Two weeks ago I read two articles about abortion on the same day. I'm glad I read them in the order that I did because the first one placed my paradigm in a more inclusive rather than exclusive stance.
The first article (A Change of Heart: From Pro Life to Pro Choice, AlterNet 1/9/08) included a perspective I needed to hear: "Our beliefs are not created by what -- or who -- we are against. They exist because of what we are for: comprehensive reproductive health for all, and the ability to decide for ourselves if we will or will not have an abortion."
A line from the second article (Changing Abortion's Pronoun, LA Times 1/7/08) elicited an audible groan from me, and my mind went to The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and Starhawk's description of The Southlands in The Fifth Sacred Thing. A man, discussing his personal regret about several ex-girlfriends' abortions: "'I never really thought about it for the woman,' he says slowly." What?! He never really thought about the woman part of the equation in an abortion scenario? Excuse me?
It's an interesting catch-22. Though it disgusts me, it doesn't surprise me that anti-abortion activists will utilize women's termination regret to influence the courts toward the incorrectly-perceived need to "protect" women from their own choices. But would they do the same with men's regret as a motivator? To protect men from themselves? I do not doubt that some men experience loss or sadness over the termination of a pregnancy in which they played a role. But is regret the best measure of whether or not government should permit certain reproductive medical decisions?
Back when I was a married-to-a-man queer grrl, before the polyamorous part of our marriage was predominant, my husband and I terminated a pregnancy. In Utah. I wrote about it here, when the South Dakota mess was in the news. In the post, I half-heartedly pretended it wasn't me, but it was probably pretty obvious. Many women have termination stories; I have one. I don't see why men shouldn't get to tell their stories too.
My ambivalence toward abortion topics is deep and multi-layered. I believe it important to let stories and voices be heard, and yet I also recognize the deeply personal realm of reproduction, coming from a family where fertility, miscarriage, and ectopic (tubal) pregnancies were wrapped in whispered conversations, kept from children, spoken about with solemn secrecy.
The more we share, all of us, the more information we have, the greater likelihood that we might just be able to see each other and really connect and not live under the illusion that our way of experiencing the world is the only way it's experienced. The more information, more connection, more understanding, more empathy, the better. That includes having empathy for people who truly believe that abortion should be illegal. If I can empathize with their feelings, it may be a vital step in bridging the gap in our perspectives, and maybe that person will one day believe that even if abortion is not a choice s/he would make or want a loved one to make, it is a choice that should nevertheless be available in a legal and safe way. The "fight" is more about increased connection and communication rather than fighting. Give peace a chance, wo/man.
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4 comments:
thanks for these articles. And yes, I got some skin creeps from reading the one about men, but at the same time, I also think that men are often brushed aside and excluded from the dialogues and decisions that need to be made after conception has taken place. Do I think that a man should ever, ever be able to force an unwilling woman (or manipulate, or emotionally steamroll) to carry a pregnancy to term? No. But I also think that discussion should also be encouraged. How many women would choose to allow the pregnancy to continue if they knew that the father was going to be responsible, perhaps even the one raising, the resulting child?
if there are two people sitting in that waiting room, both of them feeling hopeless, isolated, lost, grieved, powerless... what could shift and change if they felt that they could talk to one another? That they were partners in this issue at least (even if they're not partners in life?)
And, bringing in the first article, what if they could speak to each other about their doubts, ambivalencies, the complications, without being forced into one position or another?
I think about how critics are pegging "Juno" as an anti-choice movie just because she didn't go through with her planned abortion. Because she listened to an abortion protester. I didn't see Juno as anti-choice at all. I saw it as complex and layered. But if your thinking on this issue is polarized and exclusive then women who get abortions are pro-choice and women who don't are pro-life.
There are so many ways that so many people lose with this kind of thinking.
Us-verus-them / Self-other / generalized opposition-based worldviews . . . these may be seductive (some might say natural) but ultimately destructive concepts.
anaccidentofhope, your comment is well-placed, and I agree wholeheartedly. Men should certainly be included in reproductive dialogues [why does my spell check want me to say dialogs?].
And yes, pro-life women have abortions, and pro-choice women elect not to have abortions.
It's absolutely not a zero-sum game, but is intensely complex.
And knowing (or knowing of) women who desperately wish to get pregnant, sometimes I wonder if my pro-choice stance feels offensive to them. I certainly don't mean to be insensitive. My own mother miscarried four times and had two tubal pregnancies. My sister nearly died from a tubal pregnancy. Most of my maternal aunts were unable to conceive. As I said in the post, issues around fertility and reproduction are touchy and I was raised NOT to talk about them.
Once it was clear that I was sexually active, my parents asked that if I got pregnant, that I "give" the baby to my aunt and uncle, who had lost two babies to stillbirth. Though I cannot pretend to understand their pain, it's not so easy to request that a person give a baby to a family member. That may be the right choice for some, but the universal "just put it up for adoption" assumes a lot of things about pregnancy, reproduction, emotion, intention, and consequence. See this BitchPhD post for more.
I defy silencing, especially about these topics. So yes. Let's talk more. Not less.
hmm, I can't speak for every infertile, but I can tell you that most of the ones I hang with in the blogospere are very pro-choice. Because it's all tied together. Our reproductive systems, the medical establishment that "deals" with them. The choice to terminate a pregnancy, the search to get one, it's all part of the same big system. And the way to survive the system is through more choices, more information, more dialogue, more women empowered.
Plus, most of the women who are most agonized over being infertile are the ones who love children desperately, and we can't stand the thought that children are born where they're not wanted or cared for.
And, the most compassionate of pro-choicers are people who believe that in a perfect world there would be no abortion because every child would be a wanted child and every expectant parent would have access to the resources to raise that child in health and safety.
And, of course, there would be no rape, no incest, and no horrible genetic defects, either.
I grew up hearing, from my mother, the one who was farmed out to relatives after her own mother died, that if my younger sister or I were to become inconveniently pregnant, we would not be permitted (by Attila the Mom) to terminate, because, in my mother's words (I can hear her speech slurring as I type), "It's murder and that's my gene pool."
That was her entire anti-abortion argument, beginning with my first period, and ending when my little sister became inconveniently pregnant soon after graduating college and was told by her physician that a full-term pregnancy would most likely cost her her complicated-by-diabetes life. Mom's vehemently espoused morality seemed to dilute in direct proportion to her genes, which only clarified to me that her position was not forged from anything close to rational thought.
Hm.
It's been interesting, watching my mom grow up. I think the best part of it for me has been learning fairly early on not to trust blindly the judgment of others -- especially others whose judgment should be faultless, because too often it is anything but.
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