In the very first pages of Without Exception: Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood, and Freedom, Pam Houston (Deep Creek, Contents May Have Shifted) writes, "A book's first purpose is to lead its writer into a place much more emotionally complicated, much more fraught, more entangled, more layered, more confusing than she had expected.... That's how she knows she is doing it right." If we apply this definition of "doing it right" to the experience of the reader as well as the writer, it's abundantly clear that Without Exception is done right. Over the course of 60 "mini-chapters," Houston collects "facts and impressions in and around the subject of abortion," weaving the political history of reproductive freedoms in the United States with her personal experiences with abortion in a collection that is as appropriately tangled, layered, and complex as the issues she is writing about.
Houston outlines the short-lived history of abortion rights in the United States, lasting a mere "forty-nine years, five months, and two days" between the passing of Roe v. Wade in 1973 and its eventual fall with the Dobbs v. Jackson decision in 2022--a span of time that almost perfectly aligned with the span of Houston's own "reproductive life." She details the abortion landscape while Roe stood as U.S. law (a time during which the number of abortions performed annually did not increase, as detractors warned it would), and a post-Dobbs world. With sharp and lyrical prose, she illuminates data around the shrinking number of states where abortion is a protected and legal right, as well as the disproportionate impact this lack of availability has on people of color, low-income families, and individuals that hold other marginalized and intersecting identities. Without Exception is rife with facts but a far cry from a dry history of abortion rights; each element of this broader political and cultural history is important, relevant, and necessary for understanding the context of each of Houston's three abortions and her commitment to remain childless by choice.
This mix of the personal and the political is where Without Exception truly shines, as Houston writes with candor and urgency about her experience of abuse, abortion, and the freedom to choose her own path in life. "Feminism is every woman's right to her own story," reads the entirety of chapter 24, and this is Houston's: a timeless story of self-determination inextricably intertwined with a political moment in time, a personal reckoning that lays bare the heart of the fight for reproductive justice, and an urgent and heartfelt reminder to give and receive love and mercy to each other--and to ourselves. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer
Shelf Talker: A moving collection of essays weaves the political history of reproductive rights in the United States together with the author's personal abortion experience.