Last week I read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood for the first time. It was published in 1985, and found itself suddenly on the best seller list after the election of Donald Trump. In this dystopian future, corporate greed and science run amok have caused massive infertility. Religious extremists have banned pornography and forced those women who are capable to breed for the higher class of women who are infertile. Ironically, Mary McCarthy reviewed it in the Times in 1986 and found it "powerless to scare." I imagine if I had read it in '85 it would have made me angry. Now that I am older and have an adult daughter, in the era of Trump when every day results in another horrific attack on liberties, it made me enormously sad.
At the same time, I happened upon an essay by Gloria Steinem from 1980 entitled, "If Hitler Were Alive, Whose Side Would He Be On?" Gains by women in the Weimar Republic, increased freedom to work and access to abortion, were immediately eradicated by Hitler. In the U.S. in 1973, Roe v. Wade produced an immediate backlash, with the first anti-abortion law, attacking the poor by denying Medicaid funding for abortion. We have seen that the anti-abortion movement, which never goes away, becomes more fervent whenever women's rights grow. During the Obama presidency, we saw gains in access to contraception along with victories in the fight for employment equality. The Trump backlash, led by old white men like Lindsey Graham, grows in fervor as the women's rights movement has taken on renewed energy, and the #MeToo movement seeks to hold men responsible for sexual assault and harassment.
So here we are in 2018 with minorities and the poor being attacked by the federal government, from DACA to Muslim immigrants, to attempts to do away with the minimum wage. And front and center are the legislative assaults on women's reproductive rights. Right-wing states' rights advocates are pushing federal twenty-week abortion bans, falsely named "pain-capable." Personhood bills are cropping up like kudzu, along with new and improved twisted bills like "dismemberment abortion ban," which would prohibit second trimester abortions. Be horrified but don't be surprised to learn that Trump appointee Scott Lloyd proposed something called an "abortion reversal" in order to stop a teenage detainee from completing an abortion already in progress.
And conservative darling David Brooks weighed in last week, offering his unsolicited advice to Democrats, suggesting that we go along with the twenty-week abortion ban because it affects so few women and we could trade them for something else we wanted to get done, I assume something more important than those few women wrestling with the tragedy of fetal abnormalities.
Under the heading, With Friends Like These...: Bernie Sanders campaigns for an anti-abortion candidate. And in 2018, we in South Carolina have a Democratic candidate for governor who proposes registering pregnant women "so the state can track their offspring and offer services if their children are not thriving." This in a state that refused Medicaid expansion and wants to enforce work rules for anyone seeking public assistance. I shudder to imagine what "services" would be offered.
I have talked ad nauseum about the twenty-week abortion ban, and its basis in false science. I have ranted about a movement that calls itself "pro-life" but opposes health care for all and gun regulation. A movement that claims to be for the family but cheers on the separation and deportation of immigrants.
How did we EVER allow this movement to get away with calling itself "pro-life" anyway? The evil wordsmiths of the right wing have created fabrications of language that would make George Orwell blush. Paul Ryan's "American Health Care Act" was designed to take health care away from millions of Americans. Whenever you hear a republican talk about "gun safety" you can bet they are going to get behind whatever jackass bill the NRA hands them, and that bill will allow (or require) more guns in public places, across state lines, on college campuses, in elementary schools.
And you can bet that they all call themselves "pro-life."
It is time to take back the label "pro-life."
I am pro-life. I believe women and children -- and men for that matter -- should all have good health care. We live in a country of great wealth, that few of us see. Without leaving the Koch brothers homeless we could increase their taxes and provide health care for all.
I am pro-life. I believe that guns and gun owners should be registered, that background checks should be required. I believe that guns do not belong on the streets, and assault weapons do not belong anywhere outside of a licensed shooting range. I believe that police officers as well as children playing in their front yards or attending school as well as someone drinking in a bar deserve the right to be safe from an unstable individual with a gun.
I am pro-life. I believe that women have the right to decide how to care for their bodies, privately and with the advice of a licensed physician. Period. In a country where "a man's home is his castle" and George Zimmerman was allowed to "stand his ground" and shoot an unarmed teenager and collect his gun on the way out of the courtroom, you are NOT allowed to legislate a woman's contraception or pregnancy. There is not an abortion epidemic; there is an epidemic of violence against women, and attacks on reproductive freedom are part of that assault. There is nothing "Christian" about the "Christian right." They more resemble the Taliban than Christianity.
I am pro-life. I respect the right of women to choose to give birth. I completely respect and admire women who choose to give birth despite fetal abnormalities, or other hardship. It takes a strength I don't have, and nobody has the right to make that decision for the pregnant woman. I do not respect those few who have said that they made a mistake by having an abortion, so they choose to prevent other women from making their mistake. Likewise, if there is a God, she/he made it so that if you choose to have an abortion, you get to do it again when you're ready, so stop talking about all the babies we could have had in the world. If I had not had an abortion in 1973, I would not have my two wonderful children today.
There are a lot of different rationales for being anti-abortion. Those billionaires who fund our right-wing legislators mostly don't really care about abortion; they mostly like the distraction it causes while they pillage and plunder workers and the environment. Lindsey Graham knows it is a dog whistle that will keep his right-wing base from championing a more extreme primary opponent and keep the big donors happy.
Right-wing Christians entertain so many twisted rationales for their beliefs that it would be impossible to generalize. Fact free and projected from their own needs and fears, you can find the Rapture Ready, those that believe pregnancy is God's punishment for sex, and those that believe that the fetus is a little tiny baby with an erection that can pleasure itself and feel pain and that is going to be cut up into pieces with full awareness during an abortion. If that latter image horrifies you, that is exactly its intent.
The anti-abortion movement is mostly powered by those who will keep poor and minority women -- and girls -- from being able to determine their own lives. This is why, despite all the moaning about killing babies, these same people oppose free contraception, accurate sexual and reproductive health education in the schools, and health clinics like Planned Parenthood that provide reproductive care apart from abortion. It is the 21st century rendition of keeping them (us) barefoot and in the kitchen.
And this is not just about women. Smart men know that preventing women from controlling their own reproductive lives can throw an entire family into turmoil. Not able to work to their potential. Inadequate time or finances for the rest of the family. The stress of having to live with a pregnancy; the stress of knowing there are options out there, but you have been prohibited from taking them.
In America, we are prohibiting women from options that are available to the rest of the developed world. In Canada, Justin Trudeau has recently reaffirmed his commitment to reproductive rights, despite conservative protest. When we take part in the phony dialogue about when abortion is acceptable, we are agreeing that women are incapable of determining their own paths.
When I was young, Catholics were taking a lot of crap for their large families, and Prescott Bush worked to support Planned Parenthood; later, George H.W. Bush crusaded in Congress for family planning funding. Back then, they knew that unwanted pregnancies were a drain on resources, but now we have a government that believes it is worth the waste to keep the poor struggling. With government assistance cut down to bare bones, a poor woman won't get contraceptive care, and when she gets pregnant, can't get an abortion, so she -- and her child -- will spend their lives living hand to mouth. They won't be able to hold a job much less keep their children well fed and healthy.
Pro-life? Bullshit. It is time to take it back. Time to say: I am pro-choice because I am pro-life.
It is time to stop drawing lines in the sand for pregnant women to struggle with. It is none of your damned business. Embryos and fetuses are not cute little miniature babies. Viability is the false argument that began it all. It doesn't matter if it is viable if it is inside a woman's body. Late term abortions are rare and occur when there are severe fetal anomalies. Only a woman should make that decision. Using science or religion to create legislation to control a woman is unacceptable. We are not incubators.
If you want to save lives, make gun safety laws, provide health care and good education, make sure the poor all have a roof over their heads. Don't invent an epidemic that doesn't exist so that you can win elections.
For those of you who would like to learn more -- and I hope you do -- here are two excellent books:
Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights by Katha Pollitt
Life's Work: A Moral Argument for Choice by Dr. Willie Parker
The other night, I turned off a DVD in frustration after about half an hour. In the movie, a woman had learned that she was pregnant, and she was pissed off. She was distraught, and went on about it as though this pregnancy had just ruined her career and hence, her life. I turned the TV off when I got tired of yelling, "Get an abortion, you idiot." "You know you don't HAVE to have a baby, for god's sake." And, "What the hell is wrong with you???" I was imagining an actual baby being born to this narcissistic stupid woman, and also the damage movies like this did to a woman's right to have an abortion, because it did not even consider that women had an actual choice. I must add that I assumed in the end she had the baby and magically turned into a warm, loving mother, maybe because the title of the movie was, "Mothers and Daughters." I may be wrong, in which case I apologize, but it truly wasn't worth another hour and a half of my life to find out.
On the other side, in one of the plot-lines in the brilliant television series, Shameless, fifteen-or-so year old Debbie intentionally gets pregnant, and battles the insistence of her oldest sister and parental surrogate Fiona to have an abortion. As the baby is lovingly accepted into the family, Debbie realizes that parenting is far more than she thought she wanted or could handle, and that she may have made a big mistake.
In Dr. Willie Parker's dynamic and personal account of the battle for women's right to abortion, he talks about how crucial it is to be sure a woman has actually decided that she wants to have an abortion independently and with certainty. In Life's Work: A Moral Argument for Choice he describes a heartbreaking incident in which he thought a woman had made that decision, only to learn after the procedure, that she had been coerced by her husband.
It's been a few weeks since I read that book, and the description of that incident has stayed with me.
One of the things that we pro-choice advocates tend to ignore is that pro-choice means that women -- and girls -- have the right to choose pregnancy as well as abortion. That is certainly my bias. I was truly fortunate that I never had to face that with my daughter, because it may not have been my shining moment as a parent. I know MY choice would have been for her to have an abortion, regardless of her choice.
We make quite a big deal, we liberals, about how pregnant girls should not be forced by parents to have a baby. About how it can ruin their lives. About how they will be hurt emotionally and financially. We know that raising a child on her own is an extraordinary hardship for most women. It is likely to impair relationships, with family, friends and potential partners. It will interfere with educational opportunity and career goals. The emotional stress of having a baby without adequate support will affect the health and well-being of the baby.
And of course, it just makes sense that they wait to have a baby until they are emotionally and financially ready.
But is that right? If I am to be truly honest here, is it more right to deny a teen the right to have a baby than to deny her the right to an abortion? And what about the pressures from husband, boyfriend, parents on adult women to end a pregnancy?
Let's take care of that latter question first. A woman should be in charge of her own decision regarding a pregnancy. Period. There are social mores, as with some religions, that put the decision in the hands of the husband, most often forcing a woman to bring the pregnancy to term. It may also happen the other way, as Dr. Parker described, in which the spouse has ordered his wife to end the pregnancy, and she complies. Which is why it is so critical that clinics have the ability and training to interview and assess whether the woman has independently chosen an abortion.
Far more difficult is the teenager's choice. Would you let your teenager really choose? When I was pregnant at age twenty there was no conceivable way I would have told my parents. My father, with whom I wasn't speaking on and off since I was fifteen, would certainly have stopped speaking to me. My mother, with many tears and recriminations, would never ever have approved of an abortion. And I would have been totally unable to care for a baby on my own. But had I decided to tell my parents and keep the baby, they surely would have loved it.
Decades later, had my daughter become pregnant, I would have assumed that she would have an abortion. Her teenage years had been rocky enough between she and I; I can only imagine the rage on both our parts as we each fought for what we thought was right. Her life as I wanted it to be would have been over. But her life as she might have wanted it to be....
The irony is that as parents it is up to us to make decisions about our children that affect their well-being. And as they grow older, at some point we lose control over those choices, even though we may know better. They may experiment with drugs and alcohol. They can choose to fail in school, drop out or refuse to go to college, take a low-paying job with no future. They can decide to date or live with someone who has himself made bad choices. And one of the things they may choose, even under our roof, is whether they become pregnant, and whether or not to have a baby.
Because we have needed to be so rabidly engaged in the fight to protect our right to reproductive freedom, i.e. contraception and abortion, we have let the right wing control the other side. We have let them talk about killing babies and how those who are pro-abortion would take away a woman's right to have those babies.
It is time to take this argument away from the anti-choice brigade. Because what they are proposing is not "pro-life" but anti: against both sides of "choice."
Pro-choice should mean certain rights to women and girls who choose to be pregnant. It should mean that the government will provide to them the safety net that will assure the well-being of both mother and child. A pregnancy should not mean hardship and punishment, difficulty finding work or even the need to find work while caring for an infant. Proposing that pregnant women and girls should be required to carry the pregnancy to term without financial security, health care, and emotional support services is not pro-life. It is punishment. Punishment for those who are pregnant, punishment for their families, and punishment for the child to come.
Those who are most rabidly in the anti-abortion league tend to be those who are most determined to cut away any safety net that would actually optimize life. That is why Texas now has the highest maternal death rate in the developed world. In a country that has no problem spending tax dollars on prisons, we are hearing Tea Party idiots like Mick Mulvaney talk about how taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for food stamps. While they are promoting fanciful lies about how abortion kills babies, they are cutting funding for clinics that would provide the care that would save the lives of women, infants and children.
If we honestly believe our stance is "pro-choice" we need to start talking about the right to have babies as well as the right not to. And then we can have the argument on our own terms. That is, that a woman or girl who chooses to be pregnant deserves the support of the government. Health care, housing, child care -- no one who claims to be pro-life should obstruct those rights.
It is time to own this side of women's right to choice.
This is what I thought about as I tossed and turned for several hours last night:
H 3114, the deceitfully titled, "Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act," went before the SC Senate yesterday. That afternoon, The State ran a video of a woman -- and her daughter Savannah's -- testimony. Wendy Duke is dignified and well-spoken, and her remarks were carefully prepared. She has written an inspirational book about her daughter's first years, and she is a blogger. She introduces her daughter early on, and 14 1/2 year old Savannah comes to sit by her while her mother continues.
At 21 weeks, Ms. Duke's doctor informed her that there were potentially severe fetal abnormalities. At first glance, it sounds like the recommendation was based on the fact that one leg would be significantly shorter than the other. Listen carefully, though, because it turns out there was also "significant brain abnormality," so the recommendation to consider an abortion was more than responsible and justified.
Before she turns the microphone over to Savannah, Duke concludes, "At 21 weeks gestation, this former fetus' personality had already been established."
Well, no. And therein lies what is outrageous about this testimony. An emotional appeal mixing feelings with facts, combining the terms "fetus" and "personality" as though they actually made sense together, just does not belong in the South Carolina legislature.
Duke's comments were followed by a brief religious screed by her daughter. The camera panned on an anti-abortion pin that she wore prominently, with a photo of something that looked more like a premature infant than a fetus, saying, "20 week preborn child -- Please protect me."
National anti-abortion organizations advising the states have been careful not to frame legislation in religious terms and rather resort to nonsensical medical terms, hence "pain capable" and my favorite, "pre-born." We have heard legislators across this country claim such idiocy as because male fetuses have erections it is an obvious indication of pleasure, so therefore must feel pain. We have been constantly inundated with claims that the fetus appearing to flinch in response to stimuli assumes pain, although pain receptors have not yet been developed.
And here we have the testimony of a truly inspirational parent, and her truly amazing daughter, claiming that without this proposed law, her daughter would not exist. Also not true.
But it is well orchestrated and heart-wrenching. And here it is on video, and making it to the State website.
If you read to the end of the piece, though, you will find testimony by another woman, Jennifer Lane, describing the tremendously difficult decision she had to make in similar circumstances. With a five-year-old daughter, she had to make decisions based on not just the severe brain abnormalities, but also on whether she could care for a child with such limitations while also caring for her young daughter.
It is apparent that Ms Duke had the resources to give great amounts of time, pay for years of medical treatments, and nurture her disabled child without sacrificing her own health. She was able to provide well for her daughter, and to give her all the support that would assure she would excel in her endeavors. She is an exceptional woman, but she also had the freedom to assess her situation and make the best choice for her.
Yet here she is judging other women, each with unique situations -- financial, familial, emotional -- by testifying that there should be a law preventing them from being able to make the choice that she was allowed to make.
To their credit, the subcommittee has asked for medical professionals to make recommendations on an amendment for exceptions for fetal abnormalities and the health of the woman. On the other hand, it assumes that this procedure has been done excessively and frivolously and that a law is needed. And they also seem to have accepted the erroneous claim that this ban is necessary because of fetal pain.
In any event, the subcommittee will be meeting again around April 1, a fitting time for fools to meet. And it will give me a few days to catch up on my sleep.
