Being Pro-Life

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 Trouble with Abortion

I am just finishing the book, Divided We Stand, by Marjorie J. Spruill.  It was a tough book to read, but important.  The book exhaustively documents the fight for women's rights versus the fight by right-wing republican women against those rights.  I would say it is the never-ending battle between liberals and conservatives, or good and evil, but honestly, it hurts too much to admit it.

It feels to many of us these days like we are losing the war.  Whether the war is for science and education, health care, workers' rights, voting rights, minority rights, and of course, women's reproductive rights.

And, as with every battle we are fighting, it comes down to words and communication.  Fact versus lies.  And the constant planning that goes into that fight.

We don't seem to be very good at the words.  And at disseminating them.  We are late to the game and always struggling to catch up.  We are always defending ourselves, making excuses, equivocating.  We Democrats want to get in and work for people, but we aren't very good at convincing them why, or what exactly we are going to do for them.

Abortion is the most difficult battle, because it is not pretty.  You can be proud to be gay and proud to be Black.  You can brag about being in the forefront of technology and the war on cancer.  You can celebrate lives saved since the ACA was enacted.  But how do we make abortion a positive?

It took years for the women's movement to wake up and start saying "pro-choice" rather than "pro-abortion."  Meanwhile, the right wing was "pro-life."  And we let them get away with being "pro-life," even though they were also, and continue to be, against aid to women and families, affordable health care, a living wage and workers' rights, and pretty much any program that would actually be "pro-life."

And then there are the graphics.  I recall, sometime in the 80's, driving on the highway and looking up to see a van with a fetus painted on it and some ugly anti-abortion slogan.  We see them on billboards when we drive along southern and mid-western highways.  And don't even imagine that the graphics are accurate.  In 2012, this photo claiming to be of a 12-week-old fetus circulated around the internet.

From Snopes.com

Turns out, it was a hand painted resin doll.

If you have had the dubious fortune to attend or hear a legislative session when the wackos have been bussed in, you have no doubt been regaled with how God has given us the gift of life and we have no right to murder his creations.  More clever yet is when the right wing can find an actual literate woman who can testify to her choice to have her baby, and how wonderful that has been.  Especially when the argument is whether to "save the life" of a "child" with severe, life-threatening deformities.

Our South Carolina lawmakers dragged that one out in 2015, on their way to passing the abhorrent "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act."  Not only was the woman testifying that she made the choice against the recommendation of her doctor, but lo! and behold! her teenage daughter was there to testify, as proof of God's intent.  And, because our lawmakers are still forced to pretend that there is separation of church and state, this wonderful young woman was there to talk about God her own self.  And she wore some sort of pin with a baby and God message for all to see and photograph.  It was inspirational.

And then later in the hearing, a woman who chose the late-term abortion of a severely at-risk fetus testified.

At the time, The State carried not only a photo, but video, of the wonderful child.  The second woman's testimony was relegated to a couple of statements at the end.  And what else was there to do?

Recently, an anti-abortionist argued that she was forced by her boyfriend to have an abortion, and she wanted to make sure that didn't happen to anyone else.  So, she argued, she felt it was her obligation to force women to have babies rather than change a system in which a man could force a woman to have an abortion.

An abortion is a right, but it is nothing we want to brag about.  And that is the quandary.  There is no way we can dress it up, any more than we can dress up cancer.  So we have let those who wish to take that right away from us attack us with horrible words, about killing babies, about how fetuses can feel pain, about how they can pleasure themselves in utero, control the issue.  They may have no facts to back them up, but, boy howdy! do they have the imagery.

Meanwhile, lately, with the anti-abortion activists stooping to ever lower lows, women -- and men -- are beginning to step up and fight back.  More women are coming forward to admit that they have had abortions, there are more important books written on the subject (Pro by Katha Pollitt and  Life's Work by Dr. Willie Parker) and young women are getting angry about the efforts to shame and control them.  Comedians like Amy Schumer have brought abortion out of the shadows with absolutely outrageous jokes about it.

Fact:  Abortion is a safe and minor surgical procedure.  Nobody wants to say it for fear of being thought callous, but it is like having a tooth pulled.  It becomes a Big Deal when we bring all our emotional baggage to it, which we usually do.

Fact:  It may be a minor procedure, but it is not fun, and not a choice we enjoy making, even if the government were to pay for it, which it doesn't.  We don't look forward to getting a tooth pulled either.

Fact:  Choosing an abortion may be the best option.  Or it may not.  But as Dr. Willie Parker says, every woman has the right to the facts, and to make the choice herself as best she can.

Fact:  As those sanctimonious right wingnuts make it more difficult for women to have an abortion, more women are dying.  While Texas legislators keep data about its rise in maternal death rate cloaked in secrecy, it has just been found to have the highest pregnancy related death rate in the developed world.  The same people who claim to be "pro-life" are on the forefront of taking away health care.  Women who choose to be pregnant are at risk.  Women who would get an abortion if they had a real choice are at risk.

Fact:  Women are perfectly capable of making decisions about their children.  They are also perfectly capable of making decisions about whether to have children.  It is ironic that lawmakers on the one hand have decided it is up to them to control women's reproduction because they don't believe women are capable of making the right choice; meanwhile, they wash their hands of anything they might do to help women struggling to raise a child.

Fact:  God did not choose to punish women for having abortions.  Women who have abortions can get pregnant another time.  My two adult children are proof enough that my choices were sound.  If I believed in God, I would say that He approved.

Fact:  God did not appoint lawmakers to monitor or punish women for their reproductive lives or choices.  Really.  Lindsey Graham is not more capable of deciding whether my daughter should have a baby than she is.

Fact:  Fetuses don't feel pain.  They don't masturbate.  They don't pray.  When we choose to have a baby, we also carry a lot of very romantic sweet notions about that developing fetus, that all has to do with its potential, not what it is.  There is nothing romantic or sweet about having a baby without affordable health care, or a baby born that will die minutes later, or having a baby that you are neither emotionally nor financially capable of caring for.

So, there are a lot of negatives in the above arguments.  But on the other side, we might just want to consider the positives.  We who choose abortion do it for selfish reasons.   Those reasons may include being able to finish college or take care of other children.  We may choose not to have a child we can't afford to support, or have the time to care for.  We may not want to have a child because we don't believe we would make good parents.  We may want to devote our lives to curing cancer or teaching.  We may choose an abortion just because it feels right.

In all those cases, we need to stand up and be proud of our choice.  Come out of the closet.  God doesn't condemn you, and who cares if Donald Trump does?  And we need to protect our words, and work hard to communicate our rights and beliefs.  Don't let people who are anti-abortion get away with saying they are pro-life; I guarantee, they are not.  Don't let them get away with using terms like "pain-capable" or "partial birth" or "dismemberment abortion," which latter is the most recent step on the slippery slope.  Fetuses aren't babies.  Women don't carry babies, except on their hips for a couple of years.

I am so proud of the women who are fighting this fight.  Many of them could be going about their lives assuming it isn't going to happen to them.  Abortion isn't something you grow up looking forward to, and pretty much by definition you don't plan for it.  So fighting for that right has to be more than the right to have an abortion.  It is about the right to determine our own paths, privately, freely, without government interference.  And it is about fighting for that right for all women.

The Morality of Abortion

the Ironic Cherry reads...

Life's Work:

A Moral Argument for Choice

by Dr. Willie Parker

This is a book with heart.  It is a short book; I wanted it to go on forever, but I wanted it to end so I could sit here and write about it.  I want to take each one of you by the hand and bring you to the library to check out your own copy of it.  I want to read it out loud to you.  I know I am unable to describe it to my own satisfaction, to the point where you can't wait to read it yourself.  But I will try.

Dr. Willie Parker begins his story by talking about "The Women."  It is the women, us, to which he has devoted his life's work.  He is a man of faith, African American, raised in the South, in poverty.  He acknowledges his hard work and intellect, but appreciates the support of family and educators that brought him to the work he now does.

He is a physician who performs abortions, visiting clinics where there are no other abortion doctors, in states where legislatures have chipped away at women's right to choose to have an abortion.  He is an activist, serving on boards from Planned Parenthood to the Center for Reproductive Rights, traveling to D.C. and throughout the country to give testimony in support of women's reproductive rights.

In Life's Work, Dr. Parker takes us through the changes in his life's philosophy, in which he went from being an Ob/Gyn who avoided abortion to becoming one of the nation's foremost advocates and front-line abortion doctors.  He speaks from a personal perspective, telling how he began to question the rigid moralism of the scripture, and how he became a "born again born again" Christian.  He also speaks clearly from a medical point of view, describing the aspects of the abortion procedure, because he knows that too much myth and distortion controls the conversation.  He tells us to speak out, speak to one another, speak without fear.

Speak without fear.  Dr. Parker has lived, since he has made his decision to work in the service of women who seek abortion, with the knowledge of the risk he is taking.  Each and every day that he walks into one of the clinics in which he works, he has to walk the gauntlet of antis carrying signs and yelling to the women who are merely seeking to live their lives freely.

He calls them "antis."  He does not give them any more title than that.  He writes about and debunks the lies that have been perpetuated, that doctors have been forced by legislators to tell.  He talks about the TRAP laws, those laws that are created under the pretense of protecting the safety of women, but which sole purpose is to close clinics and to make abortion inaccessible.

He tells us about the women and girls who come to the clinics, and those who are forced to carry a pregnancy to term because clinics have closed down or rules about waiting periods run out the legal timeline.  He tells about how doctors have been threatened, how laws have made it harder to practice.  He tells about the terrorists who threaten and who have killed.  And he talks about people who use their religious beliefs to intimidate and to control, and of the people of faith who have stepped up to help provide access to abortions to women who seek them.

Dr. Parker describes the changes in language on the left, wherein sincere abortion rights proponents tried to compromise with the antis, by talking about how abortion was a bad but necessary option, and how we need to make abortion safe, accessible and rare.  And how this reframing actually worked to fuel the antis.  He states with medical authority that abortion is not a "bad" thing; it is a medical procedure, a simple and safe one.  It does not have the essence of evil with which the religious right has attempted to imbue it.

In 2014, in PRO: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, Katha Pollitt began the conversation we needed to be having.  We needed to hear that we have no need to feel guilt or shame, we have the right to medical privacy and medical choices.  The government needs to get the hell out of our reproductive lives.  And, as borne out during the Women's March, we women (and men) are beginning to wake up from that deluded sleep that since Roe v. Wade led us to think we would no longer have to fight.

And now, Dr. Willie Parker has added another strong voice to our fight.

I hope you will take the time to give this book a read.  It is not just an important book, it is inspirational. 

How Libraries Die

Back in the day when libraries were funded because books were thought to be important, here in Charleston we had a generous -- and sensible -- book purchase policy.  Eight copies -- one for each large and regional branch plus Main -- were purchased for pretty much anything that wasn't totally obscure.  Before our current director hit town, there was a copy at each branch.  Since he decided we had too many couriers carrying books back and forth, and for that matter, too many books, there is no longer an owning branch.  When you return a book, it stays wherever it was returned.  So there may be five copies of a book in tiny James Island, and none at St. Andrews Regional.

Since so many of us request books online these days, the tragedy does not so much begin with those older books, although it certainly ends there as they get discarded prematurely.  People that go into the library to borrow books encounter the New Books section first.  And many of us, even those who do most of their shopping online, browse those New Books.  That's where they see titles they would otherwise never know about.

Except that over the years our library has cut back on their purchases.  Especially for books that are not best-sellers.  You can always find copies of Bill O'Reilley's latest tome, but some books disappear before we ever see them.  Painful, awful decisions about what books not to order, and of what books to order only one copy.

For example, and this is enraging me as well as breaking my heart, is the book Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights by Katha Pollitt.  Even though there is a dearth of books about abortion rights, and the reviews of this book by this established author have been quite good, making the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2014, Charleston County Public Library owns ONE copy.  There are only four holds on this book, so it is unlikely that more copies will be purchased.

And here's the thing.  With only one copy, far fewer patrons will know it exists.  When they browse those new books, they won't see it.  When those holds are exhausted (in two months), there will only be one copy of this book on the shelf at one branch.  People who browse the shelves won't know it exists.  People who are interested in abortion rights won't know it exists.  And if that one copy doesn't get lost or damaged in its short life as a New Book, it will go off into the non-fiction stacks to die.

Imagine this happening on way too many topics.  Not only do we not have the opportunity to learn about these important new books because we don't see them on the shelves.  We fail to see topics that might catch our eye, stir our interest.  We become smaller.

And that is what is happening as we downsize our libraries.

Here is what you can do:

1.  If you hear about books like Pollitt's Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, place a hold on it at the library.  A long waiting list gets the attention of the people who do the ordering and they are more likely to order more copies when the topic comes up again.  They may even order more copies of the current book if the waiting list is sufficiently long to prove an interest.

2.  If they don't order more copies, call, email, visit and ask them to order more copies.  Don't let them get away with making decisions about topics that affect our communities, and our lives.

As our library shrinks down to best-sellers and cookbooks, please join me in the fight.