Shawna & Lupine Interview

Shawna:
I’m here at an unknown location with Lupine, and we’re going to start our first interview for the book about abortion for kids. So my first question for Lupine is … And I don’t know why I’m looking down in front of me. I should look at Lupine. Hi. Lupine, do you identify as a mother?

Lupine:
Yes, I do.

Shawna:
Yeah. How come?

Lupine:
One, I have two children who call me mother or mom, and, two, because I have maternalistic instincts. I like to take care of people.

Shawna:
Were you pregnant to have one or both of them, these children?

Lupine:
What’s-

Shawna:
Were you pregnant to have these children?

Lupine:
Yes, yes. I did have both of them through my body, yes.

Shawna:
Through your body. Yeah, I know. I’m trying to think of the words for these things. Were you ever pregnant before or after, or have you had other pregnancies before?

Lupine:
Yes, yes. I’ve been pregnant a total of four times. The first time, I had an abortion, and then the second time was with my first daughter. The third time, I had a miscarriage, and then the fourth time, I had my second daughter.

Shawna:
So is that something you ever talk to your kids about? Do they know about it?

Lupine:
As we’re talking about this, I have never talked to anybody, really, about it, other than some friends when we were having conversations about it. I don’t recall if I ever even talked about the miscarriage with them, which makes me think perhaps it would be an interesting conversation to have.

Shawna:
Yeah, yeah. I know you’re so close with your daughters, and it seems like they would enjoy that conversation. I don’t know if enjoy is the right word, but it seems like that would be a [crosstalk 00:01:44]-

Lupine:
They would want to know something like that. Maybe one of them would not exist if that miscarriage hadn’t happened, right?

Shawna:
Yeah, it’s so interesting.

Lupine:
Yeah.

Shawna:
In thinking about it now, you haven’t talked to anyone about it, but if you were going to talk about it, can you picture how you would talk to them about the miscarriage or the abortion, how it might come up?

Lupine:
Well, I think I would talk to them about it probably in two different contexts, one in just the context of biologically speaking, this is what your body does and this is how you as a woman manage your body but then, also, I think from a maybe sex ed kind of context of this is something that can happen to you and you may not be ready for it. People are always like, “Be careful who you marry,” but I say be careful who you have kids with because you can divorce somebody and never talk to them again but not if you have a baby with that person.

Shawna:
Right. There’s always co-parenting, even if they’re not a very-

Lupine:
Even if they suck and they never come back, that’s always a specter. So I think that to really think about that do you want two kids kind of thing sometimes, that’s just the two angles that I would go at having that conversation and that I’m thinking I probably should.

Shawna:
I was asking you before, but have you ever seen a book for kids about abortion or miscarriage even? Have you seen anything like that that you would read or use as a resource or pull into a conversation?

Lupine:
I don’t recall. I think sometimes, maybe in some books, it’s mentioned as a … I can’t remember if it’s in that other book we were talking about, if there’s a little … Usually, it’s a little snippet, like, “This is something that can happen, is you” … Not for kids, no.

Shawna:
As someone who has expertise in this area in children’s literature and being a librarian, if you were to check out a book, what would you want it to have? What would you want to read to your kids or for yourself or your family? What would you like to see?

Lupine:
I think I would like to see something about both a very factual presentation of what this is because kids are going to ask questions. They’re going to ask questions about miscarriage. They’re going to ask questions about abortion because they hear it all the time. I think just the idea of what is it, why would people do it, why would people not do it, how are men involved in this. I mean, there’s-

Shawna:
Amen. Amen.

Lupine:
Yeah. I feel like one of the things that’s always missing from the conversation … There’s always lots of men who tell us not to do it and that we shouldn’t do it, but where are the men … What is their role when that is something you do? You teach always the woman goes in, she does this whole thing, she makes this whole decision because she’s the one most affected by it, and I feel like that’s a piece that’s missing. I don’t know if that’s involved in the children’s part of it, but I think just something that … As a librarian, I often get questions for things, and I’ll discover there’s a hole in the literature because there’s no book about this. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens often enough, and I think this is one of those areas where there’s a hole.

Shawna:
So kind of thinking about it five to eight, we talked about some things you’d include. What are some things you would leave out?

Lupine:
That’s a good question. I feel like the things I would probably leave out or at least be very vague about are if it’s something like it’s a case of rape or incest. You’re not putting that kind of graphic-

Shawna:
Right. It’s a picture book.

Lupine:
Yeah. And just having it be like, “There are times when”-

Shawna:
Right, I’m not going to say, “And sometimes nine-year-olds get raped.”

Lupine:
Yeah. And then they get pregnant, and then what are you going to do?

Shawna:
Oh God, I can barely process that. Yeah.

Lupine:
No, it’s horrifying. Yeah. So I think I would keep it not super graphic but just factual, just like a sex book for kids isn’t really talking about all of the different things that go in with that. It’s just a story of, “This is something that happens with your body, these are choices you can make,” kind of thing.

Shawna:
Then what are some ideas about making it inclusive to everyone’s experience? My feeling is I’ve always been presented the idea of abortion especially and miscarriage, too, and pregnancy in this really heterosexist point of view, and I feel like that’s what we talk to children about. It’s always this, “Oops, you got pregnant,” and that is not necessarily the narrative that I want to present. I want it to be a really inclusive narrative, and I’m wondering, how do we include LGBTQ experience? How can it include single mothers? I want to be able to somehow talk about everybody’s experience.

Lupine:
That’s a good question. It’s hard to be inclusive and not always be like, “I know I left something out.” But thinking about ways that you can do almost case studies or something maybe or … I don’t know.

Shawna:
My example is we’d always been taught that … It’s like [Bernie 00:07:57] always said, “Women’s right to” … Everyone’s always, “Women’s right to choose,” and then very recently I learned in working with Shout Your Abortion that not only women get pregnant, and I felt so stupid that this had never occurred to me before. Nobody had given me the language for that. So they say, “Women and people who can get pregnant,” and I really love that, and I’ve been remembering to use that when I’m talking.

Lupine:
Yeah, that’s a really good point.

Shawna:
So it’s things like that that I’m trying to remember.

Lupine:
Yes.

Shawna:
Even when I was asking you if you identify as a mother, for me, because that’s how I identify, that’s who my audience is, are mothers with children who maybe either want to start a conversation about their own abortions or miscarriage or pregnancy or their experience of pregnancy. But I don’t want to leave out trans and nonbinary people. I’m wondering even maybe there are people who have had babies, had their own babies, and they don’t identify as mothers.

Lupine:
Absolutely.

Shawna:
I’m really curious about all, and I don’t want to leave any parents out, but, to me, it’s more about the experience of women and people who can get pregnant.

Lupine:
Yes. Well, yeah. When push comes to shove, the person who’s actually housing this being for nine months is the person who’s going to be most affected, and that isn’t to say that the other parent, the other half of this equation, isn’t affected, but it does feel like when they’re like, “Women’s right to choose,” you’re kind of leaving out this other person, which-

Waiter:
Do you guys want another glass of wine for happy hour or something?

Lupine:
We’re okay.

Waiter:
You’re okay?

Lupine:
Yeah, thanks.

Waiter:
You’re welcome.

Lupine:
I didn’t know it was happy hour.

Shawna:
We do want more wine, but we got to finish the interview first.

Lupine:
Yeah. And drive home.

Shawna:
Yeah.

Lupine:
But I think as part of leaving the other person who is also involved in this chemical reaction out is that it alleviates them of responsibility and it alleviates them of any … It’s a common narrative throughout everything. Pretty soon, mothers, we complain a lot how we’re taking all of the load, but we kind of make that happen by saying, “Well, I’m a mother, and so I’m deciding.” How do you make that also part of the other person’s decision, too?

Shawna:
Well, that’s what’s been really missing in all of this conversation. All these women are standing up, but you aren’t seeing a lot of cis men who are being the ones with the sperm talking about how, oops, they’ve caused these pregnancies people didn’t want. It’s a children’s book, so I don’t really need all of that, but I don’t want it to just be about some immaculate conception where all of the sudden, “Oh, I got pregnant, but I don’t want a baby.”

Lupine:
The Lord is great.

Shawna:
Yes, exactly. So I’m trying to find a way to encompass that.

Lupine:
Well, I read … There was some post on Facebook not too long ago. I don’t remember who posted it. It might’ve been you. I don’t know. But it was the man who had driven his partner to the center to have an abortion and how he felt about it. I don’t know. There’s a little bit of, “Who cares?” But we should care in some cases because if we want it to be a partnership, it needs to be a partnership. But I also recognize that sometimes it does not need to be a partnership. So it’s fine for somebody to say, “I want to do this really big job, but I don’t have to stick around for it.”

Shawna:
Yes. So it seems like you’ve given abortion a lot of thought. I know one of your daughters is in middle school, and so I’m really curious because I know you well enough to know you’re an open person to talk. I’m just really curious how it’s never come up with her.

Lupine:
Well, because of the type of child that she is.

Shawna:
Do you feel like she’ll make it bigger in her head or something like-

Lupine:
No. She’s one of those kids where she does not … She’ll ask a question, and if the answer is longer than a minute, she regrets asking the question. Many times, she’s like, “Ugh, okay, I’m sorry I asked,” because I don’t know how to explain coup in just-

Shawna:
Yeah, coup is not [inaudible 00:12:27].

Lupine:
I’m sorry. I think she’s at the very beginning of puberty, and I’ve brought things up to her. We’ve talked about having our periods. We’ve talked about sex, just in very basic … I left all the books in her room.

Shawna:
Oh, I know. You would, yes.

Lupine:
She does not want to have a conversation about it at this time. I think she’s at the point where she’s just like, “This isn’t going to happen to me. I’m still a kid.” I remember feeling that way when I was a kid, like, “I just want to be a kid. This seems like too much.” I remember being really angry about it when it happened, like, “I just want to play with my paper dolls. Leave me alone.” So I kind of feel like she’s in that. She’s just not quite ready to delve into that yet.

Shawna:
That’s kind of what we experience at home, too, because since Beezus has identified as a lesbian from such a young age, she doesn’t picture herself getting accidentally pregnant, and it’s hard for her to understand. I think I hear that a lot from kids. Amelia from Shout Your Abortion, she did this really cool video with all these kids. They looked 12, early teens range, and they were asking her all these questions, and most of it, the kids really had this idea of, “Why were you being so sloppy?” That’s their whole thing, and she had to explain to them, “No, you guys have been told all these things about how you just have to do A, B, and C and you won’t get pregnant when you have sex, but it doesn’t really work like that all the time.” So that’s the message we give kids, is like, “Practice safe sex and everything’s fine,” and we don’t really say there’s way more things that can happen.

Lupine:
Well, it’s really confusing because the impression that I had growing up is, “If that guy gets anywhere near me with that thing, I am going to end up with quintuplets or something.” It was like, “We will need to be sheathed in every layer of protection.” On the other hand, then you do try to get pregnant and it’s really freaking hard.

Shawna:
It’s hard. It’s really hard. I know. That’s the thing.

Lupine:
So you’re like, “How did people accidentally” … But then I know people who were-

Shawna:
Some people are super fertile.

Lupine:
… on birth control, got pregnant, and I know people that can’t get pregnant even though there’s no reason.

Shawna:
Oh, yeah, yeah. We tried and tried and tried and tried and tried, and it took so fucking long. But the first time that I actually didn’t try, that’s when I got pregnant, but I didn’t want to yet. So your body is really kind of a mystery.

Lupine:
So it’s like luck of the draw. This is the exact right time, the exact right speediness of the sperm.

Shawna:
It’s a lottery, yeah.

Lupine:
It’s like you can’t say, “Well, if you take these precautions, it won’t happen,” or, “If you don’t do anything, it’ll happen,” because neither of those things are really true. So then, at some point, you feel lied to on either side of that. Either it’s really hard to get pregnant or it’s super easy to get pregnant, and both of those things aren’t necessarily true, but you don’t know if you’re that person who … Anyway.

Shawna:
Yes. And we never describe it that way to children at all. It’s really like A plus B, you’re pregnant, man.

Lupine:
Yeah. When they’re teaching sex ed and stuff, they’re being very worst case scenario about everything, about drugs, about everything. That’s when you feel like pushing the envelope because you’re like, “Well, that wasn’t really true about marijuana and that wasn’t really true about this, so what are you” … It’s hard to know how honest to be.

Shawna:
Well, and then … Okay, using the drug explanation, so now high school kids, we had the local kids who had their fentanyl overdoses, and now it’s like everything is scarier. I feel like I grew up in this gray area time but our kids right now, they’re going up in this very drastic time. So I don’t know. From my point of view, the whole idea of doing this is just normalizing a human experience, and so I feel like there are several things that can happen when you become pregnant, right? You can have a miscarriage. You can choose to terminate the pregnancy and end the abortion. You could have a baby, but I also have friends who their babies didn’t make it. They were born dead, or they died a few days after. I haven’t even thought in my head if that’s something that I would want to include, too, but it seems like … Are there other outcomes of pregnancy that I’m not thinking of?

Lupine:
Well, there’s also the you will die if you continue with this pregnancy, and so then you have to decide.

Shawna:
Have to, yeah.

Lupine:
I know somebody who was diagnosed with cancer when she was just a few months pregnant.

Shawna:
Oh, God.

Lupine:
So she had to make the decision, do I … She had surgery. Do I wait through the pregnancy and then go through treatment? Luckily for her, it was a very slow-growing cancer, and so she was able to continue with the pregnancy-

Shawna:
She was? Oh, she-

Lupine:
… and survive.

Shawna:
She lived and the baby lived?

Lupine:
Yeah. Yeah.

Shawna:
Oh, wow.

Lupine:
I think the baby’s 20-something now, so … Yeah.

Shawna:
Okay, see, now, this is the other thing. I noticed that, with my language, it can be a baby or it can not be a baby, and that’s something that I notice about myself. It’s all that idea of the fruition of it, if someone wants it to be a baby, it gets to be a baby in my eyes, but if they don’t want it to be a baby, then it’s not a baby. That’s something that I either have to reconcile or I just have to …

Lupine:
That’s tricky, yeah.

Shawna:
I don’t know if you ever saw … So in one of those moms groups that were in Facebook, there was some mom that posted this article about the New York abortion [crosstalk 00:18:22]-

Lupine:
Oh, yes. Yeah.

Shawna:
So she posted that, and she was very much against abortion. I was really surprised at all the people who came on who were not super … I feel like I’m a pro-abortion person. I think it’s a fine choice.

Lupine:
I wish more people would. No, I’m just kidding.

Shawna:
Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I think it’s a fine choice. But there were so many people who came on and described these really horrible choices that they had to make because they went to the doctor at a certain number of weeks or months or whatever and something really terrible was going on with their baby and they had to terminate that pregnancy. They were talking about how when you shame me about abortion, how triggering that was, and that was a whole group of people I had never thought about because that’s not an experience I myself had. When I was pregnant with Minnow, they gave me the option to … I was 12 weeks pregnant, and they gave me the option of terminating that pregnancy or going on this medication that was $3200 a month. I know. And I didn’t have insurance. But it’s so funny how that’s the decision. No, Minnow was a baby, and so I bought myself the medication for one week and decided how I was going to make it work.

Lupine:
Damn, that’s-

Shawna:
So I quit my job and got on Medicaid was the answer to that, but-

Lupine:
Yeah. Well, I mean, those are real … That’s something that people don’t think about, is the whole healthcare issue can really affect … How would you make that decision without healthcare? If you had healthcare, there would be no decision, right?

Shawna:
Yes. No, yes.

Lupine:
You wouldn’t be in that position to make that decision, but if you had healthcare … Anyway.

Shawna:
I know, and the doctors, that’s the way they presented it. They literally came in and they’re like, “We need you to be on this blood thinner,” and they told me how much it cost. It was like a Sophie’s choice. They literally were like, “We see that you don’t have insurance. Do you want us to send in a social worker? Here’s the choice, and we’ll come back in the morning and you tell us.” The interesting thing to me was the doctor assumed that I was going to have an abortion. When she came back in the morning, she was like, “Well, I’m sure you made your decision. Should we schedule the procedure?” I was like, “Yeah, I made my decision. I’ve got $1200. I’m going to buy this week’s medication, and then we’ll figure it out from there.” It was funny because she was like, “Oh. Oh, good. Okay, good.” So it’s like she was rooting for Minnow, but she couldn’t say.

Lupine:
But from her perspective, she’s thinking about a person racking up thousands of dollars of debt before they have this baby.

Shawna:
Yeah. Because we were at … What’d I say, 11 to 12? We were somewhere in between 10 and 12 weeks. I can’t remember. So how much money was that, $3200 a month. So she was pragmatic, yeah.

Lupine:
You can’t fault somebody for making that decision. You’re going to bankrupt your whole entire family? That’s fine for people to say, “I sure wouldn’t,” but you can’t make that decision.

Shawna:
No. No, because we could be living in our car, and, obviously, that-

Lupine:
Which would be super fun with a dead infant.

Shawna:
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Lupine:
Yeah. So I think those are probably the four main things.

Shawna:
Four. Yes, right. Yeah, yeah.

Lupine:
You plan it or you don’t plan it, but you keep it. You terminate it, or you have to terminate it.

Shawna:
It terminates itself.

Lupine:
It terminates itself, or you’re forced to make a choice like that. Yeah.

Shawna:
I keep coming back to this idea of … Because we’re calling it it, which even makes it a person somehow to me, and it’s like I don’t want to be like the pro-lifers that make it be a person, and so I have to think of some language that differentiates that. In the Shout Your Abortion book, a person I really admire wrote about [inaudible 00:22:23]. They wrote about this aspect of Japanese culture of going to spirits, and so babies who don’t make it just go to the spirits. They have this really cool way of talking about this baby was not meant to make it in the world and you’re going to send them off to the spirits without you or ahead of you or whatever. I sort of wish we had something like that in Western culture.

Lupine:
Well, the LDS religion has spirit babies.

Shawna:
Yes, yes, yes.

Lupine:
But those are waiting for you to have them, and that’s why it’s really important that you not terminate pregnancies, right, because some other person will have that baby.

Shawna:
Yes, but they’re waiting to come, and if you perform all the things, then you get to be reunited with them in the after … Yes, that religion is very interesting to me, very interesting.

Lupine:
Yeah. Well, I mean, for me, I feel like the beginnings of pregnancy is like a chemical reaction. These things happen and these things … and it’s a miracle, whatever. I mean, it’s amazing what our body can do. Something on Twitter, somebody posted in there, “My body: I can create a fully-formed human in nine months, me: how long is it going to take for my sprained ankle to heal? Seven years, and it’ll never be the same.”

Shawna:
Never be the same.

Lupine:
It’s amazing what happens or how badly your body can screw up. But I feel like it’s just things working together the way that they’re scientifically and chemically supposed to, and then it becomes this other thing. So I feel like it starts out as just it’s something there, and then, depending on how far along you go, then it becomes something else.

Shawna:
But it seems like it has something to do with your will. You will it to become something else, someone, will it to become someone. I don’t know.

Lupine:
Yeah. Well, because there are people who, for whatever reason, never feel attached to that. Even when it’s a full-on living, breathing infant outside their body, it’s still just nothing to them.

Shawna:
Okay, so that’s another thing. I think, before, when I was thinking about how to answer the question from the child when a child asks, “Why did you have an abortion,” I guess my immediate reaction was my own experience by saying I wasn’t ready to be a parent, right? But then do you feel like it’s important … Because there’s this whole group of mothers that we talked about who they had to have an abortion to stay alive. Do you feel like that’s somehow a sentence to include in there, like, “I had this abortion because of this, but some mothers have to have an abortion because their wellbeing is at stake. They’re afraid they might die. There won’t be healthy outcomes for them and the child. They won’t both make it.”

Lupine:
Yeah. Well, I think that’s an important distinction to make personally because I think when you’re in that situation, there’s plenty of people who don’t feel ready to have a baby, I think most of us.

Shawna:
Yeah, and they still go through with it, right?

Lupine:
They tell you to take this thing home from the hospital and you’re like-

Shawna:
You still don’t feel right.

Lupine:
… “Are you sure you don’t want to send somebody with me because you don’t know that I’m going to be able to do this.” I always say if you feel like you have enough money and you’re ready to have a baby, if you wait for that, you’re never going to feel it.

Shawna:
You’ll never have one. Right, right.

Lupine:
And some people are like, “Well, this isn’t in my plan, but fuck it.”

Shawna:
Right. Yeah, yeah, no. I have plenty friend who are like that, whether it’s God’s plan, idea or this opportunity presented itself to me.

Lupine:
Yeah. It’s like, “Well, okay, I’m going to roll with this. I feel like I can do this.” Then there are people who it’s like, “This is going to be disastrous for me, and I cannot carry through with this.” I think there’s a difference between those two things, and there are people who should not have children.

Shawna:
But they don’t always recognize that.

Lupine:
Yeah. And they’re pressured into thinking this is going to change their life and it’ll get their shit together, but it never does. I mean, not never, but it often doesn’t. So I think that the idea of, yes, I’m not ready to be a mom, that’s your personal decision, but then there are outside factors, like I’m going to die or I have to spend thousands of dollars on medication.

Shawna:
Yeah. I feel like I’m reading this story … So on Shout Your Abortion’s Instagram, almost daily, they post somebody because you can just go on their website and you submit your story and then they put it … I feel like I’ve read so many stories about the person’s in a relationship that was very abusive and it feels like … That’s not something I had experienced, but I feel like that’s something that comes up a lot, and the person, they know somewhere deep inside of themselves, that it’s not going to get better by having a baby, that things are just going to-

Lupine:
Well, God, and then you’re putting a child into that situation, and, again, you’re stuck with that person.

Shawna:
You’re stuck with that person, co-parenting, yeah.

Lupine:
Yeah. That’s also another way for someone to have power over you, because they know you’re not … That’s real. I don’t know if you need to include that in the book, but-

Shawna:
Yeah. I know. I feel like there’s some themes that I don’t have to include, but I feel like the idea of … I spoke at this anti-Kavanaugh rally, and with the Kavanaugh thing, they were all like, “These people are for abortion on demand.” It’s so funny because I had never realized that about myself, that I am pro-abortion on demand, and they kept talking about that. Yeah, I think that anyone who thinks that they should have an abortion should have an abortion, so I feel like somehow I want to be able to convey the story of abortion on demand. But I feel like, now, after talking to you, I also need to draw on this other a little bit more melancholy, a little bit sadder aspect that not everyone has an abortion just because they want to because I feel like [crosstalk 00:28:45]-

Lupine:
Right. I mean, I think there’s a lot of … You don’t just go, “Cool, I’m going to do this.” Most people don’t. I’m sure there are people. But I feel like it’s always a decision based on-

Shawna:
It’s always a decision.

Lupine:
… a million different factors, and I think if you include more maybe … Like you were saying, I looked at it from where I was sitting, and it’s very easy to forget that there’s all these other reasons. I think the people who are believing I would never have an abortion are in a great … They’re not in that position where it would endanger their life to bring a child into their world, and, yeah, that’s great, but you have to think about the fact that it’s not just your perspective. That’s awesome, that if you got accidentally pregnant, you would not have an abortion. Good for you. You get to make that decision. But you can’t tell somebody that they’re going to be put into danger and I want you to go stand in the middle of the street and let cars drive by you and be okay with it.

Shawna:
Whenever I hear a thing about that, about this idea of people just thinking about it from their own perspective, I think of this episode of … What was it? I think it was two episodes of The Daily that I listened to, and they were in two states, in Missouri and Ohio, which are right next to each other. It was a married couple, and they were both abortion providers, and one of them worked in one state and one worked in the other because they lived right on the border. So the laws were different, and they were both talking about things. The reporter who was doing the podcast was at their house and talking and like, “Well, what’s the shadiest thing that you’ve ever seen?” I think both of them had experienced having children as young as nine who are pregnant and then having to give those children abortions.

Shawna:
It’s like we both have children that age, and so I can’t even listen to that without … To me, that’s the most heartbreaking thing I could think of, and so I always feel it’s just like people who are kind of homophobic until their sister is gay or whatever. It’s like how could any parent really not … Who are these people who could really make their nine-year-old carry their rapist’s pregnancy to term? I don’t really understand. I feel like that’s so far to the extreme that I can’t-

Lupine:
Well, I want to believe that those are people who are very extreme.

Shawna:
I hope so. I hope so. I drove past a car today, and I took a picture of it. They had one bumper sticker that said co-exist, and then they had four more that were about abortion, and it was like, “Abortion, the original child abuse,” and all these other ones. I was just like, “Why are you”-

Lupine:
Who are you co-existing with?

Shawna:
Yeah, who are they co-existing with? I was up in White Center, and I kept taking pictures of their car, and I was looking at them. I was wishing that I could get out of the car and have a conversation, but it doesn’t really work that way. Anyway, these are the people I’m most curious about, and I don’t know any people like that. [crosstalk 00:31:57]-

Lupine:
Yeah.

Shawna:
… and I have these interviews planned. I actually only know people that pretty much think along the same lines as myself.

Lupine:
Well, I can introduce you to some people.

Shawna:
Okay. Are they in Idaho, back home in Idaho?

Lupine:
Yeah. Well, no, there’s some here that I know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t even conceive to know what it would be like. I try to think about my values and what my child could do to make me be like, “I got to go, I can’t talk to you anymore,” aside from if my kids became Nazis or something. But I still feel like I would be like, “Look, you’re wrong.” But I feel like that’s sort of a good, not a good but a … People who are against abortion or against homosexuality feel as strongly about that as I do feel about Nazis. So I feel like, even though I know I’m right, I try to put myself into that place of if my child were to do something so abhorrent to me, how would I react?

Shawna:
It’s funny to me that you play that game because I actually don’t play that game, but both of my daughters do, and they’ve been playing it since they were very little. The first time Beezus ever did it, she was three and she was reading that Frances Is … Which is the bedtime one, where she won’t go bed.

Lupine:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Shawna:
She’s spanked because she won’t go to bed.

Lupine:
Bedtime for Frances, yeah.

Shawna:
Bedtime for Frances. Okay. So she’s reading that, and she’s like, “Mommy, will you still love me if” … That’s their game. They both do it. “Mommy, will you still love me if I put broken glass in your slippers?” She was three. That was the first time she said it. So they keep doing it, and I always wonder if it’s because I have an estranged relationship with my own mother. Because they do this game a lot, and I come back with, “Even if you murdered someone, I would be very sad, I would be very disappointed, I would try to do something to support the family that lost someone, but it’s like I can’t stop loving you. I’ll always love you.” So they always say the things, but then, in my mind, I think, “Well, if you were this horrible [crosstalk 00:34:06]”-

Lupine:
If you become-

Shawna:
Harvey Weinstein. I don’t know. Who could I stop loving?

Lupine:
Yeah, or you become like Kellyanne Conway or something.

Shawna:
Yes. Who could I stop loving?

Lupine:
Yeah. But I don’t think you could stop loving them.

Shawna:
I don’t think I could stop loving them, but it could be at the point where you have to terminate your relationship, like you don’t talk on a daily basis, but I don’t think you ever can stop loving them.

Lupine:
Yeah. Yeah, I think about that a lot with people whose kids have done really horrible things, and people are like, those mothers, “I love him, he’s my son.” I was like, “Of course she does. That’s something that you do, and that’s real and normal, and you’re going to love your children no matter what horrible monsters they become, God forbid.”

Shawna:
Right. Even if they protested abortion clinics, I would still love them.

Lupine:
Yes. But you always just hope that they … I think about what would it be like to be the child of a parent that’s always hoping you’ll come around and not be gay anymore. But that’s not abhorrent and horrible the way … You know what I mean?

Shawna:
Yes, I know. I know. I know.

Lupine:
It’s hard to … What if you joined a cult?

Shawna:
Okay, so this is all for a different book. I’m trying to think, is there anything I should do to wrap up this? Is there anything that you want me to know that we haven’t talked about already?

Lupine:
I’m super excited about this book.

Shawna:
Just to see what comes of this?

Lupine:
Yes. I’m envisioning it in my head. So you’ve talked about the photographs and stuff, and I’m just envisioning in my head just a very gentle … Like, “Why do people have abortions? What happens? Your body does this.” A just very factual, very light coating of why people might do it with questions in the back, discussion questions.

Shawna:
That’s what I’m thinking, too, and it’s really playful and loving. I want to have a little body positivity in there. I feel like I want to encompass a lot of things. The idea of having photographs of families is really important to me.

Lupine:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). And some of those families don’t have children. Some of them might have a dog.

Shawna:
A dog.

Lupine:
Somebody like that.

Shawna:
Yeah, a dog. Yeah.

Lupine:
Yeah. Or an extended family of me and all my chosen family. I mean, the other option is that you have the baby and you put it up for adoption, and so then there’s the families that get those babies, right?

Shawna:
And that’s always hard in the whole abortion thing, too, is because my sister … That’s why my parents had my sister, is because her bio mom had three children and she knew she didn’t have financial support. So that’s one of those things where someone like me who is an abortion on demand person, you’re like, “Oh, but I’m so glad that my sister was born.” There’s so many things that are so interesting.

Lupine:
Yes. But I always counter that with there’s a lot of people that you don’t know that don’t exist.

Shawna:
Yeah. There’s a lot of people I don’t know that don’t exist. Yeah, it’s totally true.

Lupine:
You know what I mean? If I had not had a miscarriage, I would not have my second daughter. I would have some other kid.

Shawna:
Yeah, well, that’s what we talk about with our kids, too, that we had the pregnancies and the outcomes of the pregnancies we had so that we have the two children that we do have. Our kids look so similar, and they’re very similar. The five pregnancies that I’ve had are all with the same partner, and so it’s like it’s very possible that any combination of those that we had end up with children, they could’ve been very similar to these children. It’s impossible to know because of all the combinations of things.

Lupine:
I remember somebody, that was their argument for not wanting abortion. It’s like, “I was adopted, and if my mom had aborted me, I wouldn’t exist.” I’m like, “So what?” I could’ve not existed if my parents hadn’t had sex on that day. So I think that’s a stupid argument because you don’t know what you don’t know.

Shawna:
You don’t know what you don’t know. I talk about that all the time because my parents really shouldn’t have had me. It was a really poor choice. Then when I say that, my kids get really upset because that means they wouldn’t be born. I say the same thing. “Well, we just wouldn’t even know. We just wouldn’t even know.” So-

Lupine:
Or you could’ve been hit by a car when you’re 15.

Shawna:
Yes, all those things.

Lupine:
I mean, there’s a number of times when I could’ve died and didn’t, and then my children would not exist.

Shawna:
Yes, all those things. It’s just a blink of an eye.

Lupine:
Or I could’ve not met their father and met a different man.

Shawna:
And maybe that would’ve been a good thing, too.

Lupine:
Yes, and maybe I’d still be married. I don’t know. But then I would have different children. That’s like trying to … I don’t know. I feel like it puts too much importance on you specifically. Yeah, you’re not so great. There’s a lot of things happening here, you know?

Shawna:
In the whole universe, you’re not even a piece of sand in the universe.

Lupine:
Yeah. Yeah. And you can be really glad that somebody was born and alive and appreciate them, but there could be somebody else really, really awesome that you don’t know that wasn’t born. Oh, well. Or somebody really horrible. Roald Dahl wrote a bunch of short stories that are really dark. You think his children’s books … His adult stuff is super dark.

Shawna:
Yeah, his children’s stuff is very dark.

Lupine:
Yeah. His adult stuff is … I’ll lend you my copy of this book. Anyways, there’s one where it’s this whole story about this woman and she’s giving birth. She’s just distraught because she’s lost so many babies and she just wants this baby to live, and there’s all these complications and she’s like, “Please, please, please, let this baby live.” The baby’s born, and she’s really happy, and it’s Hitler.

Shawna:
Oh my God.

Lupine:
So it’s like you’re reading this, you’re like, “Oh, shit.” You know? You don’t know.

Shawna:
Yeah. You don’t know.

Lupine:
There’s no … Yeah.

Shawna:
I think that’s the perfect place to end because I think that’s that idea, the thing I wanted to convey about children. When they see pregnancy, they think it’s a baby, but I think the whole point is you don’t know, right?

Lupine:
Yeah. Yeah.

Shawna:
I think that’s a good spot. Okay, thank you, Lupine.

Lupine:
Yeah.