Does Backlines acknowledgment of moral questions around abortion make the mainstream pro-choice movement nervous?
Grayson Dempsey: Absolutely. It makes them nervous because we operate in a system that has had to rely heavily on sound bites and slogans. The pro-choice movement has been on the defensive for 30 years, so we have come up with messages that we feel are really impenetrable, like “my body, my choice”—a good message that nobody can get through. When you start to say, “You know, pregnancy is complicated, and everybody has feelings about it. I think we can all agree that we want women to be healthy…let’s talk about what that means” —that’s not easy to run on a 10-word lawn sign. What’s Backline’s philosophy? That once you become pregnant and have to make a choice, that you may experience loss in any choice that you make…. Women can embrace complexity, and still very much be pro-choice. If women do embrace complexity, they become more pro-choice, because they realize it’s not as simple as “some women have abortions and some have children.” Has your pregnancy shifted your views? My pregna
