Upcoming Events
Talk Line Advocate Training
TBD
The next Volunteer Talk Line Advocate Training will be coming in early 2009 and will take place at Backline’s office in Portland, Oregon. Interested? Please contact Program Director Marli Riede. Multilingual individuals are highly encouraged to apply.
Volunteers participate in approximately 40 hours of initial training, covering all aspects of pregnancy options and general counseling skills. Interested volunteers please contact Program Director Marli Riede.
Backline In the News
The Personal is Political: Abortion Stigma and Reproductive Justice
Reproductive Justice Briefing Book: A Primer on Reproductive Justice and Social Change | By Grayson Dempsey
From 1973 to 2002, more than 42 million legal abortions occurred in the United States6, and countless other women considered abortion as an option even if they ultimately decided to continue their pregnancies. This staggering number of Americans who have personally been affected by abortion should mean that the legality and accessibility of services should be solidly protected. And yet just 49% of Americans identify as “pro-choice”, and an even smaller number – 41% - believe abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances. Read More...
Celebrating Courageous Acts of Motherhood
May 9, 2008 | RH Reality Check | By Grayson Dempsey
This year, I will celebrate my first Mother's Day with a daughter of my own, a fact that I am contemplating deeply after an especially exhausting week of juggling work and family, responding to the needs of a teething baby, and sleeping less than I did during even the wildest of my party days. Read More...
Birth Options Essential to Reproductive Justice
January 31, 2008 | RH Reality Check | By Erin Wilkins
Working part-time as a pregnancy options counselor at a busy abortion clinic and also as an apprentice midwife in an out-of-hospital birth practice, I see firsthand the obvious parallels between birth and abortion every day. Given that clear connection, I am continually disappointed by the lack of attention the mainstream reproductive rights agenda has shown to birth options. Read More...
Q & A: Grayson Dempsey
May 16, 2007 | Willamette Week | By Beth Slovic
Grayson Dempsey wears her sunglasses like Gloria Steinem (big) and her heart like Drew Barrymore (on her sleeve). In Steinem's political spirit and Barrymore's demeanor, Dempsey bears more than a passing resemblance to both women. At 27, Dempsey is the president of Backline, a national, Portland-based confidential hotline. It offers apolitical counsel to women and their loved ones who have questions (both moral and practical) about pregnancy, abortion, adoption and parenting. Read More...
An Appreciative Approach to the Abortion Debate
May 16, 2007 | RH Reality Check | By Andrea Lynch
In our hypercritical cultures, we tend to take exclusively problem-based approaches to change, focusing on what's wrong and how we can change it instead of what's right and how we can expand it. Celebrating the good is what appreciative inquiry is all about. So, despite the Supreme Court's infuriatingly paternalistic Gonzales vs. Carhart decision, the anti-abortion nonsense continually unfolding at the state level, and the fact that the federal government continues to glibly fund ethically questionable crisis pregnancy centers, I want to take a moment to appreciate all of the folks out there who continue to place real women's lives, rights, needs, and capacities at the center of their work. Read More...
The Exorcists: Born-again abortion clinics
March/April 2007 | Mother Jones | By Josh Harkinson
When Troy Newman would answer the phone at Central Women's Services in Wichita, Kansas, last summer, there was a lot he didn't mention. The priests who'd been arrested for blocking the abortion clinic's door. The "truth truck" parked nearby with its billboard of an aborted fetus. The pickets at employees' homes. He didn't talk about how all of this had caused the clinic to shut down, save for its still- functioning phone system. He would press the receiver to his ear and intone, "Women's clinic!" And when a nervous voice at the other end of the line would inquire about abortion services, he would furrow his brow and ask, "Don't you know that's a baby?" Read More...
Where Are They Now?
02/26/2007 | Planned Parenthood Online | By Laura Lambert
Two years ago, in honor of Women’s History Month, we profiled a number of young activists. To commemorate the 34th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, we decided to revisit these young women to find out where they are now and where their activism has led them. For the fourth in this series, we caught up with Grayson Dempsey, who is now living in Portland, OR, 27, married, and pregnant — and committed as ever to pushing forward the national conversation around pregnancy, childbirth, abortion, adoption, and parenting. Read More...
Timely and compelling vision: Being pro-choice means supporting all the choices
02/09/2007 | The Charleston Gazette | By Julie Pratt
I’ve never been more hopeful or proud about being pro-choice than I was at a recent gathering at the Woman’s Club in Charleston. The occasion was the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that most abortion laws violated a woman’s constitutional right to privacy. Read More...
Is There a Post-Abortion Syndrome?
01/21/2007 | The New York Times Magazine | By Emily Bazelon
A growing number of anti-abortion activists, despite social-science research, claim that women are traumatized by their abortions — and are trying to use this to reframe the abortion debate. Read More... (must be a TimesSelect subscriber to read)
The New Scarlet Letter
01/02/2007 | Political Cortex | By Marcy Bloom
When I was in high school, I read "The Scarlet Letter" and was intrigued by its dark and stormy themes. Published in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne narrates the story of Hester Prynne, the heroine accused of adultery in Puritan New England who is forced to wear the scarlet letter "A" as a symbol of her sin. Filled with alienation, secrecy, judgment, religious hypocrisy, and self-insight, it captured my interest. Read More...
Abortion Stigma Enters Era of Unburdening
12/07/2006 | Women's enews | By Eleanor J. Bader
Abortion is the most common surgical procedure in the United States, but the stigma surrounding it remains powerful, even for pro-choice advocates and abortion providers. Efforts to reduce the psychological toll are on an upswing. Read More...
In Search of New Words: Redefining the Abortion Debate
October, 2006 | More Magazine | By Monika Bauerlein
Some women of the Roe v. Wade generation -- speaking from experience -- are calling for a more nuanced abortion debate. When we start looking beyond "pro-life" and "pro-choice," how will abortion rights fare? Read More...
Backline Press Releases
The Adoption Dialogue Invites National Conversation Among Pro-Choice Activists and Providers
May 4, 2007 | Contact Grayson Dempsey, 503.317.6866
Portland, OR – Backline - a nonprofit organization promoting conversation around all aspects of pregnancy, parenting, abortion and adoption - announced today that it will co-host the national Adoption Dialogue with Open Adoption & Family Services, a leading pro-choice adoption agency based in the Pacific Northwest. Read More...
National Organization Promoting Conversations Around Pregnancy Sets Firm Foundation, Grows in Strength
May 4, 2007 | Contact Grayson Dempsey, 503.317.6866
Portland, OR – Backline, a nonprofit organization promoting conversation around all aspects of pregnancy, parenting, abortion and adoption, announced today that after two years of operating out of the homes of volunteers it will move into its first office space in the Alberta Arts District of Portland in May 2007. Read More...
