If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would be a Sacrament
Thirty five years ago (22 January 1973) the Supreme Court decided a case titled Roe v. Wade which held that until a fetus is viable outside its mother's body (twenty eight weeks), it is not a legal individual whose rights extend beyond the rights of its mother, that in fact the mother's health preempts any rights the partially formed embryo has.
This case overturned a law in Texas that criminalized abortion and reverberated through the states. According to the Roe decision, laws against abortion violated a woman's right to privacy under due process (in the Fourteenth Amendment). This decision superceded state laws restricting abortion.
Roe v. Wade is one of the most controversial cases in U.S. Supreme Court history. Even before it was decided there were men and women whose stomachs turned at the idea of abortion. The issue had been argued many times before in fairly recent history. In 18th century England, mothers accused of murder were not put to death if they could prove they were "with child." In infamous London prisons of the day there were "child-getters"--fertile men who could reliably make a woman pregnant. Some female criminals availed themselves of their services repeatedly so as not to be hanged.
In the early Soviet Union, abortion was freely available. It was later abolished because too many women were using it in place of birth control--which was hard for most women to get up until the sixties and seventies. Rich women had it, but often not the working classes. Remember Mary McCarthy's The Group? Vassar girls had diaphragms in the thirties--but not blue collar women who relied on condoms and men who would wear them or withdraw before ejaculation. As a seventeen-year-old freshman at Barnard, I got my first diaphragm from Planned Parenthood (a college tradition). I never got pregnant accidentally because I knew that an abortion would make me terribly sad. I loved children, dogs, cats and other living things, and I understood that terminating a pregnancy would be extremely hard for me emotionally. (But then I had sophisticated New York gynecologists all my life and grew up in liberal, enlightened Manhattan with parents who were bohemians of the thirties before they surprised themselves by getting rich).
In my own Manhattan high school years, girls disappeared from New York to darkest New Jersey or Pennsylvania to seek the services of illegal abortionists and many of them were accidentally sterilized while others may have died. Rich women in New York went to Flower Fifth Avenue hospital for a "D & C." My mother did this as late as 1960, but our housekeepers and baby nurses from Jamaica or the Deep South didn't have that option. A safe medical abortion (my mother referred to it in whispers as an "a- b") was expensive and hard to find. Many poor women got infected and died. In my mother's case, as I later learned, my father was adamant about not having another baby. There were already three girls growing up and needing private schools, hand-smocked party dresses, music lessons, art lessons, ballet, figure skating, charge accounts at Saks, Best and Company and Bergdorf's, Doubleday book stores (with their listening booths for LPS--which we quaintly called "records."
How interesting that the thirty-fifth anniversary of Roe comes on the very day that my daughter will go home from the hospital after having had twins. She had a really tough time, and has been warned that she would be at risk if she got pregnant again. She is not yet thirty and has had, thank the goddess, three beautiful children and a lovely husband. She also has generous parents and in-laws, step-parents who adore her and can refuse her nothing. But she was still terrified by a very difficult delivery (the details of which are hers not mine to describe. Since she is a much-published novelist, I'm sure she will).
The babies, a girl and a boy, are miraculous--like all babies--bringing back to me Ordinary Miracles, a book of poems about childbirth I wrote when Molly was born. (The phrase has entered the language--or been ripped off by various ASCAPniks and jingle writers). Babies are miraculous, especially just when they just wake to the world.
They seem to come from a better place which some call 'God,' some call 'Mother Nature,' and some call human evolution, depending on your point of view. (I happen to think that evolution is every bit as numinous as 'God'). But one thing is clear: Having them ain't easy. And that's long before you have to raise them.
For centuries, death in childbirth was woman's lot. In some places, it still is. In mountainous Afghanistan where women can't get to hospitals or there are none, in war zones, in occupied zones with barriers or curfews, in many parts of Africa, in rural India, and China, in rural America, giving birth is still no joke. Even in big cities, it can be dangerous. There is massive bleeding, the placentas don't always detach promptly, babies are often transverse or breach, just for starters. Then there is the question of medical care.
Again, in the eighteenth-century, my favorite period in English Literature, (at the dawn of the modern era--but before Louis Pasteur), accoucheurs (the precursors of obstetricians) killed many women with the microbes they unknowingly carried from the sickbeds of other patients. There was a great political struggle between midwives, who only dealt with women, and doctors who treated everyone, because the doctors wanted their monopoly.
Many women died of infection--like Charlotte Bronte--or nearly died like Mary Shelley. Women's health had always been a political football in the supposedly "civilized" Christian era. Many midwives (always specialists in women's health) were burned as witches throughout modern history.
Now we know about bacteria and viruses and we are much more aware of unconscious infection, but childbirth can still be a big deal--especially for older women, very young women, the ill, the malnourished, the poor, the mothers of multiple babies. It seems to me incredible that anyone without a uterus would try to dictate what a woman should do with hers.
So I am appalled that abortion remains under attack--and that birth control in America has been impeded. We came so far with so much struggle. To give it back now is no less than an assault on women's health.
Of course babies are precious and should be cherished. Nobody doubts that. But should a woman be forced by the law to give birth if she has health issues, a dead baby, twins or triplets, or can't get to a hospital or must be accompanied but a male relative--who may be at war or dead or unwilling? Fundamentalist Muslims, like fundamentalist Christians would deny her that.
No wonder the late great Florynce Kennedy said: If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
I wonder about Kennedy's statement in that there are many women who believe abortion to be murder. It is not just the men in this case. However the humor of Kennedy's remark is not lost upon me and I take it for it's valuable but limited insight. There are no "sisters" out there, there are just people with different ideas.
Make your argument on something other than the demonized body of woman--"giving birth is still no joke. Even in big cities, it can be dangerous. There is massive bleeding, the placentas don't always detach promptly, babies are often transverse or breach, just for starters."
Birth has herstorically been shown to be very successful with women's ability to birth tied into their relationship with themselves
As long as we believe in the male model of medicine, fed misinformation of the female body as chaos to be controlled how are we truly making choices of any kind?
All I have to say is: Well said!
I always find it amusing and very self centered when people assume that everyone thinks as they do. But I find it alarming and unamerican, fascist in fact, when people try and force their belief's on others. We do not live under the Taliban and we as Americans are supposed to have the right to think for ourselves and make our own choices about our belief's and families. I personally am pro-birth control and I do not believe a bunch of cells is a baby. I have come to think this way through my own experience, education, and my families religious traditions. I would not force it on anyone but will discuss it if asked. I respect peoples belief's and they should respect mine. So please all of you anti choice people, stay out of my family, my bedroom and my womb. If you are against abortion, don't have one! All the time spent being ugly and calling women murderers could be better spent on helping the children who are already here. Shame on you!
What amazes me is that people are still fighting over abortion. The issue has never been abortion. It is birth control & sex education. If these things were addressed in a healthy, straightforward manner abortion would be "safe, legal & rare" as I saw on one bumper sticker. I don't think women really "choose" abortion as form of birth control. It is last resort & a very hard decision. That has been my experience with any woman I've been intimate with.
Look at what Jane Fonda is doing in Georgia. Assisting teenage girls from low income backgrounds from preventing teen pregnancies. Let's get back to talking about the real issues such as education, the ecomony, the Iraq War & stop wasting time on silly right wing moral tangents like abortion & gay marriage.
I also used to be pro abortion. Over time I came to feel it really is murder.
It is tragically sad that some women define the essence of being a woman by their "right" to kill their own unborn child.
Please do not include me in your definition.
My life has meaning that does not depend upon killing someone else.
The girls you say "disappeared" for their abortions might have had their lives transformed in ways they could not imagine by the presence of their children in their lives. THAT describes my experience. My daughter is the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Having a child is a great honor conferred by God (or nature is you prefer), it is nothing less that responsibility for a human being.
That a great many women can no longer understand that shows how much abortion has killed not just the children but the human heart.
we should outlaw obortion and every baby born should be given to the evangel churchs to support and send through college.
the war mongering evangels want to save lives before they are born and use their sons and daughters lives to trade for oil.
maybe they did not read the part you cannot kill a soul.
As a matter of personal choice, and not faith based, I do not think I would have or could have had an abortion. However, it was not my place, is not my place, nor is it my RIGHT to tell another female what to do. I am responsible for sweeping my own porch -- not someone elses.
In addition, when my former husband told me he did not want anymore children? I replied "Fine with me, get a vasectomy". Guess what? He did. He whined alot afterwards (imagine if he had to give birth!), but he did it nonetheless.
How far do we get by making the male or female appear defective due to their sex alone?
Why all the man hating ladies? Do we really need to drive away those men who are willing to stand up for a woman's right to choose? Besides much of the most vile protesters are women who don't care about their own rights. We should be pointing out their hypocrisy, not driving away men, many of whom would be willing to vocally support our right to choose if they felt welcome to. Too many men say, it's a woman's issue. No it is a human right's issue and men have every right to speak out as women do.
You are absolutely correct. If we men were able to get pregnant, it would never, ever have been illegal in the first place. This would never have been a wedge issue in our society. I do not understand the misogynist. It is a completely backwards mentality.
I wholeheartedly stand behind a woman's right to choose, and fully appreciate that, even if the child is mine own, I have no right to force the hand of a woman and her right to do as she will with her body. I can give input, certainly. I can express my opinion. But, when push comes to shove, it is not my body. It is not my CHOICE. It is hers.
Erica's article covered only part of the whole picture of abortion. She talks of "choice" yet the baby has no choice. There is no discussion of the large increase in depression, breast cancer, sterility and other serious after effects of abortion.S
Another matter concerns women considering abortion seeing Ultrasounds of their babies. Why should anyone object to this? There is much talk of making informed decisions. This would be a very important piece of information. If a woman see an Ultrasound of her baby and still wants to kill it, under the law that is her decision. At least her decision is really informed.
Without lies and hatred, liberals would be speechless. Take "choice," please.
The very term is an abortion.
The father of the unborn baby has no "choice" whether he will pay child support for the next 18 years, or have his unborn child butchered for what are usually economic reasons.
The grandparents may be able and eager to raise their grandchild, but they too have no "choice."
Finally, the baby has no "choice."
Norma McCorvey lied when she claimed to have been "raped." She was not.
Everything liberals say is a lie, including the 'ands' and the 'thes".'
I wonder how many Evangels have snuck their daughters off for an abortion. It's all different when it's personal.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
