In the preamble to their new bill, Alabama legislators write that “medical science has increasingly recognized the humanity of the unborn child,” and point to a number of technological advancements in the past four decades that allow greater understanding of fetal development. They cite the principle laid out in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal”; they claim that their efforts are in the same spirit as the anti-slavery movement, the women’s-suffrage movement, the Nuremberg war-crimes trials, and the civil-rights movement. They point to the Holocaust, Joseph Stalin’s Soviet gulags, the Rwandan genocide, and other slaughters, arguing that the number of lives taken in those horrific crimes are small compared with the alleged “50 million babies [that] have been aborted in the United States since the Roe decision in 1973.”
The above is an excerpt from a May 15th article in The Atlantic by Emma Green. It feels like Bill Murray dropping a toaster in the tub in Groundhog Day to say once more, "If this real-life issue was a movie plot, it would be rejected for being too implausible," and yet here we are.
This is not logical to compare bundles of cells the size of poppy seeds to, say, 6 million Jews with feelings and desires and hopes and thoughts and lives in progress who were slaughtered in death camps. We've been around and around the block so many times picking apart the logical fallacy in which conservatives obsess over the lives of unborn fetuses only to then ignore the very real personal and societal problems that result from bringing unwanted or non-viable pregnancies to term. We all know it's cray cray banaynay to force women to give birth to children they can't or don't want to care for, and then try to eliminate or reduce any structural supports such as WIC, paid maternity leave, universal preschool, universal healthcare, etc., that would ease the burden on families. These are not logical statements or positions. In fact, it's never been about logic at all.
It's pretty obvious, and by no means a new idea, that controlling women's access to reproductive choices means controlling all other aspects of their lives. Women who can't choose could lose their ability to: finish an education, work outside the home, provide for their children, pursue a fulfilling career, choose to leave a relationship in which they are financially dependent on an abusive partner, choose when they are done having children so they can focus on nurturing and enjoying the ones they already have.
The catch is, though, that this control only extends to certain populations of women. With enough money, wealthy women will always be able to obtain a safe, if illicit, abortion. It's the women who already lack economic resources, women who are more likely to be facing a painful choice that will really make or break their ability to manage their lives, who will lose out. What is the point of making someone's already difficult life even harder?
Is this a last-ditch effort to for old white men to hold onto control? Is it the desperate denial of the inevitable march of progress that commands them to share some of their power with women and people of color? People other than cisgendered heterosexual Christian white men are still fighting for equal rights, equal protection under the law, equal opportunities to participate in society and have their voices heard and their existence respected, and that's scary to these men, because until recently, we were succeeding.
But why exactly is that scary? Humanity. Dignity. Prosperity. Personal freedom. These are not zero-sum games. This isn't Monopoly. We're not handing Boardwalk and Park Place, free of charge, to all the women, queer people, and people of color and rigging the dice so all the straight white dudes keep landing there and forking over rent, forever and ever amen.
I don't know what to do about any of this. People much smarter and more influential don't really know what to do about this either, so it seems we're all just talking. I'm just a person with a blog, and my audience consists of my mom and like, a bot somewhere in Eastern Europe (if only that were a joke). But talking about it and considering my own positions about it is the absolute least thing I can do, so dammit that's what I'm doing. It's also the safest, least risky thing I can do, and yet somehow, it feels like I'm really putting myself out there with this one, even though I've admitted on stage and in writing to doing things I probably should be embarrassed about, like peeing the bed on purpose as too-old child, or pooping my pants while running as a not-old-enough adult.
Lena Dunham found herself in hot water a couple years ago for saying on her podcast that she never had an abortion, but wished she had. She quickly walked back her comments and issued an apology in the face of an immediate backlash from both sides. Lena has been a vocal feminist and advocate for women's reproductive freedom, and at the time, I assumed her comment was well-intentioned but poorly thought out. I remember thinking that it's a good thing no one has ever stuck a microphone in my face and publicized my baby-related comments at any point in my life. Anyone who has known me for more than a decade will probably recall my teenage penchant for making tasteless dead baby jokes that I now realize were probably hurtful to some and horrifying to many (okay, fine, to most).
I haven't exactly spent the last three years stewing about Dunham's gaffe, but it rose to the forefront of my mind in the past few days as we have seen state after state do a legislative "hold my beer" and pass ever more restrictive abortion laws for pretty much the express purpose of forcing the Supreme Court to address them, like an attention-starved child scribbling on the walls in permanent marker. Journalistic outlets and social media alike are filled with articles and hashtags encouraging women to "shout your abortion" and share your story with #youknowme. The idea is to prove to those who would demonize the idea of a woman who has chosen to have an abortion that, in fact, they actually know a real, human, not-demon woman who has had one.
For any feminist-identifying person to stay silent and ignore what's happening here would be irresponsible, regardless of how small your sphere of influence, regardless of how non-existent your audience. I feel like of all the horrors and indignities that conservatives have brought to bear throughout the last three years, of all the daily sources of outrage, this one is especially hard for me to ignore, because, selfishly, it's so personal. Because, duh, I'm a woman.
But it's also not going to personally affect me, because, like Lena (but for different reasons), I can't have kids. It keeps the question of choice at a comfortable, arms-length hypothetical. I think I understand the intent behind her words, clumsy as they may have been. She was attempting to stand in solidarity with women who have had to make an oftentimes difficult and painful choice, but somewhere in the back of her mind must have been the knowledge that she would not and could not ever truly know what making that choice feels like.
Of course, having a fully operational set of female reproductive organs isn't a prerequisite for being a feminist or an advocate of reproductive rights. Trans women, post-menopausal women, infertile women, and yes, men*, can be feminists and advocates! Uterus not required! This isn't the Hair Club for Men - you don't have to be the President AND a member. But the feeling of believing so hard in something yet remaining unable to say that you've really been down in the shit with your sisters can make you feel like an imposter.
No more of that. Ignoring or avoiding an issue that you have not personally lived through is the opposite of empathy and the quickest way to divide people into small, isolated factions. And honestly, we don't apply the same test to other social issues. Nobody is saying you can't be an advocate for humane treatment of migrants and asylum seekers unless you yourself crossed the Sonoran Desert with a Coyote. That's ridiculous. So my name is Katie and I'm proudly Pro-Choice. I support women's bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom. I haven't had an abortion, but - I totally believe that when women are confronted with the choice to terminate a pregnancy for any reason -medical, mental/emotional, financial, etc. - that they are making the most compassionate choice possible for their situation, and their right to make that choice in a safe and affordable manner is a basic human right that we must fight to preserve.
At the risk of trivializing everything I just said, thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
*Though men merely writing about abortion in a way that normalizes and routinizes it is not a sufficient condition for feminism...
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