21 Responses for "The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Abortion"

1. Becky March 2nd, 2006 at 4:32 am 1

   As a frequenter of such blogs, I saw these posts last week. While I’m not supporting at-home or do-it-yourself abortions, I think they were trying to prove a point. Namely, that such information is better than a coat hanger. Or repeatedly throwing oneself down the stairs. It’s definitely problematic though, since clearly we wouldn’t be fans of do-it-yourself-dentistry (SNL had a great skit a few years ago, come to think of it, parodying this) or surgery instructions, as people might actually attempt something and hurt themselves/ others.

   But I don’t see how people feel comfortable condemning others to “hell” — last I checked, that wasn’t a human job. (Unless, of course, you’re Dante, and you have to make some assumptions.)

2. Stephen March 2nd, 2006 at 9:01 am 2

   Becky, as a general rule we don’t condemn people to hell. (Why the scare quotes?) However, there are special exceptions… Hitler, Pol Pot, people who print do it yourself kits to murder.

3. Jane March 2nd, 2006 at 9:37 am 3

   Yup, I’m pretty sure that evil is a word that could be used to describe this type of thing. Once again, there is a huge myth used constantly by the left that if Roe is overturned, women will go throw themselves downstairs and bleed to death with coat hangers. I don’t buy it. I’m sorry, Beck, but I don’t understand how you can possibly read such a thing and not feel physically sick.

4. Becky March 2nd, 2006 at 1:23 pm 4

   If you read these posts, you’ll see that Bitch, PhD is referring in part to the movement pre-Roe in Chicago, of annonymous “Janes” who would perform illegal abortions (sorry, Jane, no parallel intended!). There is an historical precedent for such things that I think they were playing off of. Further, women have seriously hurt themselves in the past attempting to induce miscarriages — what makes you think that women have changed so fundamentally? The reasons why women have abortions are chiefly because they don’t feel they want to start a family yet (ie possibly still in school or in a job without maternity leave) or because they cannot economically afford it. I can imagine that we will again see many botched “at home” abortions in states that have such strict bans. Desperate people do desperate things.

   And I did get queasy reading these — but no more queasy than when I’ve flipped to channels with graphic plastic surgery procedures. I firmly believe that women should be the ones making the choice whether they use their bodily and emotional resources to create another human life — if they’ve had that forced on them through rape or incest, or had an accident with birth control, or the condom breaks, etc., I don’t believe that they should be basically forced to support a potential life to viability.

   And the scare quotes were due to not believing in hell.

5. Becky March 2nd, 2006 at 1:25 pm 5

   Oh! I forgot to ask — have people been following the similar move to ban abortion in Mississippi? I was just curious because I think it was proposed to add a clause that would put in place more programs to help poor women get medical care & financial help if they felt they couldn’t afford to have a child and had become pregnant. Just thought it was an interesting way to help cut down on the reasons for seeking out an abortion (in or out of state).

6. Carmine March 2nd, 2006 at 4:22 pm 6

   “I don’t believe that they should be basically forced to support a potential life to viability. ”

   Regardless of what any of us believe, there is one fact which cannot be disputed. Children are the result of sex. Nature makes it so. Sex shouldn’t be viewed as a pass time whereby all responsibility is nullified because of what any of us believe. When people realize this, maybe they will start taking responsibility for their sex partners and the resulting children, wanted or not.

7. Stephen March 2nd, 2006 at 4:49 pm 7

   Carmine,
   I think you may be misconstruing what was written. The fundamental problem here is the misunderstanding that the fetus is not potential life, it is actual life. The responsibility argument is second to that basic fact. (After all, a child conceived through rape deserves the same right to life as one who was not.)

8. Jane March 2nd, 2006 at 5:19 pm 8

   I agree that a fetus is a life and that responsibility is important, but I think Becky’s statements raise a good point. Will people turn to at-home procedures if abortion is illegal? In other words, do we have a culture that values life and promotes responsibility to the point where we won’t see women turn to this at home guide to an abortion? I’m not making a statement here, simply raising a question.

9. Stephen March 2nd, 2006 at 5:59 pm 9

   If we had a culture that valued life, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. That said, for better or for worse the government has a significant role in shaping how citizens view life. For the state to say “You can’t do this” raises the question “Why?” In the case of abortion that path leads to the recognition that the fetus is both human, and possesses a natural right to life from that.

10. Carmine March 2nd, 2006 at 6:01 pm 10

    I am in complete agreement Stephen, and my post doesnt contradict that, but I am arguing that it is absurd to pose the the point that a child is an accident when sex occurs.

11. Stephen March 2nd, 2006 at 6:29 pm 11

    OK, in that case it was my misunderstanding. I thought you had meant it was absurd because of the argument from responsibility (you f—ed someone, this is what happens, step up), not the argument from natural rights (it’s a child not a choice).

12. drageses March 3rd, 2006 at 1:34 am 12

    The abortion debate resonates on two levels. The first, and obviously the more important, is that many of us pro-lifers (and especially Catholics like me) believe life begins at conception, abortion is therefore murder, end of debate.

    However, although it’s just been hinted at here, abortion is one of the most fundamental choices a society faces (and pro-choicers understand this better than we do). Birth control, contraception, and especially abortion transform sex from a sacred, life creating act into a form of entertainment. The prevalence of consequence free sex is a defining characteristic of the modern West — and I would argue goes a long way towards explaining the demographic decline in Western populations highlighted on this blog, Smash Left Wing Scum, and many other places.

    Now, from an individualistic standpoint, there are obvious selfish benefits we get from living at the peak of imperial decadence. However, if we are serious about rebuilding our people and our civilization, we each have to embrace a life-affirming morality and wage a true Counter-Revolution. While there are many ways of accomplishing this, I still think one of the strongest forces (potentially) for Western renewal is the same institution that gave Western Civilization its birth — the Catholic Church.

    Now if only I could change the bishops’ minds on illegal immigration…

13. Becky March 3rd, 2006 at 3:53 pm 13

    Stephen,

    I think you may be overestimating the government’s ability to persuade people that the politicians’ “why” coincides with their own beliefs. Prohibition didn’t stop people from drinking alcohol, and the illegality of marijuana certainly hasn’t put a stop to smoking. To assume that our culture will suddenly become “a culture of life” because of a ban on abortion seems naive to me at best, and dangerously blind at worst. I’m in complete sympmathy with wanting to lower our abortion rates — no one wants women to be in a position to make such choices in the first place. I think Carmine touches on a point that is important in thinking about this: are we trying to stop people from having sex, or from having unwanted pregnancies? If the former, good luck. People have been having sex for reasons other than procreation for thousands of years, and I doubt that is going to change. If the latter, then why is the president not taking sex education more seriously? Or efforts to help women find and afford birth control? There was a great news story recently about young women who couldn’t afford birth control even at Planned Parenthood. Absistence-till-marriage programs have been shown to have limited results (I’ve talked about this on my own blog). Basically, it seems that teens wait an average of 18 months longer to lose their virginity. That’s great, but people will eventually have sex, so we should equip them with as much knowledge as possible. Furthermore, during those 18 months teens turn to other sexual behaviors, such as oral or anal sex, believing that they are still virgins (technically).

    I am still not convinced that passing this law is the way toward creating a culture of life. It will still mean that women are having pregnancies that they do not want — how are they suddenly going to see a 7th child as a blessing when they can’t afford the 6 they already have? Or come to see an unintentional pregnancy during college as a blessing?

14. Jane March 3rd, 2006 at 4:46 pm 14

    Beck,
    I think you are underestimating how much the government can actually do to promote life and responsibility. Communicating that abortion is murder is the first step, and the second is forcing mothers AND fathers to take responsibility for their actions. Becky, you and I both know that you are a feminist. Abortion has sent the message to men that they are absolved of their responsibility to care for and support their children. It has literally forwarded the patriarchy by forcing women to take the complete responsibility for a baby. It’s not about stopping people from having sex or even forcing them to think of it as only a means of procreation. But it’s about connecting ones actions with the natural ramifications- the creation of a life.

15. Becky March 3rd, 2006 at 9:14 pm 15

    Most feminists would deeply disagree that abortion has at all forwarded the aims of the patriarchy. Outlawing all abortions (except for those directly threatening the mother’s life) sends the message that women’s bodies will be used as incubators (in “forced pregnancies”) if they become pregnant, whether it’s due to forced intercourse, an accident with birth control, or negligence on both parties’ parts in using contraception. Anti-choicers will quickly say that a fetus is a person, it has rights to being born, etc. etc. But there are very few instances when people are forced to use their own body or even money to ensure that other people live. For example, there is no law that demands a father must donate one of his kidneys if he is a match for his dying child awaiting a transplant. Rich people are not required to give their money to a person dying on the street. Nor would we ever enact laws to such effects. Many feminists have used the “unwanted tenant” argument to describe the fetus’s supposed claims to a woman’s body for life development and support — I see some truth in these analogies.

    Clearly, not all women see or feel the same relation to the unborn that they carry, or might potentially carry. But what I find problematic is trying to force one of these views on an entire population. Most people in this country believe in abortion rights at least for the first trimester — when the vast majority of abortions are performed.

    I’ve actually heard it said that, whenever women have asserted their rights as citizens/humans, conservative movements have attempted to limit their access to reproductive control.

    Here are a few quotes that I think are useful for thinking of abortion and the feminist movement:

    From Rosalind Pollack Petchesky’s The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom:

    “Historically, the concept of privacy for American conservatives has included not only “free enterprise” and “property rights” but also the rights of the white male property owner to control his wife and his wife’s body, his children and their bodies, his slaves and their bodies. It is an ideology that is patriarchal and racist as well as capitalist.” (248)

    “At first sight, a policy that restricts abortion access for poor women seems in direct contradiction to a decade-long policy of state-sponsored population control among the poor, as a means of diminishing welfare dependency. But neoconservative and New Right thinking about welfare cutbacks and abortion does not represent a pronatalist doctrine so much as a formula for restoring the traditional patriarchal family and the authority of men within it, among the poor as among the middle class.” (250-1)

    And from Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century (by Margaret Sanger’s grandson, Alexander Sanger):

    “The concept of reproductive freedom has been recognized to some extent throughout human history. Greek and Roman secular law and Jewish and Christian theology all recognized that there were times and circumstances where birth control and abortion were acceptable. At the time when the United States was founded, under English law, birth control and abortion were mostly legal, acceptable, and used.” (21)

16. Carmine March 4th, 2006 at 5:43 am 16

    Becky, feminists may deny it, but that doesn’t make them right. Abortion has served the purpose of objectifying women and putting them even more under the thumb of a “patriarchy.” What better way to objectify women as (sex) objects than to have them reject their children, demand an abortion and wash their hands of any responsibility. I think abusive/chauvenistic men have hailed abortion far more than feminists. They get to use women for sex and leave them to clean up the mess. Or, what better way to carry on an extramarrital affair when the consequences, ie children, are nullified.

    Also, let us not forget that Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood was a eugenicist. She was not about liberating black women from the bonds of debt and financial insecurity so much as elminating their offspring.

    Abortion has not been handed down to our generation with a clean agenda, and has indeed been the vision by which many racists have hoped to achieve their aims. Surprisingly they are achieving those goals as blacks are disproprtionately lining up to suck their children out of their womb, so callously referred as the “incubator.”

17. Carmine March 4th, 2006 at 5:53 am 17

    BTW, among a wide plethora of things which could be cited for my last post, I will settle for this:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger

18. Becky March 4th, 2006 at 9:02 am 18

    Carmine,

    Whatever you think of Margaret Sanger, that doesn’t nullify the fact that she did do some good in bringing forth birth control rights, and that her grandson is not attempting to further any eugenicist claims. Further, if we decided to reject every thinker’s/activist’s/politician’s work on the basis of their misguided beliefs, we would also have to reject nearly the entire canon of Western thought. Aristotle believed that women of Athens (at least upper class women) should never leave the house. It has been persuasively argued persuasively that the Bible contains much sexist baggage from the cultural context it emerged from. Italians in the 16th century debated as to whether women even had souls. Many early presidents owned slaves. I’m not sure what you are trying to prove by pointing out the problems with Sanger’s views. Further, I didn’t quote Margaret Sanger or rely upon her views in any way.

    And if you read my posts, you would see that the term ‘incubator” was being borrowed from what many feminists have called the symbolic result of strict anti-abortion stances. You will see similar characterizations emerging from the famous but disputed violinist analogy, that is basically comparing pregnant women to dialysis machines in order to point out that the state is requiring a similar role from women. Obviously not every woman feels that way about her pregnancy/potential to be pregnant — but other women do, and it would be blatant essentialism to expect every woman to embrace an unwanted pregnancy on the basis of her being female. Feminists see women as having equal rights to men in deciding whether their bodily and emotional resources will be used to support or develop another life.

    Again, considering the great number of brilliant feminist theorists that have thought and written on the abortion issue, I cannot take the claim that abortion has furthered the patriarchy at face value. Men have been abandoning women and leaving pregnancies as ‘their problem” for the extent of known history. I’m an English lit person, so I’ll just point out that you can see this in any number of historical texts. I just read The Merchant of Venice for a course I’m taking, and there’s a single mention of a woman — a Moor — who has been impregnated by Lancelot the Clown. That’s the only mention of her, and Lancelot certainly isn’t running off to take care of the results of his actions. Has society really changed so much now that women can decide to terminate a pregnancy if they are in such a situation?

19. Becky March 4th, 2006 at 9:04 am 19

    Excuse my “persuasively” typo — too early for me to be an effective self-editor!

20. Becky March 4th, 2006 at 4:40 pm 20

    I don’t see why the views of the very first women who fought for more equal rights should guide current day feminist debates on abortion and reproductive rights. I’m sure that if we combed through their writings we would also find many things to disagree with, including inattentiveness to the issues faced by women of color and poor women. Stanton and Anthony were blantantly racist, and many early feminists actually organized AGAINST extending the vote to African American men. Activist movements evolve and respond to critiques, and I think that today’s feminist movement has reached a much more sophisticated point in their discussions and arguments. I’m sure that many women who consider themselves feminists are pro-life, but the vast majority of current day feminists (I’m thinking specifically of theorists & activists) are pro-choice.

    That being said, I think it would be difficult to trace men’s abandonment rates solely to Roe v. Wade. One could just as easily attribute it to other factors in a society that has become increasingly accustomed to divorce and serial marriages, common law marriages, and “shacking up” (as I remember Dr. Laura used to so eloquently call it). I’m also curious because I actually have never seen any studies on the subject, so I’m not even aware of what the percent increase in abandonment might be.

    And the first meaning of the word “incubator,” according to the OED, is actually “a bird which incubates or sits on eggs.” I also used the word because I know many women who would see themselves as incubators (in the more medical sense) if “forced” to carry out a pregnancy. I think it’s dangerous to characterize all women’s relationship to the unborn in a monolithic fashion. While many women embrace the experience of creating life, others see it as an invasion of their bodily integrity. If NARAL is at all guilty of dissociating women from the unborn, then the cult of motherhood is thrice guilty of imposing an idealized vision of the experience of pregnancy, which has been very damaging to those women who do not see the experience as a blessing or a joy. Some women are incredibly nurturing and enjoy that role, while others do not fit into our stereotypes of what a mother is (much as some men are more connected with their children than others).

21. Becky March 4th, 2006 at 9:21 pm 21

    Just to defend modern feminist thought, as I feel that I’ve been through a lot (with reading about 150 pages of it per week). There’s much more to it than abortion rights; in fact, few feminist theorists that I’ve been reading are explicitly trying to outline abortion rights. If you pick up Mohanty’s essays on “Under Western Eyes” or her “Revisited” essay (toward thinking of a transnational feminism), or go through Spivak’s work, or ecofeminist approaches, or theorists who are thinking about the importance of experience and identity in feminist theory (Moya, Alcoff, Moraga), you immediately sense a great difference between what it means to fight for equal rights for women today, as opposed to nearly 150 years ago. Feminist thought has become more sophisticated, drawing on everything from phenomenology to ecology.

    And while I noted that Western thought has been laden with sexist, racist, classist baggage, and admitted the impossibility of escaping that, you’ll also see that I didn’t actually use Margaret Sanger (that was something of a strawman up above). I instead was looking at much more recent work, that I think goes far in correcting for her many mistakes (as many fields tend to do). We inevitably draw on that canon of thought, but I think there are strategic ways to do so, remembering the cultural and historical forces that shaped people’s thoughts. So while I might see Mary Lyon as very progressive in her views on women’s education, I might also choose to see some of her other ideas as something I would not want to perpetuate. It’s much like MHC’s desire to play up the “physical education” component, while ignoring the fact that Lyon would likely be appalled at our secular, pants-wearing, all sexualities welcome campus. That’s why I don’t see Stanton and Anthony as the go-to women for thinking of feminism today, because I think there are many points at which they couldn’t/ didn’t go beyond their cultural moment.

    And after having many talks in class about “monolithic motherhood” or womanhood, I still disagree. Many women don’t feel that connection, and that shouldn’t be considered some biological lack on their part, or an emotional shortcoming. Some women don’t feel depressed after abortions, others do. Pregnancy is a profoundly individual experience, even as it’s simultaneously collective. (To define women by their reproductive potential has also been challenged repeatedly (especially thinking of Butler here, and of a continuum rather than a binary of sex/gender)).

    I also feel like the abandoment issue is important, and I trust that you’re right that Roe has had some influence on people’s attitudes toward unplanned pregnancies. I’m wondering though, if the bargaining power of pregnancy is really something that women should want to have. It seems much more to the point to not have unplanned pregnancies in the first place. This is completely random, but I once read this science fiction novel, Engine Summer… it has the most interesting birth control method, as women seem to have a “virus” or something that prevents pregnancy until they actually take a pill that restores fertility. I thought that was so interesting! I wish that men and women could so easily plan for a pregnancy these days.