Ongoing

The ART of Infertility is collecting creative writing about reproduction as a way to ease our anxieties about the threat of losing reproductive freedoms. While we often think about reproductive rights in terms of access to contraceptives and abortion, reproductive choice means so much more. What does having reproductive freedom mean to you? What are your own personal stories about reproductive health?

Please send us your short pieces of poetry or prose on your experiences with reproductive freedom, healthcare, and/or trauma, to be featured on The ART of Infertility blog. We welcome submissions from all allies for reproductive rights and health care, all genders, and sexualities.
The following prompts are meant to be generative, not limiting. Use them as you see fit. Please limit prose submissions to 1000 words and submit them via http://bit.ly/reproductivewritesentry.

1. Think about a significant experience you’ve had involving reproductive health and/or reproductive choice. This might be a major event, decision, or turning point. Or maybe a first experience (the onset of menstruation, the first purchasing of birth control, the day you received an infertility diagnosis, etc.). Write a list of concrete images—those that appeal to each of the five senses-- that come from your reproductive experiences. Using that list, write a brief piece of creative nonfiction or poem about your experience.


2. Dear Doctor, Dear Donor, Dear ____. Write a note thanking or recognizing someone on your reproductive journey, perhaps those who made your reproductive freedoms or health care possible. The nurse who stayed with you after a D&C, the ultrasound tech who gave you good news (or bad), the gestational surrogate who carried your child, the sex ed. teacher who passed out condoms, etc.


3. Write a rant about a challenge to reproductive freedom or healthcare, or in response to reproductive trauma. This might take the form of anaphora (repetition at the beginning of a line).


4. Dear Body. Write to your body or body part (i.e. “Ode to my Uterus”), about your reproductive experiences or health.