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 This decision superceded state laws restricting abortion.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."

Comments

[Janelynne]

As a gun owner doesn't want the state to come in and tell him what to do with his guns, a woman doesn't want the state to come in and tell her what to do with her uterus.

Pro choice is an equality issue. A woman's choice for liberty and equality are sacred.

If someone is really pro-life, they ought to oppose this horrible war. How bout it?

[DrMikeC]

By all means, choice. But firstly, education about reproduction, contraceptive alternatives, responsibility. Nobody in their right mind wants an abortion, so let's try to reduce the numbers who feel they must turn to one in the first place. Choice; absolutely. Abortion as an alternative to effective contraception? Not in the 21st Century.

[amberzfaery]

A personal story: A member of my family has a mental illness (severe clinical depression-which is a physical illness of the brain, by the way). Her first pregnancy made her illness worse, but she recovered enough from it to become an excellent mother. Her second pregnancy was terminated with an abortion early on, but she still was very ill again, was hospitalized, and had to recover. She was told she should never have another child due to her illness, but she accidentally became pregnant again. She decided she couldn't go through another abortion and she loved her first child so much that she decided to have the baby. Plus her husband really pushed her in that direction despite the warnings from the doctors. The third pregnancy produced a beautiful baby with a very ill mother who was hospitalized three times within the first 6 months of the birth and she has remained ill, with brief respites, for the past 8 years. Three months after she gave birth, her husband left her and took the children and she has never been able to get them back due to her illness (she has never been violent are harmful to them in any way-her illness isn't that form of mental illness). They live in a different state and she gets to see them 2 weeks a year. It's extremely hard for her in uncountless ways.

Now, tell me how these neanderthals have gone even further to the right in that a woman's health, a rape and/or incest shouldn't even be considered? And once the child is here, they wash their hands of it.

Younger women: You need to see the movie from 1963, "Love With the Proper Stranger" and absorb the seriousness of it. Illegal abortions were dreadful in all ways. Wake up or you will lose your rights.
Any one who thinks a woman casually walks into and out of an abortion without a second thought is a complete and utter fool!

[IowaDem]

Although abortion is a sad and heart-wrenching alternative, it is sometimes a necessity as discussed earlier (health [both mental and physical], poverty, unavailability of good medical care, uncooperative sexual partners,e­tc.).
Women can and do become pregnant (even if using birth control) when they are unprepared for parenthood for one reason or another. Are they to be punished for the failure of the method of protection they chose or the twists of fate? That seems pretty harsh.
It is also important to remember that a woman is more than an empty vessel. The assumption that women have no right to other aspirations or purpose in life than to carry and raise children is unjust.
Finally, a man may walk away from parental responsibilities and many do. Occasionally a woman does, too, but usually parenting falls to the woman. In this then, shouldn't the individual woman make the choice according to her circumstances? Who but she could know what she can handle emotionally, physically, financially, etc?

[politicky]

What I want to know is why men think they have a right to chime in on this issue at all?

They've certainly made a mess of this planet so far.

With almost 7 billion humans on the planet, why are religious texts written when there were but a few hundred thousand people on the planet still revelant?

[rwe]

Erica mentions the births of her grandchild­ren.10 minutes before they exited the birth canal they could have been termintated if your daughter had wanted and these beautiful children then would not have been children but only a lump of flesh. Birth control , abortion in the rare occurence of danger to the mother and rape and incest yes . But there are many options that the planned parenthood crowd fail to ever acknowledge.

[kilowatt]

Respectfully, Roe v. Wade is one of the worst legal opinions I have read. Do not get me wrong, I want my rights, but the Supreme Court made my rights less secure in Roe.

The power to regulate abortion belongs to the states, not the federal government, or more importantly, the Supreme Court. This power is reserved for the states via the Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution that states, “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” U.S. CONST. amend. X. I have never seen abortion mentioned in the constitution, and frankly, I do not want to.

At best, the Supreme Court should have followed legal precedent and said women have a right to privacy over their intimate and medical affairs. Just like there was already protection over marital intimacy, private possession of obscene material, procreation (i.e “bedroom activity”) and over bodily integrity/personal autonomy (i.e. physician-client relationships). In some ways, Roe v Wade has actually reduced a woman’s privacy in this regard, especially with all the feigned not “unduly burdensome” consent requirements several states have passed.

I think the content of Roe, plus its week legal footing, make it rather amazing the opinion has lasted for 35 years, and I dare say, that if it wasn’t for all the anti-abortion activism which, not coincidently, became a real movement, oh, let’s say, 35 years ago, it probably would have been overturned. So thanks extremism, for keeping bad law which benefits me, on the books.

[MA]

If men got pregnant, in vitro cloning would have been perfected years ago...

[UnrulyWoman]

We have GOT to stop making abortion a men versus women issue. There's a big difference between personal experience and public policy, and when it comes to public policy, the issue is whether a fully grown adult woman's interests should be considered over that of an unborn fetus. That's all it is, really, people have made this unnecessarily complex in large part, I think, because it's an issue so divisive that families have separated over it.

The real problem is that we're starting this public discussion in the wrong place. Abortion is the consequence of one, specific behavior. Control the behavior, the need for abortion declines - and I think we can all agree thats' a good thing. Those want to talk about abortion after the moment conception are entering the conversation much too late.

Boys and girls alike have to be educated early on about the mechanics of sex - like... you can't get pregnant from French kissing, but that's a good way to get you started down the road to making a baby - as well as the responsibility you assume when you get close to someone of the opposite sex. It's not just about contraception, it's about the way young men and women deal with each other. If you think a girl is just there to satisfy your needs or to be manipulated for your purposes, you're not going to care whether she gets pregnant. And if you're a girl willing to do anything to keep a boyfriend, you're not going to care UNTIL you get pregnant.

And if you start by driving a wedge between the genders with sweeping and unfair generalizations, you never get to the talk that really matters.

[jrw712]

I heard an NPR interview with a builder in Oklahoma City, a white man, of course. Since the city has begun to impose such harsh penalties on illegals and their employers, he hasn't been able to finish his current project, now a collection of partial shells. His comment (approximately): "There have been too many birth control pills for way too many years. We need the workers." Meaning native born, presumably white workers. This was the first explicit confirmation of my suspicion that white men oppose birth control and abortion for two sets of reasons. Fertility controls and limitation of family size (1) raise real wages over the long-term, (2) reduce the white population disproportionately, and thereby threaten both white supremacy as well as patriarchy, in particular male dominance of white families. So expect continuing opposition to any sort of effort to limit family size. After all, the dominant culture derives from greed and racism and has since 1607. Religion, as always, is merely the excuse, just as "states' rights" was the excuse for preserving Jim Crow.

[Purple Girl]

The 'stuggle' of the Unborn pales incomparison to the STRUGGLES of the living
WE must change the rhetoric to reflect the facts.
Pro life beliefs should not end at birth.This philosophy is just beginning. Perhpas they should change it to Pre -Pro Life Movement, Or simply- ProBirthers. Otherwise they have been failing at the every point of their mission.

As for Pro Abortionist- there are no such beasts.

The only way to be Prolife and prochoice is to push for the elimination of Unwanted Pregnacies.

Make this issue what it is- Womans & mans .
Birth control, including sterilization should be encouraged and offer at no charge.

Yes Reprodcutionis a humna right -but it must also be emphasised as the utmost responsiblity. If you fail to provide for the children you produce then the community has the right then to take that freedom away.
Taking these Rights away should be a slippery slope for both genders. Dead Beat Dads- Gelded.
3rd abortion procedure, scrambled the eggs while you are at it.
If they take away a womans rights then they should also take mens rights ( to play johnny apple seeds)
See how ugly it could get- how about those low cost birth control methods (free condoms),Graduated Sex education and reproductive responsiblity programs through out their education, how about adding a little parental responsiblity lesson with those 'be fruitful and multiply' adages??
Can we finally have an adult conversation about reducing Unwanted pregnancies??
Otherwise there may be some 'unpleasant' side effects to the Gov't involved reproductive rights of Both sexes.

[SouthpawSass]

I'm pro choice. I've never "asked" my husband if it was alright with him if we had any of our three children. I assumed it was all good and of course I was right. And honestly, thank God I'm done...

However, what if the situation was such that I did not want to carry a pregnancy full term and my husband did? What would be a fair conclusion regarding his paternal rights?

Granted, this situation doesn't come along often, but is there a case where a biological father wanted to keep the child, taking full responsibility, and the mother didn't?

We seem to only want a father's input when we women decide to keep the child and expect the biological father to take financial "responsibility". When he doesn;t, we expect the governemt to step in and tell him he has to whether he likes it or not. We seem to involve the courts when it's convenient. And when it's not, we don't want them around...

I think the rights of women have come a long way, baby, I just think fathers are basically in a tough spot if the mother disagrees with him. Anybody...

[adled]

I have no problems with abortion being illegal...­.in a perfect world. It ain't. Too much rape. Medical complications. Too much money/class hypocrisy. Too much ideology. Too much indifference to a mother's fate. Hey, I'm also for the death penalty in a perfect world. But then again in a perfect world we wouldn't need abortions or the death penalty.

[InsaneDisabled]

It's not just an assault on women's health. It's murder and slavery. Am I overstating the case? Imagine you had a tumor that grew 40 pounds in nine months, then forced its way out of your body at great risk to your life and made you serve it for 18 years!

If abortion is murder, so is cancer surgery. A malignant tumor is a living, growing thing that can't live independently, after all. So what if it eventually kills both itself and its host? Childbirth killed more women than anything else until very, very recently.

I went to a parochial school -- which meant Right-to-Life came in and showed us dead fetus pictures a couple afternoons every year -- just the girls, of course. Half of my class left to throw up. I so wanted to go up to them and ask where I could get a fetus to dissect, but I also didn't want to get expelled.

I had myself surgically sterilized as soon as I could -- at age 30. Doctors (mostly male) wouldn't do it "in case I changed my mind." I could have pushed it -- but why should I have to?

The idea that a few cells have more rights than a complete woman is EVIL -- and I use that word on purpose. Pretenses to godliness are pure hypocrisy. Right-to-Life means the right to women's lives. In other words, it's slavery.

Of course, they're quite happy with slavery as long as it's only women.

Put that in your holy water and soak it.

[provgrays]

I know that there is no more emotional and contentious subject than abortion and abortion rights, but shouldn't the writer be just a little "appalled" at human life being surgically destroyed before birth?

"A woman's choice" is the breathless mantra, but shouldn't the real choice take place before a man and woman decide to have unprotected sex?