Name: Aedan Grover-Scher

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?:

We met with Tara Haelle. She is a journalist in Texas and used to be a high school teacher. She talked to us about her experience in a school where there was no sexual health class, and how her high school had the highest rates of teen pregnancy in Texas. She told about one experience she had where she had to teach a pregnant student what a uterus was. I think that hearing this story really shows the importance of sexual health class in school.

Another thing she talked about was an ex-student of hers who was living on the streets and became pregnant do to sex work. Her ex-student was addicted to drugs and the baby would have been born with many birth defects. Tara was trying to find any way to be able to get her ex-student an abortion, but her ex-student ended up having a miscarriage. She also mentioned an old friend that she had who’s husband is a state legislator in Texas and he wanted to pass a bill to put any women who got an abortion to death. Hearing this really shocked me and made me more inspired to do this project.