Conceivable Future

Meghan Kallman is an environmental activist. She has taught college in the Rhode Island state prison, and was elected to the city council in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where she served two terms before winning a seat in the Rhode Island State Senate in 2020, a position she still holds. Meghan is on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Boston, in the graduate School for Global Inclusion and Social Development. As a sociologist and researcher, she has published many peer-reviewed research articles, as well as two books, The Third Sector: Community Organizations , NGOs, and Nonprofits, and The Death of Idealism: Development and Anti-Politics in the Peace Corps. Alongside colleague Stephanie Malin, she recently published Building Something Better: Environmental Crises and the Promise of Community Change.Josephine Ferorelli is a writer, visual artist, and yoga instructor, and a longtime Chicago resident. After participating in Occupy Wall Street in 2011 Josephine began to write and edit climate coverage for Occupy.com. She collaborated with photographer Danny Lyon on a book called Burn Zone (2016), and in 2016 she wrote an account of her own arrest, with forty other activists, outside a BP oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana. Josephine also writes about the climate crisis from a yogic and buddhist perspective on her blog, Grandgather.com. In 2014, Meghan and Josephine co-founded the organization called Conceivable Future. Conceivable Future’s work has appeared in media outlets including The Atlantic, CBC, BBC, The Independent, The Nation, Telemundo, USA Today, The Irish Times, Vice, Salon, Yahoo News, Vox, The Years Project, WNYC, The Huffington Post, NBC News, NPR, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times. Meghan and Josephine contributed an essay in the collection Motherhood In Precarious Times (2018).

Questions about the challenges and ethical implications associated with bringing new life into a world torn by dissension and climate change have haunted prospective parents for decades. So have entreaties to practice responsible family planning, especially in the face of dwindling resources and population growth. This balanced and empathetic offering comes from Kallman and Ferorelli, cofounders of the Conceivable Future organization, a grassroots movement devoted to giving people, especially women, a platform to share their stories. Their thoughtful and engaging narrative addresses multiple facets of emotional, social, economic, and political concerns (cultural expectations, adoption, reproductive activism), with helpful navigational features (self-checklists, flowcharts, step-by-step action guides) and numerous quotes and anecdotes from specialists, commentators, and individuals seeking answers. Distinctive threads run throughout: there are no such things as right or wrong answers; everyone has the right to make judgment-free choices, and everyone has the capability to change the future. The concluding chapters ("The Big No"; "The Big Yes") pull everything together, and multiple resources cited throughout the book combine with detailed chapter notes and a lengthy bibliography to offer readers considerable assistance. This reassuring consideration of a deeply personal matter teams seamlessly with a reasoned, emphatic call to action.