Name: Lily Rosenhal

Social Justice Group: 2022-2023, Reproductive Rights/Abortion

Date of Fieldwork: February 9, 2023

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Tara Haelle

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?:

On Thursday, February 9th, we interviewed Tara Haelle, a journalist in Texas. Before she was a journalist, she was a teacher in a high school with the highest percentage of teen pregnancies. She went on to tell us that most of the girls she worked with had never taken a health class. One experience she told us about was when she had to teach a pregnant student what a uterus was. This shows how important Heath class is and how lucky we are to have it.

She also talked about how, since abortion is illegal in Texas, women are getting pills shipped to them from India. These pills are not approved and could be dangerous. Pregnant women will also try ways to make themselves have a miscarriage just because they don’t have access to an abortion. She talked about one of her old students who was living in a not-very-stable family and was living on the streets. At the time, her only source of income was doing sex work. When she found out she was pregnant, she was doing a lot of drugs and was in no way fit to keep and raise a baby. She ended up miscarrying, and for her, that was great news. People who she knew were trying to find ways to get her abortion pills and help her find access, but there was no way of doing it. This again goes to show how lucky people in New York are to have access to abortion.