Apoplectic about Abortion: One Clergy Woman's Emotional Roller Coaster

The following is reprinted with permission from Religion Dispatches. You can sign up for their free daily newsletter here.

I used to be angry, now I am apoplectic. I also used to be fraulein and now I am a frau. I used to be a mademoiselle and now I am a madam, a senorita and now a senora. In other words, I am a mature woman, whose human rights are vanishing before her very eyes. For a long time, I have confused myself with a man and a human and become habituated to freedom. I don't like it when Congress treats me like a girl by hacking away at abortion rights and thinking about ELIMINATING funds for family planning.

From deep within my apoplexy, I ask: What in the name of God and goodness is Congress thinking? My reluctant and puzzled conclusion: Congress IS moralizing about sex and how some people are not supposed to have it while one member (and I do mean "member") after another is discovered in a bathroom with his pants pathetically down or on a screen showing off his biceps. Larry Craig, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, John Kennedy, Gary Hart -- all sides of the aisle -- remind me of nothing so much as my 16-year-old son, who forgot to remove a used condom from his jeans' pocket, for me to find when I laundered the pants. I don't remember moralizing. I do remember conversation. We decided, sex ed for him was "everybody agrees, no one gets hurt, no one gets pregnant." He posted these notes on his bedroom wall. Moralizing is not conversation. Congress wants to be punishmentalist and moralizing about female sexuality, as though it was theirs and not mine.

Certain members of Congress are living on a hypocritical erotic planet. People have sex. They love sex. Women love sex. I actually feel sorry for Larry Craig and what he sees as his potty room, the only place he is worthy of sex. Even if it becomes "illegal" in its reproductive consequences, people are going to have sex. Some will have it in bathrooms; others will have it on the Internet when their married lives start to bore them.

Republicans are also politically hypocritical. They say out of one side of their mouth, "less government," and out of the other, "more moral policing by big government." Did these electeds never take a class in logic? Do they really "think with their d---'s?" Forgive the slang but it fits way too well with my argument. Political logic would attach family planning to a decrease of the deficit and increase the funding for it. One d-word appears to be in the way of another. More unwanted children require more schooling, polices and services. DUH.

To even bring up the South Dakota possibility of encouraging people to murder doctors who do abortions is to move beyond apoplectic, where even rage doesn't protect our souls. I am going to ignore the South Dakota possibility on the grounds of my spiritual health, which is my only new subject in this tired and tiring conversation.

I am now praying for my mental health as a mature woman. I am praying to learn what Jesus could do, which is to love my enemy and be good to those who hurt me. As an adult, and a woman, I know my rage is hurting me as much as it is hurting my opponents. Can I try to understand what the sex police want? Do they want to justify their bathroom behavior? Do they want their mothers to find "something?" Are they really capable of an abstinence that they are forcing on women? As a pastor, the only explanation I can give for the immoral stupidity of the current proposal is here: Some people on the religious right really hate their own sexuality. That almost makes me sad enough to care about them. Just almost, as I still need the defense of anger. Anger is not the opposite of love. Indifference is.

My political opponents are no longer just opponents: they are enemies of my adulthood and the enemy of girls who will become adults, if I have my way, and won't if they have theirs. I wish I could bear all the sadness they have caused me and not cover it so with rage. I do love women, girls, sex, babies, sons as well as daughters. And I love choice. The choice to be a woman and not a girl. If men had to have abortions, they would be a sacrament. Since they don't, they aren't. I think choice is sacramental. And finally, I love sacraments. What we have done to sex and girls and women is anti-sacramental. Choice can be sacramental. That is why I am apoplectic about it.

---
Read on for a sample of someelecteds' sexual behavior, courtesy of dKosopedia.

Larry Craig, Republican Senator for Idaho, was arrested on July 11, 2007, by plainclothes police officer investigating complaints of lewd behavior in a Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport airport men's room. On Aug. 8 in Hennepin County Municipal Court in Bloomington, Minn., Craig entered a guilty plea and paid a $500 fine. On Sept. 1, Craig subsequently announced his retirement from the Senate. Five days later, Craig changed his mind, renounced his retirement and began a battle to have his guilty plea overturned. Craig supported the Federal Marriage Amendment, which barred extension of rights to same-sex couples; he voted for cloture on the amendment in both 2004 and 2006, and was a cosponsor in 2008. However, in late 2006 he appeared to endorse the right of individual states to create same-sex civil unions, but said he would vote "yes" on an Idaho constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages when pressured to clarify his position by the anti-gay rights advocacy group Families for a Better Idaho. Craig voted against cloture in 2002, which would have extended the federal definition of hate crimes to cover sexual orientation.

Mark Sanford, governor of South Carolina, disappears during Father's Day weekend, 2009, returning to confess an extramarital affair in Argentina.

John Ensign, Senator from Nevada, refuses to resign after confessing to an extramarital affair with a married staffer, claiming she was trying to extort him.[ Later, it was learned he was attempting to pay her and her husband off through his parents and finding them jobs

 

Comments

[Athelstane]

08:48 AM on 02/24/2011

LesCap: Where in my post did I mention religion? I'm not religious. I am talking about facts and realities and you haven't responded to any of them. You are the one with the nonrational side of the argument-- you are simply saying "It is THEIR body," and that is the beginning and the end of the argument. In other words, women should be able to have abortions because that's what they want, and what they want trumps all other considerations. With regard to late term abortions, a noted proponet of abortion, C. Everett Koop, pointed out long ago that far too many are done, and done with a wink and a nod at the supposed medical or other justifications, indicating they are more a matter of the mother's procrastination or convenience.
Anyhow, my conclusions on abortion are formed more by history than religion. In many previous societies when infanticide was performed routinely at the behest of the father it was brutal and inhumane. Now that it is performed at the behest of the mother, it is still brutal and inhumane.

[LesCap]

08:10 AM on 02/24/2011

Read Athelstane's post below Donna.....see why many non-believers are overcoming their bambi-story inspired politeness.

From what perversion of which religion do Athelstane's beliefs spring? What fact can be found in that post beyond the fact of Athelstane's "belief"? What evidence can be found in that post to indicate Athelstane has a clue as to the realities that might lead to a late term abortion?

Blaming Congressman for being Congressman is not exactly new or productive it seems.

They very much enjoy their positions of authority and will use any tool we provide them to perpetuate that authority.

Until good people in this country, besides the non-believers who are tired of being polite, realize that our politicians using their religion to beat "other" people over the head with has not added to our nations inclusiveness, we will be stuck with our hate filled laws and party advocated "beliefs" and prejudices.

While women that decide, due to the realities of THEIR lives and THEIR world, to terminate a pregnancy are being openly demonized by our Godly neighbors, children suffer and dye from untreated diabetes or untreated infections as Godly parents and their Godly friends watch and comfort within the limits of what they (choose to) believe.

Religion, apparently needed by some, is simply advocated, for use and abuse, by most.

What part of religion is it, that is becoming intolerable for so many of us?

[DrSnuggles]

09:23 AM on 02/24/2011

Athelstane's comment was well thought out and reasoned; and actually made NO mention of religion at all. Personally, if I were to be labelled - I would be pro-choice. However, I find that both camps succumb to the same fallacy; believing they are absolutely right when a good proportion of the populace disagrees with them (even in the most pro-abortion or anti-abortion nations and areas, the opposition rarely drops below 30%). That's why I find YOU mentioning religion interesting;

Often, the pro-life camp will invoke religion as the reasoning behind their beliefs on abortion; obviously this is a poor argument (separation of church and state, other religions, non-believers etc.). But Athelstane didn't do that, they made a reasoned and non-religious response. Your response impugnes religion upon them to attempt to denigrate their viewpoint.

Using religion in this debates is JUST AS MUCH a false negative as it is a false positive.

[LesCap]

07:44 PM on 02/24/2011

I did not "accuse" this pro-lifer of being religious, just the rational.

[Athelstane]

05:26 PM on 02/23/2011

1) Once a child attains viability outside the mother, all logic says it is a human being, since it is capable of living on its own. The only difference between a viable foetus and a baby is that the foetus is still inside its mother. That is one reason why many pregnant women who see an ultrasound are no longer able to sanction the death of the child. And particularly in the case of late term abortions it is very difficult to see a rational difference between abortion and infanticide
2) Roe v. Wade is based on a "Right to Privacy" which is nowhere found in the Constitution other than in the Penumbral fantasies of an activist court (even Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested it was an ill advised decision, and that abortion should have been ruled upon by legislatures instead). A reasonable person naturally asks, "What has privacy to do with terminating the life of a human being?" We don't allow murders that occur in the privacy of the home, because to stop them would be intrusive, do we?
Given the above, how can you be shocked at the continued opposition to abortion? Yes, there are persuasive arguments that can be made for it, but it is at best a close question.
Support abortion all you want, but spare me the histrionics that you are being denied some sort of clearly expressed, fundamental entitlement.

[DrSnuggles]

09:29 AM on 02/24/2011

Well said, I am tired of people in both camps acting as if they had the ultimate answer. Personally, I'm pro-choice, but that label means very little beyond I support legal abortions with reasonable guidelines.

Morally we all fall somewhere on the line between 'ultimate rights for potential life' and 'ultimate rights for a woman's right to choose'. I may be at point A and someone who is pro-life may be at point B the most important thing to remember is that we can, neither of us, tell the other that their moral perspective is unequivocally wrong.

[KDMac]

11:35 AM on 02/24/2011

Exactly. As I explained to my kids, the abortion issue isn't just two sides, there are several areas.

I think many "pro-life" people would support abortions in the first trimester, but not when the fetus would be able to live outside the womb. I also think many 'pro-choice" people wouldn't support late-term abortions.

If a second or third trimester abortion is requested, why not just birth the fetus and, if it survives, adopt it out?

[Cindbird]

01:38 AM on 02/25/2011

But it is a fundamental right. The right of a woman to decide what should happen to her body. For me, my views on this came about when I was working as a paramedic and cared for a 12 yr old rape victim. I'll spare you the details except to say it was a gang rape, and the child became pregnant. Her doctor refused to abort the pregnancy even though the child was threatening suicide. Her mother asked me to help. I found an abortion clinic for them. I did it because I came to the realization that this child was serious. And in this case, at least, better one life lost than two. I have no desire to go back to the days of back street abortionists. What Right-to-Lifers forget, or refuse to acknowledge is that a woman can be more afraid of having a baby than using a coat hanger to get rid of it. The claim that abortion in the case of rape would be ok still leads to a problem. Only about 1/4 of rapes are reported. So how do you decide who has been raped? If you require a police report then 3/4 of women who get pregnant from rape would be excluded. I don't like abortion, no one does. But if the choice is legal abortions or women dying in filthy hotel rooms or on the bathroom floor, then I'll accept legal abortions.

[sonjasmom]

05:08 PM on 02/23/2011

You're so right. If the anti-abortion position of almost all of these politicians were about the life of the fetus/child and not about punishing women for having sex, they would (1) support birth control for poor women; (2) maintain WIC to assure that pregnant mothers and young children had necessary nutrition; (3) support public education; (4) support portions of the health care law that permit all children to get health coverage, etc., etc. But since all they care about is that a woman had sex, the actual well-being of the product of the sexual act (not to mention the woman herself) means nothing to them.

[upstatebabe]

03:58 PM on 02/23/2011

Clergy woman to clergy woman, Preach it sister!

I feel like this congress is the Bizarro version of everything that this society has accomplished in the last 100 years for women and not just for women!

[ninetailedfox]

01:29 PM on 02/23/2011

A long time ago, Pagans or "nature worshippers" as we are referred to, believed there was nothing wrong with sex. Now christians have demonized sex saying that they should have the rights to tell people what is moral and what isnt. I can see now, what a disaster allowing christians to do as they please has turned out for society.

as for liberal christians: The first rule of making excuses for religion: always claim the religion and "fundament­a­lism/lit­er­alism" are somehow separate. Never offer any evidence of course, just rely on lack of critical thinking. After all if you can frame the fundamenta­ls of a religion as not part of it, then you will believe most anything.

[lauraj400]

01:09 PM on 02/23/2011

Donna,I am a pro-life Dem.