I’m joining NARAL Pro-Choice America as a member of their board of directors, and I’m excited to work with their new initiatives to include young people.
Jessica ValentiThe NARAL Pro-Choice America table at the Baltimore Pride rally in 2010. (Flickr user: .m.e.c.) Fun fact: In 2004, I was a blogger with NARAL Pro-Choice America. They brought me on to write about the election, and I liked them so much I stayed on for a while, blogging and launching their Blog for Choice campaign. Now, almost nine years later, I’m working with NARAL again in a totally different and even more exciting role: as a new member of their Board of Directors. I’m especially thrilled because I’m joining the organization just a few months into the tenure of NARAL Pro-America’s dynamic new president (and my Nation colleague!) Ilyse Hogue.
NARAL Pro-Choice America has an incredible legacy, but like other mainstream pro-choice organizations, it has had a fraught history with young people—something I haven’t been shy about pointing out. Too many entrenched pro-choice leaders and organizations have perpetuated the myth that young people don’t care about access to abortion, or that they take their rights for granted. As someone who has been working with young people (and a recently young person myself!) I know nothing could be further from the truth. The future of this movement is young people, the work they’re doing, and the innovative ways they’re thinking about reproductive justice and health.
I believe NARAL Pro-Choice America, under Ilyse’s leadership, is fully on board with this reality and working hard to help in any way they can. From their long-standing work helping to elect pro-choice representatives and defeating anti-choice legislation to their newer initiatives on young people—I have tremendous faith in NARAL and their new vision for our pro-choice future. (I also think the fact that NARAL would embrace a board member who has been critical of the organization in the past speaks volumes about their commitment.)
I don’t expect that my new role at NARAL Pro-Choice America will impact my writing here, but if I write about NARAL’s work in any of my pieces, I will remind readers of my relationship in the interest of transparency. I’m incredibly excited about this new role and eager to work with NARAL and Ilyse to curb the assault on reproductive rights, and starting thinking about what a progressive, pro-choice future might look like.
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Jessica ValentiTwitterJessica Valenti is the author of Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth about Parenting and Happiness. She has also written three other books on feminism, including The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women, which was recently made into a documentary. She is editor of the award-winning anthology Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape and the founder of Feministing.com, which Columbia Journalism Review calls “head and shoulders above almost any writing on women’s issues in mainstream media.” Jessica was the recipient of the 2011 Hillman Journalism Prize and was called one of the Top 100 Inspiring Women in the world by The Guardian.