“The Abortion Monologues” Opens in Calgary

Following its 2009 premiere at NAF’s Annual Meeting, The Abortion Monologues is set to open today at Mount Royal University in Calgary. In a profile in this week’s Maclean’s, playwright Jane Cawthorne, a former women’s studies teacher who now writes full-time, discusses the show, which presents more than 20 fictional female characters’ experiences with abortion. “I felt that the public discussion on abortion was polarized, and didn’t reflect what goes on in the real lives of women,” says Cawthorne, who has volunteered with non-profit women’s health and reproductive rights groups for two decades. “Whatever you believe about abortion, at some point in the play, you will be forced to think again.”