Please join Backline in welcoming our newest Board Member, Farah Diaz-Tello of National Advocates for Pregnant Women! Farah wrote the following introductory piece about why she joined the board.

I don't have to tell you how confusing or difficult all this reproduction business can be. The being pregnant and not wanting to be, not being pregnant and wanting to be, being pregnant and not being ready to parent... and that's just the pregnancy part! If you're pregnant and lucky enough to make it to carry to term - and not everyone is - birth has its own host of permutations and possibilities. Have you ever tried telling someone your birth story? If it's good, they'll generally be interested for about two minutes. If it was bad, one minute tops.

Here's a question: Why do we pretend that the above situations aren't just each of us in different points in our lives? And where are you supposed to turn if the only pregnancy narrative that we are allowed to entertain is that of getting pregnant, staying pregnant, then being utterly in love with the perfectly healthy baby we give birth to, and riding off into the beautiful sunset of parenthood?

As the vision of reproductive justice spreads, a word I am hearing more often is "full-spectrum," like the full-spectrum doulas who help women through births and abortions and pregnancy losses. It reflects recognition that pregnancy is not a singular path; it's a spectrum of possibilities. As we see a proliferation of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, many of which purport to be meeting women's needs, but instead exist solely to dissuade them from having abortions, to know that there actually is a place people can turn is no small thing.

This is why I have the most profound respect for the people who do the daily work of reproductive justice: the doctors, the midwives, the social workers, the organizers and activists... the people who are there for others in ways that I can't be. Ranking highest among these are the counselors, who have an ability to listen, just really listen with patience and without immediately trying to take up arms.

Backline is the only organization doing this work to provide full-spectrum emotional support for any aspect of pregnancy, parenting, abortion, or adoption. This is reproductive justice in action, and I couldn't be prouder that they've invited me to be on their board. I have really high hopes for Backline as we take the organization to the next level, and I know that one of my favorite organizations will be one of yours.  

Farah Diaz-Tello, JD, Staff Attorney, is a graduate of the City University of New York School of Law, where she was a Haywood Burns Fellow in Civil and Human Rights. Her work at National Advocates for Pregnant Women has focused on the rights to medical decision-making and birthing with dignity, and on using the international human rights framework to protect the humanity of pregnant women regardless of their circumstances. A proud Texan, she is an alumna of the University of Texas at Austin.