What If Your Mother

Poetry. Judith Arcana, a reproductive rights activist formerly involved in Chicago's pre-Rose v. Wade underground abortion service, imbues her poetry, fiction and essays with the same ferocity, humor and passion that informs her activism. "It's a passionate rush of language, hope in a hard time, truth in the middle of lies. This poetry sparks and burns with the hidden language and stories of women"-Minnie Bruce Pratt.

"Arcana has written poems about a subject so complex and difficult that I could not imagine them being written…she tackles the whole range of situations and emotions….She’s articulated the impossible and…given us a way to think about what couldn’t have been thought." Toi Derricotte

"Lyric, varied, funny, moving, full of lively stories and authentic voices….this book will change the definition of political poetry." Annie Finch

"Judith Arcana's...words speak the clear, bloody truth of women's fight for reproductive freedom...taking readers...on a journey through...the unspoken and the unspeakable...the real and the inevitable...tell[ing] the real story about mothering, not the Hallmark version.... Jill Scott (review in Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering)

"This inspired collection…covers the gamut of reproductive issues from mothering to miscarriages and women’s bodies to babies…delivered by a true poet." Conscience, the magazine of Catholics for Choice

"The title poem of this book should be made into a poster and pinned up on the wall in every clinic in the United States." Peter Bours, MD