Dear readers,

When Trystanne suggested we publish a Womb Issue, I jumped for joy behind my Zoom screen and responded with a resounding yes. I can think of no better topic for the first issue of TrooRa that I sign on as associate editor.

After all, TrooRa aims to give voice to the voiceless. And among all the opinions about wombs, the people most affected rarely get heard.

I have a womb, and that fact has determined much of my life. My womb drives me crazy for five days a month (I have no excuse for the remaining twenty-five days). It is the reason I have been followed and threatened, overlooked and belittled. I have cursed it during cramps and pregnancy scares. I have cried over the lower belly fat that protects it for what we are told is our greatest purpose as women—to carry children—only to then be shamed for having that very fat.

One day, when I choose it, I hope my womb will also bring me great joy, as I bring a child into the world.

My relationship with my womb is complex, and I think many people who have one can relate to that feeling. It is “just another body part,” you could say. But it is also something that shapes how the world treats us, how many people build families, and how governments, religions, strangers, and entire systems try to control our choices. Everyone seems to have an opinion about it.

The womb is personal, yet constantly treated as common property. The womb is political, and policies are turning it into a battlefield. The womb is a symbol, and one that never gets to speak for itself.

In this issue, we give the Womb back its voice.

We speak with comedian Amber Ruffin about how her experience with uterine fibroids shaped her activism and transformed her from comedian into political commentator and advocate. Representative Sara Jacobs takes us inside the political fight for reproductive rights, while activist Loretta J. Ross reflects on decades of defining and defending them, from the other side of the protest sign.

We explore the womb as a symbol of safety and care through the rooms interior designer Medina King creates for neurodivergent children. We also confront the painful reality that for many, the womb is not a safe place at all, investigating environmental racism and its impact on maternal health.

Race, geography, class, disability, and politics all shape the experience of living with a womb. We examine how Black communities in the United States are reclaiming maternal healthcare after centuries of medical neglect. We look at how PCOS (recently renamed PMOS) is understood and treated around the world. And in a speculative prose poem, we follow a womb across borders, bodies, and generations.

We look back at the priests and nuns who secretly helped people access abortions before Roe v. Wade, and forward to the possibilities and ethical questions raised by artificial wombs, reproductive technology, and citizen science through period-tracking apps.

Across these stories—and many others—we hope to take you on a journey through the womb in all its contradictions: devastating and joyful, intimate and political, funny, painful, hopeful, and profoundly human.

Enjoy the issue.

With love, Eloise