Published in The Evangelical Catholic, Feb 92, and ALL About Issues, May 1992
ABORTION: WOMEN'S RIGHTS AND WRONGS
by Frederica Mathewes-Green
The abortion debate seems like an unresolvable conflict of rights: the
right of women to control their own bodies, the right of children to be
born. Can one both support women's rights and oppose abortion?
Truly supporting women's rights must involve telling the truth about
abortion and working for it to cease. Many years ago I felt differently;
in college I advocated the repeal of abortion laws, and supported my
friends who traveled for out-of-state abortions. In those early days of
feminism, women faced daunting obstacles. The typical woman was thought to
be prone to having parking lot mishaps, and then consoling herself with a
new hat. Certainly not someone who should run a corporation- -perhaps
someone who should not even vote.
But the hurdles were not only political; we felt physically vulnerable, as
rape statistics rose and women's bodies were exploited in advertising and
entertainment. The external world's disparagement of our abilities was
compounded by the extra cruelty that our bodies were at risk as well, from
violence without and invasion within. For an unplanned pregnancy felt like
an invader, an evil alien bent on colonizing one's body and destroying
one's plans. The first right must be to keep one's body safe, private, and
healthy; without that, all other rights are meaningless.
It is because I still believe so strongly in the right of a woman to
protect her body that I now oppose abortion. That right must begin when
her body begins, and it must be hers no matter where she lives--even if
she lives in her mother's womb. The same holds true for her brother.
For years I bought the line that the unborn was just a "glob of tissue".
When I ran across a description of a mid-pregnancy abortion, I was
horrified at the description of the syringe's hub jerking against the
mother's abdomen as her child went through his death throes. I learned
that early abortions are no more kind: the child is pulled apart limb from
limb, and sucked through a narrow tube into a bloody bag. Worst of all, I
learned that 400-500 times a year children are born alive after late
abortions, and then made to die by strangulation, drowning, or just left
in a bedpan in a dark closet until the whimpering ceases.
I could not deny that this was hideous violence. Even if there were any
doubt that the unborn was a person, if I had seen someone doing this to a
kitten I would have been horrified. The feminism that hoped to create a
new just society had embraced as essential an act of injustice. In The
Brothers Karamazov, a character challenges another as to whether he would
consent to be the architect of a new world in which all people would be
happy and at peace, but "it was essential and inevitable to torture to
death only one tiny creature--that baby...for instance--and to found that
edifice on her unavenged tears." Not just one death lies beneath this
edifice, but tens of millions, with thousands more every day. Justice
cannot be built on such a bloody foundation.
Have women profited from abortion legality? Someone has profited, but not
the woman who undergoes one; the abortion industry makes $500 million
dollars a year, and the sale of unborn children's parts could push that
figure into the billions. The average woman does not gain, but loses, when
she has an abortion. She loses, first, the hundreds of dollars cash she
must pay to receive the surgery. Secondly, she must undergo a humiliating
procedure, an invasion deeper than rape, as the interior of her uterus is
crudely vacuumed to remove every scrap of life. Some women will be haunted
by the sound of that vacuum all their lives.
Thirdly, she can lose her health. In addition to the women who are
punctured or killed on abortion tables, there are more subtly damaging
effects. The opening of the uterus, the cervix, is designed to open
gradually over several days at the end of pregnancy. In an abortion, the
cervix is wrenched open in a matter of minutes. The delicate muscle fibers
can be damaged--a damage that may go unnoticed until she is far into a
later, wanted pregnancy and they give way in a miscarriage. By some
estimates, the aborted woman's chance of later miscarriages doubles.
While the cervix can be opened, the uterus was never intended to be
vacuumed. Nicks and scratches can cause scarring which may lead to
endometriosis. But if those scars are near the opening to the fallopian
tubes, the openings can be partly obliterated. Tiny sperm can swim in and
fertilize the egg, but the fertilized egg, hundreds of times larger than a
sperm, cannot pass back through into the uterus. The fertilized egg can
implant and grow in the tubes until the child's size reaches the tube's
limit; if the condition is not diagnosed, the tube explodes, the child
dies, and the mother may die. Some studies show a five-fold increase in an
aborted woman's risk of tubal pregnancy. Alternatively, the scarring at
the tubes' entrance may be complete. In this case, the sperm can never
meet the egg, and the woman is sterile; she thought she was aborting one
pregnancy, but she was aborting all her pregnancies for the rest of her
life.
Which brings us to the most devastating loss of all: she loses her own
child. Abortion rhetoric paints the unborn as a parasite, a lump, that
"glob of tissue". But it is in fact her own child, as much like her as any
child she will ever have, sharing her appearance, talents, and family
tree. In abortion, she offers her own child as a sacrifice for the right
to continue her life, and it is a sacrifice that will haunt her.
For the last loss is the loss of her peace of mind. Planned Parenthood
recently conceded that as much as 91% of aborted women may experience
trauma after abortion. Some suffer depression, nightmares, suicidal
thoughts; some wake in the night thinking they hear a baby crying. A man
who saw his wife gradually disintegrate after her abortion asks, "What
kind of trade-off is control of your body for control of your mind?" The
baby lost in an abortion is not one that will keep his mom awake at
night--not yet.
For all these losses, women gain nothing but the right to run in place.
Abortion doesn't cure any illness; it doesn't win any woman a raise. But
in a culture that treats pregnancy and childrearing as impediments, it
surgically adapts the woman to fit in. If women are an oppressed group,
they are the only such group to require surgery in order to be equal. In
Greek mythology, Procrustes was an exacting host: if you were the wrong
size for his bed, he would stretch or chop you to fit. The abortion table
is modern feminism's Procrustean bed, one that, in a hideous twist, the
victims actually march in the streets to demand.
Earlier strains of feminism saw this issue more clearly. Susan B. Anthony
called abortion "child murder" and called for "prevention, not merely
punishment...[of] the dreadful deed." The nineteenth century feminists
were unanimous in opposing abortion. Elizabeth Cady Stanton grouped it
with infanticide, and claimed that if it was degrading to treat women as
property, it was no better for women to treat their own children as
property. Perhaps their colleague Mattie Brinkerhoff was clearest when she
likened a woman seeking abortion to a man who steals because he is hungry.
For the question remains, do women want abortion? Not like she wants a
Porsche or an ice cream cone. Like an animal caught in a trap, trying to
gnaw off its own leg, a woman who seeks abortion is trying to escape a
desperate situation by an act of violence and self-loss. Abortion is not a
sign that women are free, but a sign that they are desperate.
How did such desperation become so prevalent? Two trends in modern
feminism, both adopted from the values of the masculine power structure
that preceded it, combine to necessitate abortion. Re-emerging feminism
was concerned chiefly with opening doors for women to professional and
public life, and later embraced advocacy of sexual freedom as well. Yet
participation in public life is significantly complicated by
responsibility for children, while uncommitted sexual activity is the most
effective way of producing unwanted pregnancies. This
dilemma--simultaneous pursuit of behaviors that cause children and that
are hampered by children--inevitably finds its resolution on an abortion
table.
If we were to imagine a society that instead supports and respects women,
we would have to begin with preventing these unplanned pregnancies.
Contraceptives fail, and half of all aborting women admit they weren't
using them anyway. Thus, preventing unplanned pregnancies will involve a
return to sexual responsibility. This means either avoiding sex in
situations where a child cannot be welcomed, or being willing to be
responsible for lives unintentionally conceived, perhaps by making an
adoption plan, entering a marriage, or faithful child support payments.
Using contraceptives is no substitute for this responsibility, any more
than wearing a seatbelt entitles one to speed. The child is conceived
through no fault of her own; it is the height of cruelty to demand the
right to shred her in order to continue having sex without commitment.
Secondly, we need to make continuing a pregnancy and raising a child less
of a burden. Most agree that women should play a part in the public life
of our society; their talents and abilities are as valuable as men's, and
there is no reason to restrict them from the employment sphere. But during
the years that her children are young, mother and child usually prefer to
be together. If women are to be free to take off these years in the middle
of a career, they must have, as above, faithful, responsible men who will
support them. Both parents can also benefit from more flexibility in the
workplace: allowing parents of school-age children to set their hours to
coincide with the school day, for example, or enabling more workers to
escape the expenses of office, commute, and child care by working from
home. We also must welcome women back into the work force when they want
to return, accounting their years at home as valuable training in
management, education and negotiation skills.
Women's rights are not in conflict with their own children's rights; the
appearance of such a conflict is a sign that something is wrong in
society. When women have the sexual respect and employment flexibility
they need, they will no longer seek the substitute of the bloody injustice
of abortion.
Provided courtesy of:
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