So you know how anti-feminist groups like to co-opt the language of women's empowerment? The anti-abortion movement is following suit. In an important article in this month's American Prospect, Sarah Blustain and Reva Siegel report on the woman-centric (rather than fetus-focused) language in the South Dakota abortion ban.
The ban is based on the wording in the incredibly biased report (released last December) by state's task force on abortion. Fully half of the task force's "findings" focus on women rather than unborn babies. But it goes above and beyond the "abortion harms women's health" crap -- the phony breast cancer link and made-up "post-abortion syndrome" -- we've heard about time and time again.
Finally, to make credible its claims about women’s health and women’s choices, the task force made repeated claims about women’s nature. It asserted that women would never freely choose an abortion -- even absent outside pressures -- because doing so would violate “the mother’s fundamental natural intrinsic right to a relationship with her child.� The task force took as a statement of biological and psychological fact that a mother’s connection to her unborn baby was more authentic than her own statement of desire not to be pregnant. These gender-role convictions are at the heart of the movement’s claim that the nation must now combat an epidemic of dangerous and coerced abortions.
If you ever had any doubts that the anti-abortion movement was about enforcing traditional gender roles, this article should do a good job destroying them. It's straight out of the pre-pregnancy school of thought: Any person with ladyparts is really a walking incubator, biologically unable to reject the idea of motherhood.
Janet Crepps, staff attorney in the domestic program at the Center for Reproductive Rights, says South Dakota has argued that “women are not capable of being informed decision-makers in the context of abortion, which is shocking.� It is “the first time you have a whole legislative body adopting this kind of bad abortion science and this kind of fairly outrageous statement of their view of the proper role of women in society.�
As if that weren't bad enough, this framing of the abortion debate is being put to use beyond the borders of South Dakota. Conservatives are following David Reardon's anti-choice playbook, Making Abortion Rare:
The book explains to the anti-abortion movement the importance of addressing women’s interests to persuade “the middle majority [which] is paralyzed by competing feelings of compassion for both the unborn and for women.� In the early 1990s, Reardon and his allies advised the movement that it needed to “take back the terms ‘freedom of choice’ and ‘reproductive freedom’ ... to emphasize the fact that we are the ones who are really defending the right of women to make an informed choice...
Ah, yes. The mushy middle majority that, much to the dismay of folks like Reardon, favors legal abortion with some restrictions and contraception access, and stubbornly thinks that women can make empowered and informed choices on their own. How clever to reduce adult women to the intellectual level of a still-gestating fetus.
The message has already trickled down to the troops that the whole "abortion is murder" line is getting kind of tired. I didn't really think about it until I read Siegel and Blustain's article, but I've heard protesters shout out to women entering a clinic, "Why are you doing this to yourself?" more frequently than "Why are you doing this to your baby?" But protesters aren't the chosen bearers of the gospel of women's disempowerment. To spread the Word that women are simply unable to decide against their maternal insticts, the anti-abortion movement trusts crisis-pregnancy centers, many of which receive government funding to spread this propaganda.
So let's recap. We have state legislation and government-funded centers lending credence to the idea that women are biologically unable to decide if it's not the right time for them to be a mother. So if a woman does choose abortion, that means she was coerced into doing so, against her maternal nature. And how do we "empower" women and protect them from this coercion? By preventing them from having abortions. And how do we prevent them from having abortions? We criminalize it.
Scary stuff. Go read the whole article, and email it to your friends.
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Wow, what an amazing load of crap.
"[W]omen would never freely choose an abortion - even absent outside pressures - because doing so would violate 'the mother’s fundamental natural intrinsic right to a relationship with her child'."
Um, no. I've had two abortions, and I have never regretted my choice. In fact, I usually take a moment from each day (sometimes two, when I'm around screaming, snotty children) to be thankful that I had the opportunity to have a safe abortion, because my urge to NOT procreate is so strong that I would have used any means necessary to get unwelcome visitors out of my body. I would gladly risk death rather than be forced to have a baby - I felt that way then, I feel that way now.
I am so tired of legislators labeling me as a stupid babymaking machine. My life is so much better and more productive without children. I can't believe there are women backing up the notion that no woman is capable of making a choice. It makes me sick to my stomach.
Really now, how this works is really fucked up. Women have uterusses (uteri? have no idea on that one, sorry) so therefore they will always want to be mothers no matter what, and men have sperm so they will always want to "spred the seed" to as many incubators as possible and that's just "how it is?" Gimme a fucking break. It's an excuse to keep woman under control and men fucking as many women as possible. Guess who wins with that one?
I admit that now women have more efficeint(sp) means to ward off unwanted pregnancies (gator dung, vinegar douche, while well and good, don't really compare to condoms and the pill)however, these people can't seem to get it in there heads that not every woman wants to be a mother. This isn't some newfangled reason of thinking from the birth control pill, there have always been women throughout time who didn't want kids. Sometimes those women succeeded and sometimes they didn't but forcing women to have kids won't "open their eyes" to the "blessings" children are but will only breed resentment and possibily abuse, whether mental or physical.
I don't want children. I don't hate children and I don't think I'm "selfish" for not wanting children, as a woman it's just not something I ever took pleasure from envisioning for my future and I don't get all tingly from the pitter patter of little feet. I do enjoy playing with other people's kids but it never made me want any of my own and my uterus works just fine and she agrees with me.
The novelist Caleb Carr includes this theme pretty heavily in second book (they're historical fiction, but quite scholarly). If I had it with me I'd quote, but I have to paraphrase.
He writes a lot about this view of motherhood as intrisic to society's view of women. It goes along with seeing women as symbols - woman as nuturer, woman as caregiver - rather than human beings.
And yeah, I hate the idea that some politician believes he has a better understanding of what goes on in my head than I do. By his logic, I would never CHOOSE to be on birth control, as that also denies me my, um, fundamental right to a relationship with my "child." I'm using scare quotes on child since neither an egg nor a fetus is a child. A child is a child. When you see one, it's kind of obvious.
So what makes these people the arbiter of what women "really" want? The fact that abortion can be bad and harmful and is a difficult decision is hardly something pro-choice activists deny. Guess what? Chemotherapy is also pretty damn sucky and bad for you, but that doesn't mean people should not have the option of doing it even though you could make the (bad) argument that if they were really thinking, they wouldn't want it. Some people do, and some people don't. And even though either option has some undesired consequences, that itself does not point to only one correct choice.
But I think we should focus on the positive here: the fact that abortion foes are focusing on women's choice means they recognize the power of this argument. And I personally think this one's *way* easier to defeat than the life issue. When you're talking about when life starts, people are simply not going to change their minds. When you admit that choice ought to play a role, well, I think we've got 'em.
I just want to support Sylke and Ultramagnus, and also to point out that wanting children is not the same thing as wanting children right now. I want children very much indeed, and I believe that were I to be denied the experience of motherhood, I would be very unhappy. But I do not want children right now--it would be disastrous professionally--and I certainly did not want children ten years ago, which would have been disastrous in many ways.
But now I've seen the light, of course--I was wrong! Silly me, to think I knew best about my life and my desires. What was I thinking?
"Silly me, to think I knew best about my life and my desires. What was I thinking?"
Silly woman! Brains are for doods! ;p
It asserted that women would never freely choose an abortion -- even absent outside pressures -- because doing so would violate “the mother’s fundamental natural intrinsic right to a relationship with her child.�
I recommend that the people responsible for this logic all be arrested. Because if they're not arrested, they cannot exercise their right to a speedy trial. Leaving them free is violating their rights!