A student political organization at the University of Texas is hoping to change the tenor of the abortion debate by staging a play based on real-life stories of women who have experienced it. Titled Out of Silence: Abortion Stories from the 1 in 3 Campaign, the play will be performed this Thursday evening on the UT campus.
The play is being produced by Texas Rising, a student group that advocates for progressive causes like abortion care access, voting rights, and LGBTQ equality. It claims the production will serve as a way for its audience to step outside the politicized rhetoric and social stigma that surround the issue and instead focus on the stories, circumstances, and hard choices made by real women.
Out of Silence consists of a series of vignettes adapted from stories posted on the 1 in 3 Campaign’s website by women recalling their personal experience with abortion. The campaign provides the script and rights to perform the play for free so that student advocacy groups can stage productions of it on their own campuses.
Texas Rising’s production comes as a response to recent Republican-led efforts to introduce legislation restricting access to abortion in Texas and across the country, as well as to an event in March organized by the 1 in 3 Campaign in which women read their abortion stories publicly on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Out of Silence will be performed one night only, Thu., May 4, 6-8pm, at the Black Box Theater in the Student Activity Center on the UT campus. Admission is free with a suggested donation of $5 to the Lilith Fund, a nonprofit that provides small grants for low-income women in South and Central Texas who cannot afford abortion services.
This article appears in April 28 • 2017.