The Abortion Diarist

Melissa Madera, Ph.D.

Founder and Director | New York or (sometimes) on the road with the podcast

E-mail | Twitter | Instagram

Originally from Washington Heights, New York, Dr. Melissa Madera (a.k.a. the abortion diarist) is a  queer, first generation Dominican-American, and the Jill of all trades at The Abortion Diary. She is an independent consultant mainly working in the reproductive health, rights, and justice space. She is also a researcher on Project SANA (Self-managed Abortion Needs Assessment), an interdisciplinary research group at The University of Texas at Austin that researches self-managed abortion in the United States. She has worked as a special projects consultant at Plan C Pills. She is also the former Director of Research and Partnerships at Choix, a telehealth clinic founded by experienced family planning clinicians with a vision of using technology to expand access to abortion care. Melissa is also a Society of Family Planning 2019 Changemakers in Family Planning Awardee and a board member of inroads (the International Network for the Reduction of Abortion Discrimination and Stigma). An expert on abortion story-sharing and listening, she works to center the voices of people who have had abortions and end abortion stigma in all facets of her life. 

Melissa has traveled the world with her podcast, and is a story-sharer and (above all else) a dedicated story-listener.  She is also a recovering academic, multimedia historian, and full-spectrum doula. She has also been a high school teacher, adjunct college professor, and Gynecological Teaching Associate, and has trained in Restorative Therapeutic Yoga (as well as an Anusara Yoga 200 hour YTT), Thai Yoga Bodywork, and Reiki I.

Melissa is also the curator of “ar·ti·facts: abortion stories and histories,” a traveling multimedia exhibit. This exhibition gives voice to untold and silenced experiences through audio stories, images, and objects; ar·ti·facts gathered by Melissa over the past eight years for The Abortion Diary.  

Melissa created The Abortion Diary in the summer of 2013. Since then she has been running the project, and making its podcast out of pocket and as a labor of love. Her own abortion story and the deep impact sharing it (13 years later) had on her, her family, friends and complete strangers inspired her to create The Abortion Diary. Melissa travels across the country, and around the world creating spaces for personal abortion story-sharing, story listening, and capturing diverse abortion experiences; stories that are as different as the people who share them. She has travelled to 27 states across the United States, over 10 European cities, Canada, The Dominican Republic, and Thailand with the podcast. Since beginning the project in July 2013, she has listened to and recorded over 300 people share their reproductive experiences. These experiences are quite diverse across geographic location (36 U.S. states and 21 countries), socioeconomic background, age (18-85.5), ethnicity, race, religion, and gender, and span from the late 1950s to 2019. Melissa has been featured on the front page of  The Washington Post, on NPR's Weekend Edition,  a Q&A with Cosmopolitan Magazine,  Latina.com, ThePool.com, Rewire, Univision, MSNBC and The Daily Dot.

Melissa holds a B.A. in History from Baruch College (CUNY), a Master of Science in Social Studies Education from Pace University, and a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. in Latin American and Caribbean History from The State University of New York at Binghamton. Her research on gender, public health and reproductive practices in the Dominican Republic led her to become involved in the contemporary global movements for reproductive justice.  She was also the 2015-2016 Laura C. Harris Fellow in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Denison University, where she taught classes in Latinx Studies, and Reproductive Justice.

Melissa is currently writing a book based on her experiences traveling with The Abortion Diary in the U.S. and abroad, building community, and sharing abortion stories with strangers for this project, and curating a traveling multimedia exhibit, “ar·ti·facts: abortion stories and histories.” Her writing has been featured in Broadly, Self Magazine and Nursing Clio. You can find her recently published first-author paper on self-managed abortion at SSM - Qualitative Research in Health.

When she's not story-listening or working on all the other abortion diary things, she can be found practicing yoga, hanging with bees, swimming, knitting, reading and watching science fiction or exploring the great outdoors. You can also find information about Melissa at melissamaderaphd.com. 

Melissa is available for speaking engagements, artist talks, workshops, classroom visits, public lectures and conversations. Programming with the ar·ti·facts exhibit can vary. She works with audiences to engage with the exhibit, foster dialogue, and gather stories from their own communities. For more information, please e-mail her at melissa@theabortiondiary.com.