The mother is capable of making her own decisions and if she wants to abort a foetus, yes, a foetus for any reason whatsoever, she’s well within her rights to do so.
If I had been born in a different time, I would probably have been an abortion rights activist. The unfettered and unquestioned right to an abortion is one of the issues I care most deeply about, perhaps not surprisingly given that the right to not reproduce is strongly tied to the determination of women (and, today, adults in general) as unworthy subjects outside of marriage and childbirth.
Over the last two days, the New York Times has produced, first, a report and then an op-ed on abortion. This is entirely a coincidence but also a sign of how fraught the topic is in this country, where the rights of women to abortion on demand—and we should demand nothing less—are severely curtailed, giving the lie to liberal and mostly white women’s insistence that feminism in the US flourishes to any meaningful degree.
You should read the op-ed, by Merritt Tierce, “This Is What an Abortion Looks Like,” because it’s a succinct critique of the idea of good and bad reasons for abortions. Referring to the wide praise for Wendy Davis who has written about her abortions undertaken for what are thought of as justifiable medical reasons, she writes, “By repeating only the gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, terrifying abortion stories, we protect a lie: that abortion isn’t normal. We have learned to think of abortion with shame and fear. We have accepted the damaging idea that a person who wants an abortion must grovel before the consciences of others.”
A day earlier came a sobering report that showed how far we have slid from the time when fewer of us felt the need to apologise for asking for an abortion. In Missouri, the legislature “has enacted one of the most stringent waiting periods for women seeking abortions,” increasing the waiting period for an abortion from twenty-four to seventy-two hours. This is, of course, designed to make abortions far more onerous for women, practically impossible for many.
I was struck by this part:
“We’re talking about the life and death of the unborn child,” said Senator David Sater, of southwest Missouri, who sponsored the bill. “I’m sure the unborn child probably would like to see an extra 48 hours for the mother to decide on whether or not to have the abortion done.”
I suspect there are many things the “unborn child” would like: sunshine and puppies, raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. As it grows and develops its taste buds, it might develop a yen for peanut butter sandwiches with all the crusts carefully sliced off by the hapless mother forced to carry the child to term and raise it. Or perhaps, raised in a borough of a city known for its foodiness, it might demand perfect sushi and edamame for lunch, driving another exhausted mom to distraction as she gets up at dawn to pick perfectly ripened pods glistening with morning dew [insert latest food craze here; I can’t keep up any more]. Perhaps this unborn child will become a president (but only if it’s male, because by then men like Sater will have ensured that women stay in the kitchen where they belong). Perhaps it will become an arch-conservative governor of a cold, cold state looking at Russia from her window and lecturing the country about morality while her daughter boinks her drunken boyfriend upstairs.
Let’s remind Sater and others like him: There is no such thing as an “unborn child.” This phrase, a repugnant one, is a contradiction in terms. There is no sentient being, no child curled up inside and possessed of a political will or even a fondness for anything other than, perhaps, the fluids it absorbs from the woman in whose womb it resides. There is only a blob, and it is not a blob with any rights. It is not up to this “unborn child” to make decisions for its mother, just as it is not up to a six-year-old to demand that its mother give up her job and stay at home to periodically wipe its bum, just because. The mother is capable of making her own decisions and if she wants to abort a foetus, yes, a foetus for any reason whatsoever, she’s well within her rights to do so.
She might decide the time is not right. She might decide that she made the decision to become pregnant in haste. Or, hey, get this: She might decide to have an abortion based on nothing more than a whim. She might well have an abortion and then, just months later, decide to get pregnant again and then, get this, decide to have an abortion again. She might even regret an abortion, and that would be fine. She might go on to think it was the best decision of her life, and that would be fine too.
It’s not anybody’s business, and it wouldn’t be anybody’s business even if it were his sperm that had heroically managed to fertilise her eggs.
Safe abortions on demand, for any reason whatsoever, no questions asked, no waiting period. It’s time we expected nothing less.
For more on my work on abortion, see:
Mourdock, Donnelly, Abortion, and the Wrath of Gods
Krista Jacob’s Abortion Under Attack: Women on the Challenges Facing Choice
Is Slutwalk the End of Feminism?
Barefoot and Pregnant in the White House: Sarah and Bristol Palin
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