Texas.

I teach public school, and I'm proud to say that our campus vaccination rate is 100%. Our school nurse follows up on everyone and is fabulous!

When my son (who is four) isn't sure of someone's gender, he refers to them as "the human." He just started doing that on his own. I thought it was pretty awesome.

When I got the police involved, they bungled the whole thing by neglecting to bring the required mental health liaison, the one they agreed in advance would be present. My ex then proceeded to charm the officers until they left me alone with him.

Too true. In my experience, these are the groups who seem LEAST likely to believe the victim when the perpetrator is one of their own. They can't admit that they didn't recognize a predator or that they potentially enabled one. It calls their whole identity into question.

Yes. Absolutely. When I first read this book, I cried. This part described my ex so perfectly, down to the therapy stuff. He loves therapy and the new vocabulary arsenal it gives him to better abuse and control with. When a therapist sees through him (we had three, possibly four, who did), he finds a way to discredit…

This story hits so close to home it makes me deeply uncomfortable to read. My ex is like this, so closely similar that only the small details differ. He, too, is a self-identified radical feminist who disarms women with his story about growing up witnessing (and experiencing) terrible domestic violence at the hands of…

Absolutely. This happens to me.

I did some protesting outside their local center with said friend and several others. Always masked, always parking very far away. Once, after a protest, my friends and I were walking in a roundabout way back to where the vehicles were stashed. Someone walked up to us on the street and said, "Hey, excuse me, but did…

Last year's Thanksgiving sucked mightily and ended with me in tears.

A friend of mine spoke out about them publicly in my city. His dog was found poisoned and the lug nuts on his tired were loosened, causing a tire to fall off on the highway.

Coal miner's granddaughter and native West Virginian here, too. Yes, coal is a killer. My great-grandfather went into the mines in after dropping out of third grade. As an adult, he lost his leg at the hip because of faulty mining equipment. Screw coal.

Also, fuck those people who say abortion is all about convenience. I had an undetected pregnancy (a rare false-positive pregnancy test and I was still breastfeeding my toddler and hadn't had a period since before he was born) and then an abortion at 20 weeks, 6 days. It was agonizing. The procedure was a three day…

I didn't have the option of putting up a baby for adoption. I was leaving my husband (domestic violence case). To put it up for adoption, I would have had to have notified him and gotten his permission. He never, ever would have given it. I worked full-time at a job with no paid maternity leave. I had a two-year-old…

Yes. Any future children of mine? I wouldn't be able to talk about having future children if I hadn't had an abortion.

That's my fear. Putting my life or my existing child's life/safety in danger.

Yes. Absolutely.

It's all so damned thorny. I'm 100% pro-choice (on demand, without apology, all of that). But I'm a pro-choice woman who had a late-term abortion under difficult, heart-wrenching circumstances. If I'd kept that pregnancy, this would be the month my child would have turned two. I don't have a lot of space where I feel…

I agree with you, but is it wrong to bring up that a woman being DENIED an abortion would have overwhelming emotional consequences, and this is why we should al ways respect a woman's right to choose?

I can't help it, these things make me cry. I wrote one to mine, too. I wanted to keep that pregnancy. I wanted it so badly. The only thing I wanted more than that pregnancy was for my existing then-toddler to be okay. To continue that pregnancy, I would have had to have given up my existing baby. I plan on having…