‘Being denied an abortion broke my confidence in myself as a mother’

When was the last time you read a book that was truly incendiary? That offered a viewpoint you had genuinely never heard before?

 

In this digital age, so few untackled taboos remain. From sexuality to periods to menopause, the realities of womanhood are increasingly debated in the open, the pins of misplaced propriety being gradually knocked down one by one. And yet, how often have you heard a woman speak of being denied an abortion, forced to carry a child she’s not sure she can provide for, only to be denied adequate healthcare when that child is born unwell?

 

Were you to picture such a situation, where would it take place? Zimbabwe? Poland? Were you to picture this woman, who would she be? I can’t imagine you’d conjure American Christa Parravani, bestselling author, liberal New York native, Columbia graduate, university professor and mother of two children, and then three. For Parravani is that woman, her third child, a son named Keats, the baby she initially sought to terminate. And now, in Loved and Wanted, she is turning the page on a taboo of motherhood few have dared to tackle.

 

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