”Can I see the fetus on the screen?”: Visualizing abortion experiences in Julia Hansen’s 'Two Lines = Pregnant' and 'It Grows'

Two Lines = Pregnant, published by RFSU, is cartoonist Julia Hansen’s own abortion story, adapted from her debut graphic novel Det Växer (It Grows). This graphic novel is one of the few pieces of Swedish abortion-positive educational materials that visually engages with the realities of the abortion experience, from vulnerable conversations with loved ones, to bodily functions, to fetal images. Without essentializing abortion as a uniform experience, the story takes Julia, and the reader, through a step-by-step process of many "unknowns" of abortion: what to do if one is pregnant and wants to terminate, what an abortion can feel like and how the body might respond, who else might be involved in the abortion experience, and what a medical abortion actually looks like. These representations of unknowns accompany a variety of emotions that Julia goes through–confusion, anger, curiosity, relief–without ever showing regret. This Gender Lunch presentation will highlight how Hansen's portrayal of abortion in Two Lines = Pregnant serves to both show what an abortion experience actually looks like and the nuanced feelings around it, while challenging the stigma that keeps other abortion stories from mainstream discourse.

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