction of people who oppose abortion.
  3. The movie includes focus on Shame, Decision-Making, the Abortion itself, Grief, and Resistance. Young and older women need to talk with one another. Colleges and universities are good places to start. Refer people to the website (https://www.voicesfromthesilenced.com/ ). There is a need for pastoral counsellors to make themselves available to support pregnant people.
  4. The movie embraces aspects of women’s community and solidarity since abortion is such a common experience for women. We all need to put ourselves out there to be part of that community, whether we have had or not had abortions.

WATER thanks Victoria and Martha. We invite WATER colleagues to consider next steps to continue this conversation at a time when abortion rights are under attack in the United States. Show the film for free and help put abortion conversations front and center.