My computer seems to be on the frizz (is that how you spell it?), so my ability to mod comments might be touch and go until I get back to Austin. Sorry, y’all. But while it’s up, I have to get in a blog post before I start to get on the move out of San Francisco. Courtney Martin’s article at Alternet about about admitting the complexity of abortion bothered me, probably especially because I think so highly of Courtney as a general rule and think she’s really good at probing the uncomfortable areas where people are kind of lying to themselves. But the article read to me a lot like articles defending belief in spirituality or space aliens against all the big, meanie skeptics out there. But even more so, because I reject the idea that there’s mobs of older feminists running around denying women the right to feel complex about abortion, when there are lots of us meanie skeptics who will call bullshit without mincing words too much on UFOs or religion, because I think everyone gets that the decision to have an abortion is hard on a lot of women. At best, we meanie feminists demand respect for those who don’t feel that complex about it.
Courtney, to her credit, admits that the meanie feminists she’s arguing with are a bit of a strawman, by focusing right away on a woman whose main sin was not putting up a phony show about feeling guilty over her own abortion that she might not have even been having.
Planned Parenthood was packed on a Thursday in the frigid Colorado dead of winter. I remember giving up my seat to a woman who looked to be in her thirties and totally unfazed by the crowded lobby on abortion day. She alternated between gabbing on her phone and yelling at her toddler. I flipped through a magazine without really looking at the pages and hated her a little.
It wasn’t that I thought she was an evil person. I am not, nor ever was, a conservative Christian — despite having grown up just miles away from Focus on the Family. In fact, I was at that Planned Parenthood, in order to support a pregnant neighbor. After a condom-break and twist of fate, she was too scared to tell her parents, but too determined to protect her own future. We marched past the pro-lifers with their gruesome placards and went inside, arm in arm.
I was unequivocally pro-choice, but I hated that woman in her 30s because she seemed (I didn’t ask) to have such an uncomplicated relationship with abortion. I was jealous. Past my conviction that abortion should be legal and safe, my own feelings were a mess.
I felt that way again at a screening of Jennifer Baumgardner and Gillian Aldrich’s film, I Had an Abortion, a couple of years ago. After a riveting film collage of real women who had experienced the complexity and power of abortion, a rather one dimensional discussion took place where older feminists expressed their disappointment in younger women’s ambivalence over the issue. A young woman spoke about her conviction that abortion should be legal, but not easy, and another woman, who looked to be in her 50s, immediately yelled out “Abortion is a form of contraception!” Another feminist veteran teared up talking about her misguided students who expressed shame over abortion, but there was a hint of patronizing mixed in with the sadness.
Was it there? Or did it just feel there, because the women didn’t put up a really phony display of over-validation in order to quiet doubts? The tone of the article reminds of that of someone defending religion or UFOs not because I think feeling complex about your own relationship to abortion (or birth control, for that matter) is wrong like I think religion and UFOs are wrong, but because, like in the articles defending religion or UFOs, I get the impression that Courtney is battling the doubts in her head more than the women out there. She isn’t asking something fair, which is for those of us (outing myself) who have no moral qualms about abortion to be accepting and generous to those who do—we already are, because most of us get that it’s all mixed up in feelings about sex, love, gender roles, and other stuff we also feel ooky about when triggered in other ways—but she seems more to be asking that we pretend to feel a complexity we don’t so that others feel better about themselves. Like the woman in the waiting room—what was she supposed to do? I get the impression that Courtney would have liked it if the woman put on a big phony display. And I don’t think that’s good or healthy by any stretch.
I’m not surprised that anyone who’s adamantly pro-choice feels weird and ooky about abortion, nor do I think they should feel guilty about feeling weird about it. It would be nice if more women who felt ooky about it really sat down and asked themselves hard questions about the need to get over all this internalized guilt about sexuality and choosing your own health and well-being over the desires of others who wish to lay claim to your autonomy. Or their own irrational need for perfection, since a lot of pro-choice women beat themselves up for contraceptive failures. But I’m not going to bust your ovaries about it if you don’t have all the answers right away—again, we’re not perfect nor should we feel that we have to be.
But women who don’t feel a quandary are not bad people, and trying to guilt-trip us about it is out of line. I find most of the time when people demand phony displays of feelings that you don’t have, it’s because they have doubts and they want your phony display to make them feel better. And Courtney admits that her anger at the woman in the clinic for not putting on a phony display was based in jealousy, of the ability to not care. So let me take a moment to defend those of us who don’t give a shit about the complexities of abortion, for our own selves (certainly, I extend my sympathies to anyone who does feel weird or guilty). Here’s why I personally don’t feel weird in the slightest about abortion:
Abortion doesn’t hurt anyone. I’m one of those who thinks there’s a moral issue when it comes to killing a fetus that’s sentient. I don’t think that that moral issue has any bearing on the legality of abortion,* but I would be ooked severely by a woman who aborted at liuke 30 weeks for no reason. Lucky for me and my potential for ookiness, late term “convenience” abortions don’t happen—most are performed for health reasons. The vast majority of abortions are performed when the fetus is basically brainless, and thus those abortions have the moral weight of removing tumors or tapeworms. The potential person argument has no sway over me, because if not allowing a potential person to come into being is wrong, all forms of birth control, including abstinence, are wrong. Fetal personhood is a red herring argument, anyway—you can predict a person’s attitude towards abortion rights far more by their attachment to mandatory patriarchal gender roles and their weirdness about sex than by their feelings about “life”.
Female sexual pleasure is a great thing, and in that abortion rights help secure women’s ability to feel pleasure, abortion is a good thing. I suspect that a lot of women feel ooky about abortion for the same reason they beat themselves up about taking that piece of cake. Not that abortion is a piece of cake—I suspect it’s pretty painful—but it signifies having sex for pleasure, not out of duty. And that leaves we puritanical Americans uneasy. I waste my puritanical urges on food, though, and have nothing left over for sex.
He came in your vagina, he didn’t pee on your leg. A lot of women’s guilt over abortion is about feeling like it’s wrong not to want to settle down with every guy you sleep with. Pregnancy is the time-honored way of forcing the issue. Chuck Klosterman wrote an interesting bit in his book Killing Yourself To Live about the secret hope that his girlfriend’s pregnancy turned out to be for real, so that he could quit second-guessing his relationships and just get married already. I think that secret sentiment is more common than we want it to be, and for a lot of women, getting an abortion makes the hope explicit and rejects it. Trust me on this; I felt ooky about a pregnancy scare right up until my ex-boyfriend pounced and suggested we just get married. Which made me realize that I didn’t want to passively fall into these things, which is a rejection of social norms on a fundamental level.
I don’t want children. I suspect that if you want children in the future, but not now, abortion dredges up an assortment of fears about the future. But if you’re not going to have kids or you have had them and you’re done (perhaps like the lady in the waiting room who was blase?), then not continuing a pregnancy sort of feels like not driving to Cleveland. You’re not thinking, “What if I realize that was my only chance and I blew it?” On the flip side of that, Susie Bright has said her first abortion made her happy, because it made her realize that her body was fertile and that she would one day have that chance to have a child, which she did. That’s a legitimate feeling, too.
Wrapping this up, I just want to make it clear that because I personally don’t get ooky about abortion in no way, shape, or form means that someone else is bad because she does. There’s a massive tendency in our culture to think that one person’s experiences being different from another person’s invalidates one of the two. But in this case, it’s really personal and touches on a lot of issues—sex and family are biggies—that people simply will feel complex about.
*Because I think it’s immoral not to donate your organs when you die if you can, but it should be perfectly legal not to. Same principle.
99 Responses to “No apologies can mean no regrets (but doesn’t have to, of course)”
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It’s “on the fritz.”
And good post. Ambivalence is all very well, but pro-choicers should not forget that they’re in a war. Let’s not get into the situation Yeats described: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”
Awesome piece.
I’m a college student, younger feminist, and it does irk me that so many people my age have such issues with abortion, even if they are pro choice. I think anti-choice culture and the recent revival of religion as something we have to treasure and respect no matter how stupid it is has a lot to do with this attitude.
At a Roe v Wade event the other day, I heard an old George Carlin joke, “When it’s a human, it’s an abortion; when it’s a chicken, it’s an omelette”
The condition is named after Walter Mondale.
It’s interesting that she points to older feminists being critical of younger women who aren’t as sure about abortion.
It reminds me of a conversation that took place where I work about safety in refineries. Accidents and fires have been dramatically reduced in oil refineries and there is a significant population of refinery workers who have never been through an extremely hazardous situation. That’s a great thing! But the result that needs to be overcome is that it makes the employees sometimes feel “too safe” so that they might get careless.
I think it’s similar with some of us who have never lived in a time when abortion was illegal or in an area where abortion is difficult to get. I can understand why older pro-choice women would get frustrated when younger women don’t have “zeal” when it comes to protecting abortion rights. They’ve seen what happens when you don’t demand unconditional access.
I’m only 30 but I’m really sympathizing with the “older” feminists and impatience with the insistence that the personal complexities of abortion need to be part of the political discussion. There are other medical decisions that are equally complex and emotional. No one insists that we need to have a public acknowledgement that some people have complex reactions to those because it’s taken for granted.
I also think she’s used personal experience and anecdote to create a split between supposed older “abortion is good, period” and younger “I’m ambivalent” feminists.
Excellent piece, I’ve often been a bit curious about some of the details of your thoughts on this matter, and this really clarifies it well.
Also I once had a roommate with the surname Fritz. He wasn’t fond of that particular idiom. Which is neither here nor there but is a amusing memory for me.
I didn’t like that piece either. It may be because I’m a midwesterner to the bone - and the upper Midwest at that - but seriously, I don’t want to share in the anxious feelings of anyone other than those I actually have an emotional tie to too, nor will I perform my emotions on demand - to anyone. Her call/request that all women seeking abortions perform a contriteness dance is something I find demeaning, as is her feeling that it is patronizing (?) for me - as one of those now older feminists - to really not give a shit about the emotional whinging of adolescents who want to moan on about their feelings of ickiness regarding abortion. Do it on your own time, kid.
The suggestion (demand?) that one potential compromise (as if) position with the anti-abortion crowd is to all hold hands and solemnly agree that all women are fragile emotional wrecks who immediately bond with any zygote that takes up residence in their wombs such that the choice to dump it out is traaagiccical makes me want to barf.
For some it is, and they deserve all the support available. For some - like, say, me - it totally wasn’t. Not then, not now. And I deeply resent the idea that i’m supposed to pretend it was to satisfy an audience who will never be satisfied until all women are back in the shackles of femme coverture. Fuck them.
I’m 29, so “younger,” but also have two kids, and the tone of that piece about the “gabbing and yelling” mother who seemed so “uncomplicated” is so patronizing and infuriating. Thank you for giving a more nuanced view of that woman and for not asking that she justify or validate poor Courtney’s feelings.
The condition is named after Walter Mondale.
HA! Tres funny.
Alas, the term is probably theatrical in origin and was first attested to in 1903.
“It would be nice if more women who felt ooky about it really sat down and asked themselves hard questions about the need to get over all this internalized guilt about sexuality and choosing your own health and well-being over the desires of others who wish to lay claim to your autonomy.”
I have done all that, Amanda, and had an abortion. I feel slightly ooky about mine, but not truly guilty. We who have “been there, done that” have a right to our feelings. You seem to imply that we wouldn’t have those feelings if we’d just realize that they were artificially induced by society(pun intended). I must disagree. I don’t have children to this day, and don’t regret it. I am ferociously pro-choice and have participated in clinic defense. I also felt so darn relieved and happy when the abortion was over.
Sex, reproduction, biology, human emotions…they’re all terribly complex and shouldn’t be dismissed.
Even when society says you should abort and supports your decision, it’s terribly difficult.
I take it that the author of this piece doesn’t have any children herself, no?
Having a toddler to yell at makes it all less complicated. That is because you are on daily terms with the reality of real children and babies, and not formulating what if scenarios out of rosy-colored haze and romance.
Mom knew full well what she was doing. Been there, done that, not going to have another, no regrets. So easy for somebody who doesn’t understand that woman’s daily reality to judge her apparent lack of contrition.
BetsyTX, I just read that as saying that there is a lot of internalized guilt over sexuality, but people are better off if/when they can let go of that guilt. Not that you aren’t allowed to have your feelings as they are, and not that you should be made to feel guilty for having those feelings. Perhaps that is all Amanda meant?
it’s terribly difficult
I’m sure you meant to add “for some.”
Or - “it can be.”
I’m not aiming for patronizing here, but only insisting that your own experiences aren’t used, however unintentionally, to invalidate mine.
And when abortion is difficult for those personally involved, counseling, rituals, religious or spiritual practices - any and all should be readily available and free from shaming. One of the many frustrating things about the current situation is that these services aren’t always available, or even when available, easy to make use of. In part- and my guess is to a significant degree - these services are hard to come by/make use of because of the general sense of ookienes and shame/unrealistic weirdness pervading issues of female sexuality and motherhood - and abortion involves both.
And that does have to be dealt with. So that all women choosing abortions can get the type of care, before, during and after, that they need in their particular context.
Also, how does Martin know that Cell Phone Woman was getting an abortion? Planned Parenthood does lots of other things as well. She could have been getting a Pap test, or one of the many other things that make up 97% of Planned Parenthoods procedures….
Assuming that the woman was there for abortion, and then assuming she was not feeling enough? So patronizing
“Even when society says you should abort and supports your decision, it’s terribly difficult. ”
This was a bad place to switch into second person, as it exemplifies the whole nature of this conflict. This isn’t about a generic “you,” it’s about a specific you — BetsyTX. This isn’t about a generic “it is terribly difficult,” which is universalizing, it was about your experience.
The point is that not everyone does feel complicated about abortion. You did, and I respect your personal right to feel complicated about your abortion.
I don’t respect your decision to project that complication onto me and other women, which is something you’ve done inherently (though perhaps not intentionally) with your choice of wording here.
Nell @ No. 6:
BRAVO!! I could not have put it any better, so I won’t even try.
Thank you.
“not continuing a pregnancy sort of feels like not driving to Cleveland.”
Hey now…
“Chuck Klosterman wrote an interesting bit in his book Killing Yourself To Live about the secret hope that his girlfriend’s pregnancy turned out to be for real, so that he could quit second-guessing his relationships and just get married already.”
Is that book really that good? I really like Sex Drugs & Cocoa Puffs…
hm…my first comment seemed to disapeer…
How does Martin know that the woman was having an abortion? Planned Parenthood offers many services. Assuming that Cell Phone Lady was in for an abortion is not only patronizing, but probably inaccurate.
Am I the only one who read the article and thinks that maybe the author was off-base with her entire premise? I mean, yes, it’s “abortion day” at that particular Planned Parenthood, but — couldn’t the mother she’s “hating” really be there for something else, like an annual Pap smear?
Maybe it’s a personal trigger, but it makes me insane when people assume that all Planned Parenthood visits are always and only for abortions. I used their services rather frequently when I was a fresh-out-of-college, no-insurance-having twenty-something, and I’ve never been pregnant, so have (obviously) never had an abortion.
I just couldn’t get past that for the first two attempts at reading the article.
But I agree that I have no desire to demand that other people must feel a certain way about abortion in order to demonstrate…what, exactly?
“couldn’t the mother she’s “hating” really be there for something else, like an annual Pap smear? ”
Exactly, isn’t only something like 3% of Planned Parenthood’s budget directly devoted to abortion?
This was Rudy’s justification for taking donations from them; I suspect that the religious right was fully aware of these issues and didn’t give a damn when they attacked him for it, specifically because beyond abortion they don’t care about women’s health in general.
Not morning, that did occur to me. You are right to point out the wide variety of Planned Parenthood services. In fact, one office locally provides only the basic office visit stuff on a rapid turn-around basis.
However, Amanda has us discussing the writings of a woman who was doing some serious projecting - whether the “screen” was a screen or a wall doesn’t make any difference.
Not a morning person,
That’s what I thought exactly. She’s falling for the wingnuts’ paranoid crap that Planned Parenthood is all abortions, all the time.
Yeah, I completely agree with Nell, too, and in my experience the insistence on the “I support abortion rights but YOU HAVE TO ADMIT ITS REALLY REALLY MORALLY COMPLICATED AND PEOPLE WHO FEEL IT IS WRONG MUST BE LISTENED TO AND YOU HAVE TO SHUT UP AROUND THEM OR YOU WILL HURT THEIR TENDER FEELINGS WITH YOUR STONY HEARTLESSNESS” mode of argument
is pretty much code for “I don’t support abortion rights very much, actually”
I got the feeling that the “marching past the protesters” part of the neighbour’s experience seemed to Courtney M like a necessary element of the process — like, abortion *should* be a harrowing, gauntlet-involving ordeal.
Some of us older types may also envy the younger (especially childless) ones the freedom to spend time gazing at their navels.
OK, that came out a bit too dismissive. That woman in her 30s with a toddler, gabbing on the cell phone, isn’t visibly angsting about her abortion (should she be there to get one, which seems unlikely, since being sedated and taken into an OR doesn’t really mix with supervising a toddler, and — hey, Planned Parenthood also, in fact mostly does birth control and other gyn stuff) because that’s not the place to do it.
“Mama, why are you sad?”
“I’m not sad, I’m just thinking.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Well, I might have another baby like you, but I’ve decided not to….”
right in a crowded waiting room. Uh-uh.
It sounds more as if Martin is heedlessly projecting her own situation and angst onto everyone else in the waiting room, and hasn’t quite gotten the notion that the situations of all those other people aren’t about her.
>
I have seen that tendency so often in judgements passed upon rape victims. I really hate that.
From the article: “A young woman spoke about her conviction that abortion should be legal, but not easy, and another woman, who looked to be in her 50s, immediately yelled out “Abortion is a form of contraception!” Another feminist veteran teared up talking about her misguided students who expressed shame over abortion, but there was a hint of patronizing mixed in with the sadness.”
I actually do know what this feels like. I grew up with an older female relative who accepted no other opinion than that abortion was contraception and utterly without any more meaning than a minor surgical episode, and had had at least eight abortions herself by the time she was in her mid-30s. It was flatly not allowed for me to ever by so much as a twitch of an eyelid show any feeling about abortion either other than joy that they were legal, which was difficult as I was a child, a teen and a young woman when I knew her and ergo, first learning what it was and trying to figure out my own feelings about it as a moral issue, a medical issue, a woman’s issue, etc. etc. I once daringly remarked (I think I was sixteen or seventeen) that I could understand being sad about having an abortion…she gave me a definitely, no-imagination-needed-to-discern, pitying smile and said she felt sorry for me, then, if it ever turned out I needed one. So yes, older feminist types such as the article author described do exist, and are pretty intolerant of any complex feelings anyone else may have about abortion.
Ah, sorry, Ms. Kate - I’m not trying to derail the discussion; as I said, it’s a trigger for me.
And I agree that there’s absolutely no point in judging the reasons other people make the decisions they make, and am finding this to be so self-explanatory that I can’t eevn form a coherent response to this article. As far as I can tell, I don’t get to (as an adult and semi-rational human being) require that other people unrelated to me take my feelings into account when they purchase a car, take a job, or pick a mate — so why do I get to require that anyone consider my feelings on something like a medical procedure? And the reverse is true: I don’t take the feelings of unrelated strangers into account when I make decisions, either.
So I guess even once I get past my initial objections, I’m still having a hard time understanding why another adult human being thinks that “other people’s feelings” are a necessary component of anyone’s decision, so I’m still baffled that the author of this article is making a case for it.
The thing I pinged on with her projection was the assumption that because the woman in question wasn’t clearly exhibiting obvious feelings of remorse, confusion, etc, that she didn’t have them, or hadn’t even bothered to address them.
I agree with what others have said above about it not being mandatory to have conflicts over it, but she certainly may have. And with those who point out that the author had no way of knowing just why she was there. Maybe to support another woman who did have all the emotional upheavals the author approves of.
But some people sort through their issues, make a resolution in their mind, and then proceed without dwelling.
Others may feel deeply and simply don’t show it, whether by choice or by nature.
And on top of it, she was busy - her child may have been enough of a distraction to focus on the moment and not on something coming up.
Absofuckinlutely. What nell said.
I’ve never had an abortion and if responsible condom use and yasmin popping work as they should, I will never need to have one, but for someone who at this time expects to be childfree for the rest of her life, I find it offensive that (culturally) there is still a strong consensus even outside the abortion debate that women should want to be mothers: We’re selfish bitches if we don’t want to raise children and immoral sluts if we don’t want to birth them. The idea that a woman’s first responsibility isn’t to continue a pregnancy, that it’s to HERSELF, seems to shock the moral fiber of many, many people. I’ve used this term before, and I’ll use it again - motherhood is not “the default”. Until we start asking ourselves why we should continue a pregnancy, rather than why we should NOT continue a pregnancy, this absurd cultural norm/default is going to stay. And I hate it.
“…was based in jealousy,..”
ENVY, not jealousy. (insert lecture on a writer’s duty blah blah blah)
Back in the Roe days, the thing that was most upsetting to me was Justice White’s concurrence in the decision, which basically said that women will make this choice without reflection. (i.e., will use birth control as a form of contraception). The notion that woment are not serious thinkers or moral beings and will not take this choice seriously was really, really offensive.
That’s the same problem with the 24-hour waiting periods. Leaving aside the fact that they are intended to make having an abortion logistically difficult, they are also offensive because they suggest women have not given the decision to have an abortion sufficient consideration.
So that is why I have some trouble with the thought that there are women for whom the choice is simple. (That is also why I have trouble with the notion that ‘older feminists’ bristle when younger women describe abortion as a hard choice.)
In the end, I guess there is a difference between thinking it through and having moral qualms at the end of the thought process. It appears that your position is carefully considered, but it leaves you with moral clarity. I don’t have a problem with that.
oops — I should have said justice white’s dissent.
Fetal personhood is a red herring argument, anyway—you can predict a person’s attitude towards abortion rights far more by their attachment to mandatory patriarchal gender roles and their weirdness about sex than by their feelings about “life”.
No argument here. But one question. I do have two friends who really and truly believe that life begins at conception. They are entirely consistent with that belief: no exceptions for rape or incest, would be willing to try women and doctors alike, the whole 9 yards. What do I say to them? I don’t feel like telling them that they can’t legislate based on that belief, because if I believed abortion was murder, I’d be freaking out too.
Is it good enough to say that the vast majority of anti-choicers care about sex and not life, so we can mostly ignore the few? Intellectually, I’m more or less comfortable with that. But as a friend, hearing my friends sincerely tell me that murder is legally happening daily, I want to have something to say (and believe me, they aren’t going to be sold on the tapeworm analogy).
Any advice?
What I can’t tell from this story is whether the young woman was saying abortion shouldn’t be emotionally easy or saying that it should be difficult to get one. Because both of those statements are troubling, but the latter is especially so. I’m in my 20s and I would have yelled at that young woman in the audience just the way that older woman did. I’ll see my own shades of grey, thank you very much — I don’t need a doctor or a government official to do that for me. Sometimes I think these young women have no idea what they’re advocating.
Courtney needs an intervention, I think.
She starts by assuming why the woman is there, then interprets the woman’s emotional and mental state to suit herself. And even if the woman is there for an abortion right now AND feels no guilt or shame over it, Courtney never once considers that the woman’s situation might easily make abortion the best or even only choice left to her.
All so she can blather on about how BAD abortion makes her feel and how CONFLICTED she is about HER NEIGHBOR GETTING AN ABORTION. She feels the need to justify her neighbor’s abortion to us, too–like it’s any of our concern.
Courtney, sweetie, nothing in this story is about you, OK? Shut up, grow up, and get over yourself already. Go look up “solipsism” in the dictionary, and maybe “narcissism” while you’re there. See, honey? Always mking everything about you and your feelings is A BAD THING.
Excellent critique. Martin’s argument seems like another variation on the theme of “tragic” abortions, that you pay for ending an unwanted pregnancy with remorse and pain, rather than because you’re entitled to do so as a right. This bothered me when Hillary Clinton used the “tragedy of abortion” argument to put ideological space between herself and her pro-choice audience, and it bothered me when Frances Kissling called for more pro-choice talk about “fetal value”: “In this world people are waiting for some sign that prochoice advocates are not proabortion and are sensitive to the values that are in conflict when abortion is considered or performed.”
(I do like Katha Pollitt’s lampooning of the Zero-abortion goals of people like William Saletan though: “Do you think abortion is tragic and terrible and wrong, that Roe v. Wade went too far and that the prochoice movement is elitist, unfeeling, overbearing, overreaching and quite possibly dead? In the current debate over abortion, that makes you a prochoicer.”)
But at least the first two examples have the somewhat redeeming factor of being overtly political moves: attempts to craft a “message” that appeals to the unconverted. It’s definitely disturbing that when that message is so effective that even out-and-proud pro-choice women begin expecting eachother to display the proper amount of regret at exercising their rights — as though the preferred image of a woman getting an abortion — ashamed, very sorry, certainly not casual — is more important than her right to get one. Not to get too personal, as I don’t imagine this was intended, but it rings a little bit like judgmental pro-lifers who end up in the PP waiting room, still convinced that everyone around them is a slut, but their case deserves an exception.
Something that always gets me is that some people apparently don’t realize that by the time a woman finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy, she most likely has already given the issue lots of consideration. If I were to get pregnant right now, I would not need any time whatsoever to decide that I would have an abortion. I wouldn’t need even a minute of consideration, because I’ve already carefully considered what I would do if I were to become pregnant. Do people not get that women think about that decision quite a bit, before they’re ever actually in a situation where they have to make the decision? I’m not saying every woman is able to make the decision instantly, just that if a woman does make the decision instantly, that doesn’t mean she hasn’t carefully considered it (not that I think women need to patronizingly be told to carefully consider their decisions).
That’s what really struck me: she’s talking about other people’s abortions and how they make her feel. If her neighbor’s husband has an organ transplant, will she write another column talking about her moral qualms about transplants and how upset she is that her neighbors seem okay with having had a transplant?
Two things hit me, first the incredibly lame assumption that a woman with a toddler in tow would be there for an abortion (as a number of others have pointed out, most of what Planned Parenthood does is other services such as Pap smears and contraception), and, second, that just because someone is not visibly emoting that person isn’t feeling anything. Some people do still believe their personal emotions are just that, personal, and not something to be shared with a waiting room full of strangers.
I think that some people get mixed up about this stuff because they do not draw enough of a line between HOW I FEEL about abortion IN MY OWN LIFE and how i feel about it AS PUBLIC POLICY.
If I had an unplanned pregnancy I would definitely consider abortion and that would be a complex decision for me to make. But when I consider whether to support pro-choice policy, it is absolutely un-complex. The decision to terminate a pregnancy is difficult and different for everyone and SHOULD BE LEFT UP TO THE INDIVIDUAL.
The complexity and simplicity of it are really the same thing. The issue is so easy to decide on a macro level BECAUSE it is so hard on an individual basis (for some people, certainly not all).
Yep…it’s that assumption that women haven’t fully thought out a given situation that gets my hackles up.
Sorta like when I mentioned a tubal ligation to my GP the last time I went in for a pap smear. Since I don’t look hispanic or african-american, she immediately began some drivel about how vasectomy for my husband would be a lot less invasive and probably a better choice, to which I replied: “Yes, I know, and I’ve thought about that and determined it’s not the best course of action. If I hadn’t thought it over, I wouldn’t have mentioned it to you.”
Same thing with abortions. Just because a woman isn’t curled up in a corner of the waiting room in the fetal position on the floor, weeping dramatically, there’s an assumption that she doesn’t feel anything about her abortion, and therefore, hasn’t considered it.
The assumption is that all women are hysterical, subhuman creatures, incapable of being rational actors, much less of making carefully considered, dispassionate determinations by using logic and reason. It’s assumed that all women act on their whims, which is what Justice White’s dissenting opinion was all about. He was trying to codify a gendered stereotype into law because he was relying on his emotions to decide “how women behave,” rather than examining all evidence to the contrary.
“Something that always gets me is that some people apparently don’t realize that by the time a woman finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy, she most likely has already given the issue lots of consideration. ”
Very true. It is also true that there is something about the actual experiencing of an unwanted pregnancy that can upend all that careful thinking. At least, many of us know of folks who object to abortion in the abstract but feel differently when they are forced to make the decision for themselves.
I think that’s why people are offended by Courtney’s opinions about the decisions she presumes have been made by the women around her.
Which raises the point -not necessarily applicable to this particular scenario - but what the heck is it with the people who manage to assume that even a later-term abortion decision must have been made without thinking it over? Like she just now noticed?
I agree with everything that’s been said, but with all the stress on how logically these decisions are made, I start to wonder what the difference is between making a decision based on “emotion” and making it based on “gut instinct.” And why does one seem frivolous and the other valid? I have never had an abortion, but in my two pregnancy scares, I had very different emotions, even though both occurred at times when I absolutely did not want to be pregnant. And had they not resolved themselves, those emotions would have played a role in whatever my ultimate decision would have been. And I think that’s appropriate. My feelings as I contemplated the possibility of being pregnant told me a lot about what I was prepared to handle and that’s a pretty key piece of information.
“Simple” does not mean mean “easy.” It does not mean “without thought.” It just means that, upon consideration, there was one option which was clearly the best or only option.
When I had my abortion, the decision was simple, but not easy, not without thought, and not without huge unwieldy ugly emotions. I looked at all my options, I cried and ranted and raved, I hated that I had to have one, but I had to, there was no other viable option for me, so I did. Simple.
You may have trouble with it, but it’s still true.
chingona, I totally agree with you, based on my own similar experiences with pregnancy scares and even my experience with a planned and desired pregnancy. there is definitively a visceral, almost physical dimension to this, but it seems difficult to acknowledge because of stereotypes about “emotional” or “irrational”women. It is worth thinking more about how to capture this in the discussion.
To my mind, it’s actually irrelevant whether any individual woman has “properly” thought it through. How do you force a person to think it through? How do you determine that a woman has really thought through her decision and isn’t just a good actor? Is the decision less hers to make if she makes it for a frivolous reason?
I’m not saying pre-abortion counselling (of the “this is how it works, are you sure this is the right decision for you” kind, not the Silent Scream kind) isn’t a good thing, but if one’s political goal is to make sure every woman feels as she “ought” about abortion — well, it can’t be done.
And I agree with chingona — I have a feeling a lot of these decisions come down to gut instinct, and that isn’t frivolous. If a woman strongly feels that having a child in her current circumstances (or having a child at all) would be wrong for her, even if she can’t explain that “rationally” (i.e. with reference to outside circumstances) — well, I believe her.
rebecca, “simple” that was not the right word. “easy” or “not carefully considered” is more what I was trying to get at.
I have some trouble with the thought that there are women for whom the choice is simple.
Really? Well, guess what. For me - the choice was simple. Very. Why do YOU have a problem with that?
Deal.
I used to be an abortion counselor. Meaning, I used to work at a women’s clinic that performed abortions. My job was to provide all the information about the procedure that the laws required, meet with every woman and discuss her decision with her, and then stay with them during the actual procedure. I’ve talked with hundreds of women about their decision.
Generally, a clinic will do only abortions on one specific day. There usually are not enough doctors willing to perform abortions to have one in the clinic on a daily basis so they schedule all the abortions on one day a week (or whatever). So all of the women in the waiting room that day were probably abortion patients or their support team. Since they generally end up sitting around for 4-8 hours for the entire process, they have lots of time to look at the other women in the waiting area and speculate and, unfortunately, frequently pass judgment.
One thing I heard over and over again was, “Why is so easy for all those other women in the room and so hard for me?” The assumption was always that no one else was struggling, or afraid or depressed or conflicted because no one was crying hysterically. When I would tell them that almost every woman in the waiting room had asked me that same question, they would be stunned and relieved.
A lot of them thought they were supposed to feel a certain way about having an abortion and felt guilty when their feelings were “wrong”. They worried that any conflicting emotions meant they were making a mistake. They worried because they didn’t have any conflicting emotions. They were worried about what the other women in the waiting room were thinking about them. They worried about what other people in their lives would think of them if they found out about their abortion.
Many of the women I talked to had great difficulty in determining their own feelings because they had so many other voices in their heads telling them what they should feel. It was very frustrating, and painful for me, to listen to these women beat themselves up for not feeling “right”.
I meant, for not feeling the way they “should” feel.
I do think it’s worth pointing out (given occasional strange insistence in this thread that almost surely she was not), that toddler-mom probably *was* there for an abortion. Planned Parenthood in general does do lots of different women’s health stuff, but in a given region usually only *one* of the several PP clinics performs abortions, it does them on certain days of the week or month, it is pretty high-security on those days such that only the woman going for the abortion plus one companion are allowed in, and abortion does not take place in an OR nor are most women under sedation for it.
Ergo: probably, yes, the woman with the little kid, talking on a cell phone, was there for an abortion. And so?
Mezosub: SO right on about Justice White.
I don’t see any conflict at all between the ideas of “carefully considered” and “gut instinct” (or whatever word anyone chooses for feelings.)
When I am making an important decision, my feelings are always a big part of my input, especially if they seem at odds with what logic or a sense of what I “ought to” choose.
I am convinced that just about everyone does exactly that. Maybe it is because women are willing to openly admit it that it gets a bad rap, but that’s absurd. (Common, but absurd).
I’d say anyone who announced they made a major decision without taking their feelings into account HADN’T given it careful consideration.
but in a given region usually only *one* of the several PP clinics performs abortions, it does them on certain days of the week or month, it is pretty high-security on those days such that only the woman going for the abortion plus one companion are allowed in, and abortion does not take place in an OR nor are most women under sedation for it.
Ergo: probably, yes, the woman with the little kid, talking on a cell phone, was there for an abortion. And so?
Or perhaps she was someone’s companion, just like the aurthor of the article. (That’s what floored me: the author didn’t seem to even consider the possibility that this woman was there for the exact same reason she herself was.)
But you’re absolutely right: “And so?”
Sorta like when I mentioned a tubal ligation to my GP the last time I went in for a pap smear. Since I don’t look hispanic or african-american, she immediately began some drivel about how vasectomy for my husband would be a lot less invasive and probably a better choice, to which I replied: “Yes, I know, and I’ve thought about that and determined it’s not the best course of action. If I hadn’t thought it over, I wouldn’t have mentioned it to you.”
I don’t know your GP, but it sounds like she was reacting to the misogyny that drives many sterilization choices (the old “birth control is a woman’s problem” attitude combined with the “I don’t care if my wife has major surgery as long they keep the knives away from my precious, precious penis!” BS) instead of the actual choice to sterilize.
When I told my GP about my concerns about entering peri-menopause on the pill and the hormone imbalances I’d been fighting, she calmly reassured me that there was not a problem, it was perfectly fine, etc. I mentioned that my husband was willing to get a vastectomy if it would be better for me to address my hormone issues while I wasn’t not on the pill.
Her reaction was priceless: she was actually speechless at the thought of a man volunteering for a vastectomy. It was clear from her abrupt change of tone about my treatment options that she had never even considered this an option.
rebecca, “simple” that was not the right word. “easy” or “not carefully considered” is more what I was trying to get at.
Why do you care? It isn’t your place to determine whether someone has carefully considered an abortion. It doesn’t matter if the decision was(is) easy or hard. It doesn’t matter if a woman has(is) carefully considered an abortion or decided on a whim. It’s just not your business, nor should it have any impact on the legality of abortion.
I don’t understand. Carrying a pregnancy to term and then raising the resulting child is much more emotionally, physically, and financially taxing. Yet, we rarely ask if the woman has “carefully considered” her decision. We don’t admonish a woman for saying it was an “easy” or “simple” choice to keep a pregnancy and raise the child. If I can choose to carry a pregnancy to term without others trying to determine if I’ve really thought it through or whether I was expressing the proper feelings about it, shouldn’t I be able to choose to end it without others input? It all goes back to the idea that women naturally want to be pregnant and, thus, choosing an abortion must be a difficult and emotionally painful process.
“simple” “easy” — whichever word implies that the choice should be at least a little bit difficult. And these words come from clearly pro-choice people, suggesting that if the choice is simple for a particular woman, then there must be something wrong with her, she’s less than human, doesn’t have normal emotions, some sort of monster, etc.
Let me tell you, some 26 years ago when I realized I was pregnant, by my first boyfriend, at age 15, the decision to abort was TOTALLY SIMPLE for me. I was an honor student, I was college bound, I had my whole later life to consider having children, and I don’t believe I entertained the thought of having or keeping a child for more than 15 seconds. Basically, I put down that pregnancy-test stick and immediately opened up the yellow pages to “abortion.”
It sucked having to go through it, in the same way that a major dental procedure sucks (and, of course, like major dental work, it’s not something I’d want to do on a regular basis, “as a primary means of birth control,” sheesh), and when it was done, it was done. I moved on with my life relieved and guilt-free. It has been very rare over the years that I’ve even really thought much about it at all. It carries the same weight to me in my personal history as: “I had my tonsils out when I was 6.”
I am a whole person, I have normal emotions, I can and do love and care for others, and I try my best to live an ethical life. I am sick of the implication in public discourse, even by many feminists, that I am somehow not a good or thoughtful person because I didn’t agonize over what was obviously the right choice for me, or dwell on it once it was done.
Why? I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask people to deny how they honestly feel because it helps the cause. I know someone who says she will never have an abortion herself but is pro-choice. Is that bad?
You can argue that that sort of attitude plays into the hands of the religious right who want people to believe that abortion is wrong. That’s probably true, but if that is how people feel that is how people feel.
To me it’s silly to adopt the attitude that you aren’t *really* pro-choice unless you are totally unconflicted about abortion on a personal level. (As some people in this thread have done)
Why? I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask people to deny how they honestly feel because it helps the cause. I know someone who says she will never have an abortion herself but is pro-choice. Is that bad?
No one is asking that people who feel that way deny it. What we are saying (demanding, perhaps, even) is that such people do not use their own qualms/religious teachings to support any request or political suggestion that women who do seek abortions perform public acts of contrition or regret after suitably public periods of indecision - whether or not they feel any. Or get pissy with those who didn’t/don’t and choose to say that out loud.
I read Amanda’s post as suggesting that many women, like Courtney Martin, who wring their hands about their own discomfort about abortion are mostly involved in displaying their own faintly (?) smug notion that while *other women* may find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy they choose to end, certainly they will either never have it happen to them, or that they will certainly - no matter what their circumstances at that unhappy moment - experience profound confusion and pain and agonize over a monstrously difficult choice.
It comes off as a kind of boasting. “I’m the possessor of finer sensibilities and in the face of delicate women’s troubles, will tremble in fear and doubt. Unlike those other, coarser women with a blunted or dulled sense of morality who forge ahead without reflection. Congratulate me on my feminine weakness.”
This? This is not meaningful reflection. This is romantic tripe. Which has it’s place, but is not and should not be the foundation of law or political strategy. Especially because, in this case, it plays right into the hands of the anti-woman brigades and abortion is really only the most visible of their assaults on women’s freedom and independence. And I really wish I were speaking in hyperbole - but I don’t think I am.
I’m of two minds here — first off, no guilt, no regrets here about any body appetite. I dislike sex because it’s dull, not mentally stimulating, and doesn’t feel like much of anything. I remember the first few times I had it, thinking to myself, “I was in the middle of chapter 5, and I put the book down for THIS?” No hormonal imbalances, no illnesses, no PCOS, just a near-total lack of interest in sex although I can tell pretty people when I see them. No guilt about food, either — none. Although that particular appetite is a hell of a lot more fun to sate, mostly because you can read while you do it and it tastes better.
So I imagine I’d be one of those “how dare she not feel guilty about her abortion” types should I ever need one. Far from complex, my emotions about kids pretty much cause me to classify them as “screamy wet pink things that leave stains on everything and would prevent me from vacationing in Wales when I felt like it.” Like Margaret Cho, I ovulate sand.
But at 41 and officially entering middle age, I am simply not prepared to be quite that impatient with younger women, including younger feminists. Christ’s sake, they’re still figuring this shit out. Do yall even realize how long it takes for a human being to really get a grip on who they are and what they think? What, you think YOU were so together? How quickly we all forget how long it took us to straighten out about EVERYTHING, not just abortion. And you, over in the corner, who insists that you haven’t changed your opinion about anything and were just as perfect at 20 as you are now at age 50 … I have my doubts.
Yes, you can disagree with young women and lose patience. But I can assure you that no 20 year old has ever instantly aged emotionally up to 50-year-old level because of the sheer force of anyone’s thermonuclear feminist impatience with her. Sure, it sucks that not everyone can be as wonderful and fantastic and entirely together and perfect and completely internally consistent about everything as we middle-aged old bitches are
, but there is literally NOTHING TO DO ABOUT IT except just give them the information they need to make up their own minds and then sit the fuck back and let them do it.
And yes, I know that OUR RIGHTS ARE IN JEOPARDY and WE COLD LOSE ROE V WADE and all that. Like I said, “screamy wet pink things get that little parasite the fuck out of my uterus NOW.” But IT ISN’T GOING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. Youth is youth, and the process of human maturation and the gaining of experience is not going to be sped up because we old farts and old-farts-in-training lose patience with it.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t pick wrong stuff apart when we find it. But looking at young people who are still figuring this stuff out and dismissing them as stupid fucking fake feminist posers leaves these women who are still getting their thoughts in order with absolutely no feminist mentoring.
Engage with patience, and if it pisses you off that much, then just don’t engage with them period. Step back from time to time when you feel you want to strangle something.
How about the default be simply that a woman makes up her own mind? Why shouldn’t the question be, “Would continuing this pregnancy be a good thing or a bad thing?” Whether you do or not, and whether you like it or not, most women in this culture still want to have kids. Why should the default go with the minority rather than the majority? And how does having the default be to not continue a pregnancy help women — all women, not just childfree women? But having the default simply be to essentially do a pro/con list and then make a decision in one direction or the other, well, that I think is helpful to all of us.
I think it’s all just projection. When I had an abortion I remember being in the recovery room and there was a woman there who changed into her work suit and insisted she had to leave right now as she had a meeting and was a very busy person. I lay there, weak and sick from anasthetic,(sp?) and I HATED that woman. I was 17, she was mid-30’s (she seemed ancient to me) and all I could think of was how come she “didn’t care at all”. This was thie biggest thing that had ever happened to me at that time. Years later, obviously, I grew and matured and now I’m in my thirties I can see how I was projecting. I think as a younger person you can get tied up in knots thinking about things and especially what other people think about things, when you’re older you tend to have a better reign on your emotions, more experience, better decision making skills, and I think some younger women can feel a bit of envy and project the way this woman is doing.
I think it’s all just projection. When I had an abortion I remember being in the recovery room and there was a woman there who changed into her work suit and insisted she had to leave right now as she had a meeting and was a very busy person. I lay there, weak and sick from anasthetic,(sp?) and I HATED that woman. I was 17, she was mid-30’s (she seemed ancient to me) and all I could think of was how come she “didn’t care at all”. This was thie biggest thing that had ever happened to me at that time. Years later, obviously, I grew and matured and now I’m in my thirties I can see how I was projecting. I think as a younger person you can get tied up in knots thinking about things and especially what other people think about things, when you’re older you tend to have a better reign on your emotions, more experience, better decision making skills, and I think some younger women can feel a bit of envy and project the way this woman is doing.
“No one is asking that people who feel that way deny it. What we are saying (demanding, perhaps, even) is that such people do not use their own qualms/religious teachings to support any request or political suggestion that women who do seek abortions perform public acts of contrition or regret after suitably public periods of indecision - whether or not they feel any. Or get pissy with those who didn’t/don’t and choose to say that out loud.”
Nell, how the hell are they supposed to talk this shit out with one another without saying it? I mena it — how could Martin have phrased her wondering aloud in such a way as to not trip your “how dare you say that” trigger? Should she just have not said it aloud and have just sat in a corner and tried to think her way through this stuff on her own?
It doesn’t make sense to say that women should shut up because our musings could get us in trouble when it’s only that process of talking shit out — occasionally in front of other people — that straightens our opinions out in our heads in the first place.
This is starting to sound uncomfortably as if wonen with unorthodox opinions as judged by The Older Generation to be dangerous must have their attempts to discuss this stuff and work it out policed for perfection. Like it or not, some women who are still working this out (and are even reassuringly on their way to being all perfect as they get older) will have to talk about it, post about it, and have discussions, even where other people can hear them. Do you want to stand over their blogs with a black marker and make sure that nothing that can be used against us is said, just in case? Or should they keep their voices down in fear of being overhead? Where’s the feminism in that?
Yes, I know that abortion rights are in jeopardy, and that they likely always will be. Unlike most of my feminist contemporaries, I am neither optimist nor prepared to let men off the hook from which they presently dangle. And I know that these musings CAN be used against all women. Make that WILL.
I’m saying that there isn’t a neat solution of “these women who are thinking things through should just do so in a manner that keeps their unorthodox thoughts as secretive as possible” in the wings for us.
1) The oppressors can use these musings against us.
2) Without this “thinking out loud” process, none of us will be/would have been able to even arrive at what we like to think is our present thoughtful, well-considered position.
This is a catch-22, and you can berate women like this Martin chick all you want, but you won’t speed up her thought process. Like evolution, it goes as quickly as it goes, and that’s IT. Yes, it can be damaging to us, and that STINKS ON ICE. But drawing these torturous distinctions about HOW such women “should” be allowed to have these discussions is like spitting in the ocean — perhaps pissing into the wind. They have to think this shit out, like a sort of peer review.
Yes, what they SAY can piss me off — sometimes because it’s so wrong, and sometimes because I personally have reasoned my way through that exact thicket and I’m ticked off that the rest of the world hasn’t caught up. But they are thinking it out and evolving. There is NO WAY to berate them into maturing or thinking any faster or try to consciously control that process to mazimize it. It’d be like rushing evolution or pushing water uphill.
THEY need to think, and WE need to plan. That’s sort of how it goes. Christ, I can’t believe I’m the one sitting here going on about mentoring and patience and “young people will grow and think at their own damned rate and must be allowed to do so” and I haven’t even got a single brat myself!
The only way to handle this is for younger women to do what they are doing — think it out out loud — and for older women to avoid the YOU STUPID KID reaction that I’m seeing here, and pick apart not the PERSON but their arguments, reasonably and patiently. And if you are feeling like you want to slap someone, then step back for a second.
The human thought process will not be sped up, especially not by ad hoc arguments and impatience. It’s irrelevent whether Martin “should” have written this and dared to say such dangerous things aloud. She DID, and women — all women, but in the context of this discussion, younger women — CAN and WILL continue to do so.
It’s the job of older women to patiently pick apart the arguments and not the women who make them. And for us to realize — and I’m still doing this myself — that, like it or not, shit like this wil continue to be written and thought and said aloud because humans keep making other humans, and those humans pass through their teens before they pass through middle age. Like it or not, there will ALWAYS be a generation of women musing aloud on stuff like this.
Sorry about the double post……..and also, can I substitute “emotional maturity” for “age” as the two don’t necessarily come together!
“No one is asking that people who feel that way deny it. What we are saying (demanding, perhaps, even) is that such people do not use their own qualms/religious teachings to support any request or political suggestion that women who do seek abortions perform public acts of contrition or regret after suitably public periods of indecision - whether or not they feel any. Or get pissy with those who didn’t/don’t and choose to say that out loud.”
Nell, how the hell are they supposed to talk this shit out with one another without saying it? I mena it — how could Martin have phrased her wondering aloud in such a way as to not trip your “how dare you say that” trigger? Should she just have not said it aloud and have just sat in a corner and tried to think her way through this stuff on her own?
It doesn’t make sense to say that women should shut up because our musings could get us in trouble when it’s only that process of talking shit out — occasionally in front of other people — that straightens our opinions out in our heads in the first place.
This is starting to sound uncomfortably as if wonen with unorthodox opinions as judged by The Older Generation to be dangerous must have their attempts to discuss this stuff and work it out policed for perfection. Like it or not, some women who are still working this out (and are even reassuringly on their way to being all perfect as they get older) will have to talk about it, post about it, and have discussions, even where other people can hear them. Do you want to stand over their blogs with a black marker and make sure that nothing that can be used against us is said, just in case? Or should they keep their voices down in fear of being overhead? Where’s the feminism in that?
Yes, I know that abortion rights are in jeopardy, and that they likely always will be. Unlike most of my feminist contemporaries, I am neither optimist nor prepared to let men off the hook from which they presently dangle. And I know that these musings CAN be used against all women. Make that WILL.
I’m saying that there isn’t a neat solution of “these women who are thinking things through should just do so in a manner that keeps their unorthodox thoughts as secretive as possible” in the wings for us.
1) The oppressors can use these musings against us.
2) Without this “thinking out loud” process, none of us will be/would have been able to even arrive at what we like to think is our present thoughtful, well-considered position.
This is a catch-22, and you can berate women like this Martin chick all you want, but you won’t speed up her thought process. Like evolution, it goes as quickly as it goes, and that’s IT. Yes, it can be damaging to us, and that STINKS ON ICE. But drawing these torturous distinctions about HOW such women “should” be allowed to have these discussions is like spitting in the ocean — perhaps pissing into the wind. They have to think this shit out, like a sort of peer review.
Yes, what they SAY can piss me off — sometimes because it’s so wrong, and sometimes because I personally have reasoned my way through that exact thicket and I’m ticked off that the rest of the world hasn’t caught up. But they are thinking it out and evolving. There is NO WAY to berate them into maturing or thinking any faster or try to consciously control that process to mazimize it. It’d be like rushing evolution or pushing water uphill.
THEY need to think, and WE need to plan. That’s sort of how it goes. Christ, I can’t believe I’m the one sitting here going on about mentoring and patience and “young people will grow and think at their own damned rate and must be allowed to do so” and I haven’t even got a single brat myself!
The only way to handle this is for younger women to do what they are doing — think it out out loud — and for older women to avoid the YOU STUPID KID reaction that I’m seeing here, and pick apart not the PERSON but their arguments, reasonably and patiently. And if you are feeling like you want to slap someone, then step back for a second.
The human thought process will not be sped up, especially not by ad hoc arguments and impatience. It’s irrelevent whether Martin “should” have written this and dared to say such dangerous things aloud. She DID, and women — all women, but in the context of this discussion, younger women — CAN and WILL continue to do so.
It’s the job of older women to patiently pick apart the arguments and not the women who make them. And for us to realize — and I’m still doing this myself — that, like it or not, shit like this wil continue to be written and thought and said aloud because humans keep making other humans, and those humans pass through their teens before they pass through middle age. Like it or not, there will ALWAYS be a generation of women musing aloud on stuff like this.
Except that nobody here is asking that anyone be totally unconflicted about abortion on a personal level (i.e. on the level of “how would I feel if I had an abortion/ would I have an abortion”). What we are asking is that if you advocate a pro-choice position, that you are unconflicted about supporting every other woman’s personal decisions without demanding that they engage in public self-flagellation in order to make you feel that they really, really considered their decision. In other words, that your LEGAL and POLITICAL support for abortion is absolute.
Quite frankly, I don’t understand why personal feelings about abortion are even relevant when discussing access to abortion and its legality, yet that’s what faint-hearted pro-choicers like Courtney want us to spend our time engaging. My response: do your own fucking emotional work and let other women get their abortions without having to earn your approval.
It’s not bad, but at the same time, I think women who need to add “but I would never have an abortion” need to ask themselves why they’re saying that. Why is that disclaimer necessary? If these women really don’t believe that women who have abortions are bad or immoral, why do they feel the need to distance themselves from those women when the subject of abortion comes up?
And I understand that believing something should be legal doesn’t mean you believe it’s moral. But my sense is that, as nell said, women who look down on other women for having abortions are more easily persuaded to support restrictions on abortion access, because they’re more likely to believe that other women (unlike them) can’t be trusted to make this decision, that other women (unlike them) are having abortions frivolously and that this is bad and wrong and must be stopped.
history_mom:
“Quite frankly, I don’t understand why personal feelings about abortion are even relevant when discussing access to abortion and its legality,”
EXACTLY. When we let every discussion of abortion descend into us all exploring our own personal feelings, we make it seemn like our personal feelings are somehow relevant to the LEGAL and POLITICAL issue at hand.
I think it’s a *good* thing if people can distinguish personal morality and the law.
Usually when I discuss gun rights I mention that I personally abhor guns. (Outside of video games) But I’m still a strong supporter of 2nd Amendment rights and nobody is going to convince me otherwise. I don’t know that I think owning a gun is immoral or bad; I just wouldn’t ever own or use one myself.
We’d probably be much better off if more people realized that laws don’t exist to enforce personal predilictions.
“Except that nobody here is asking that anyone be totally unconflicted about abortion on a personal level (i.e. on the level of “how would I feel if I had an abortion/ would I have an abortion”).”
No, they’re just telling people that they are not allowed to talk about it anywhere at all where they can be overheard. Just FEEL the conflict, don’t try to talk it out.
Having spent tons of time in oncology wards and waiting rooms - not as a patient but as a caretaker - I’ve been repeatedly amazed at how calm people are in the face of medical catastrophe. You’d think you’d occasionally see someone rant and rage against the dying of the light, but no, people sit stoically, chit-chat about mundane things, and wait.
I can imagine that a similar dynamic obtains for abortion facilities, too. Whatever turmoil a woman might feel while she waits, be it sorrow, guilt, or even happiness, she’ll put up a impassive front because anything else violates the norms of medical institutions.
That’s just one more reason why Courtney has no basis for her projections.
Still, I’m frustrated by how hard it is, even among feminists, to discuss the moral complexities abortion holds for some women. This issue seems to rear up every year or two. One year it’s Naomi Wolf who urges us to ponder the morality of abortion, then it’s Frances Kissling, and now it’s Courtney. We should be able to discuss the morality angle without immediate accusations of betraying our own cause.
I myself find abortion morally unproblematic in early pregnancy. But I worry that if we can’t acknowledge and address other women’s qualms, we end up preaching to the choir and alienating people who are in the mushy middle, where a majority of young women (and men) find themselves.
I teach women’s studies, so I have both the opportunity and the responsibility to promote real dialog on this. Most of my students say they wouldn’t choose abortion themselves (though of course some of them will decide otherwise when faced with an actual pregnancy). But most can also be readily persuaded that women, rather than government, ought to make the decision. While I don’t view my role as providing conversion experiences, I’ll admit I’m glad when young people who initially say they’re pro-life realize their position is more complex. If they learn to distinguish the personal level from policy, it’s real progress.
Here’s an example of where we can reasonably concede that moral complexity exists (I’d be interested in your reaction, Amanda, if you’re still following this thread): I agree that it’s ludicrous to endow a fetus with personhood. But I don’t think you can persuasively equate a fetus with a tumor or with the whole universe of children-never-conceived due to birth control. Unlike a tumor, a fetus is at least a potential person. And unlike the “unconceived,” a fetus is not an abstract and infinite potential person, it’s a concrete, specific one. It’s got DNA and it’s human, though it’s not yet an actualperson, which is of course a crucial distinction. Its gradual development toward fully realized personhood is one reason why even most staunchly pro-choice people see a difference between abortion at 2, 12, 20, and 30 weeks. We should be able to acknowledge this without fearing that it hurts the case for abortion rights.
“Except that nobody here is asking that anyone be totally unconflicted about abortion on a personal level (i.e. on the level of “how would I feel if I had an abortion/ would I have an abortion”).”
No, they’re just telling people that they are not allowed to talk about it anywhere at all where they can be overheard. Just FEEL the conflict, don’t try to talk it out.
I don’t think the “problem” is with people who feel conflicted about abortion: my problem is people who demand that every other woman also feel the same conflict they do. I have a problem with people who seem to only be OK with abortion as long as the woman feels guilty about it, but it shouldn’t be “too easy” or “too available.”
I guess it’s just another aspect of the idea that your pregnancy–or your abortion–are any of my business, that I have the right to express and even impose my opinions on you.
I’m one of those “older feminists” who became sexually active before Roe, and yes, my feelings abortion after it became legal was much more simple, than before for good reasons.
I’d even delayed becoming sexually active until age 19, because two of my childhood friends had been forced into teenage marriages by pregnancy, pre-Roe — one at 14, one at l6, A students both — and thrown out of high school.
In college, was when I first became aware of the possibility of illegal abortion, I considered it an option — although it was by no means guaranteed to be safe.
So forgive us “older feminists” who see legal and safe abortions in a less complicated manner: versus forced pregnancy and unsafe, not legal abortions, it must certainly is.
Oh, and students of history are aware that many of the same arguments used against abortion and very similar guilt trips were laid on women in the the early part of the 20th century against widely available (and legal) contraception, and then against The Pill in the early ’60s. (”You’re killing babies — you sluts!”)
I absolutely agree. That’s why I find it frustrating when women trot out “I’m pro-choice but I’d never have an abortion” or “abortion shouldn’t be easy” at discussions about the legality of abortion.
I think people don’t pay enough attention to the man behind the curtain when it comes to the law and government, and thus, as I said, don’t understand what they are advocating. I agree that merely shouting down women who say this “it should be less easy” stuff doesn’t help — but I’d be tempted to ask very blunt questions. It shouldn’t be easy? What would such women like civil servants and police officers to do to make it less easy? And what would you like them to do to women who break the law to get around the new restrictions?
“Unlike a tumor, a fetus is at least a potential person. And unlike the “unconceived,” a fetus is not an abstract and infinite potential person, it’s a concrete, specific one.”
Whether a fetus is a “potential person” or a parasitic growth feeding off of her system is up to the woman carrying the fetus. Until it is born, it is in effect part of HER body to do with as she wishes and its degree of personhood is entirely up to her. Your argument is flawed because, taken to its extreme, every effort at contraception eliminates “potential people’ and women need to be chained up like chattel to prevent this tragic loss.
On top of that, even for real people (not “potential people”), we do not force one another against our will to submit our bodies for medical care of another person. It would be seen as a violation of our rights.
No, they’re just telling people that they are not allowed to talk about it anywhere at all where they can be overheard. Just FEEL the conflict, don’t try to talk it out.
Nobody is telling women they are not allowed to “talk about it anywhere at all…” I believe people are telling women to quit projecting their own emotions of guilt/whatever onto the rest of us. Seems to be just one more example of slut-shaming.
Those of us who didn’t think any more of having an abortion than having our tonsils out (even though I still have my tonsils), are somehow morally/humanly inferior to those that wring their hands and weep into their lace hankies - loudly and publicly.
Fine - do whatever you need to and tell yourself whatever you need to get yourself through your own personal crises. But please, leave the rest of us alone.
You seem to imply that we wouldn’t have those feelings if we’d just realize that they were artificially induced by society(pun intended).
I disagree that culturally induced feelings are “artificial”. I don’t believe that people have feelings that are abstracted from the culture. The belief that culturally induced feelings are invalid—even though those are ALL feelings—seems to be your issue here. I don’t think you should feel bad about having culturally induced feelings. That makes you normal and human.
Your ooky feelings are what they are. You can choose to work on them or not. Working on them may change the way you feel or not. God knows I’m not really all that interested myself in overcoming some of my more uncomfortable attitudes. I don’t really care. But my main thing was that those of us who don’t feel ooky about the subject don’t owe anyone a phony display.
Am I the only one who read the article and thinks that maybe the author was off-base with her entire premise? I mean, yes, it’s “abortion day” at that particular Planned Parenthood, but — couldn’t the mother she’s “hating” really be there for something else, like an annual Pap smear?
Let’s assume for a moment that Courtney’s right and she’s getting an abortion and get off the red herring about whether or not Courtney guessed right. What if the woman said, “God, I can’t believe I have to spend a day getting a stupid abortion,” and removed all doubt? Is she obligated to pretend to give a shit for the comfort of other people stuck in a world of guilt over imperfection and sexuality?
No argument here. But one question. I do have two friends who really and truly believe that life begins at conception. They are entirely consistent with that belief: no exceptions for rape or incest, would be willing to try women and doctors alike, the whole 9 yards. What do I say to them? I don’t feel like telling them that they can’t legislate based on that belief, because if I believed abortion was murder, I’d be freaking out too.
Every conversation with them needs to be about their commitment to reducing the number of abortions through sex education, free contraception, and medical care. Tell them, “Bans don’t work—when abortion was illegal, something like one in four pregnancies ended in abortion.” Ask them if they’re more interested in punishing women or reducing the rate. Then back to what they’re going to do to make sure contraception is free for all. Don’t get off the reduction through prevention angle.
I suspect that you’ll find their anti-sex attitudes will creep out if you stay on this.
Leaving aside the fact that they are intended to make having an abortion logistically difficult, they are also offensive because they suggest women have not given the decision to have an abortion sufficient consideration.
I think the problem is that assuming that a blase attitude doesn’t mean you haven’t thought about it. I get more blase the more I think about it, and the clearer the issues become to me. Should I have to get an abortion, I won’t likely have a hand-wringing fit over it, because I think about it so much that I’ve already thought through it. Again, that I want never to have kids makes this much easier—for someone who wants them, getting pregnant becomes a possible opportunity and is more complicated. Basically, I’m a rare bird in a couple of ways. For most women, it’s understandably more complex.
First off, I want to thank Amanda and everyone else for their feedback and the willingness to consider my point of view seriously and respond so passionately. It is just the kind of dialogue I am looking for (with a few exceptions…personal attacks don’t seem constructive to me, ever).
Some clarifications: it was, indeed, the day for abortions at the clinic so everyone there was getting an abortion. This leading example was not meant to exhibit that I wanted everyone who gets an abortion to feel complex about it; it was intended to reveal just how vulnerable I was at that time. Reading over people’s comments, I regret using it as a lede. It seems like its distracted people from the point I was trying to make.
I also want to restate, as I do in the article, that I am unequivically prochoice. Just making sure people heard that because some people appeared to have not read the whole article.
I appreciate your argument Amanda and I will, as you suggest, sit down and really reflect on the very clear, cogent points that you’ve made concerning your own strong and resolute feelings about abortion being uncomplicated. I am especially intrigued by your points about internalized guilt and perfection and will do a lot more thinking on those. Thanks for that.
However, I disagree with your presumption that everyone SHOULD feel this way. It doesn’t allow for difference, instead suggesting that if I, or other women who feel complex about it, were only more enlightened we’d realize that abortion is simple. Why can’t we agree it should be legal and each continue our own process of self-examination? All the most critical questions of our lives are fraught with shades of gray (love, sex, work)…why would this be any different?
I’m also a little put off by your comparison to UFO sightings. These are real feelings, not foreign objects in the sky.
To those commenters who ridiculed my tendency to write from an emotional pov, I want to say that this is how I access the world and make sense of it. I don’t think the struggle to be aware of and honest about emotions (mine and others) is narcissistic. And as I said in the article, I was basing my writing on far more than my own experience. I’ve supported a lot of friends through abortions and embraced their needs–whether they were just logistical or emotional.
There’s no way to address all the many points brought up by commenters, but I just wanted to put my voice back in the mix and say that I am reading and reflecting. Thanks for the dialogue.
I agree that it’s ludicrous to endow a fetus with personhood. But I don’t think you can persuasively equate a fetus with a tumor or with the whole universe of children-never-conceived due to birth control.
It’s reasonable to feel that. But it’s also reasonable not to feel that. What’s unreasonable is demanding that the arbitrary distinction of a fetus as more significant than the potential one you could be creating right now is morally superior to not feeling the difference, and demanding that those of us who don’t feel the difference put up a big, phony show in order to calm those who do feel a difference.
I’ve been struggling with something here: I don’t get ooked at all by first-trimester abortion and any potential ook I might feel about later-term abortion is pretty much eliminated by knowing that most late-term abortions are for medical reasons and even those that aren’t, in the end no one knows all the reasons but the woman, and we have to trust her to know best because there really isn’t any feasible alternative. I don’t get ooked that some women find abortion simple or easy or whatever term you want to use. But I get ooked when people describe fetuses as tumors, tapeworms and unfeeling hunks of flesh. Maybe this speaks to some unseemly sentimentality on my part, but it strikes me as almost as exaggerated as people who describe fetuses as babies. They are what they are. Fertilized eggs become rapidly dividing clumps of cells that become increasingly specialized that become body parts and organ systems that - given a friendly uterine environment, a lack of fatal genetic anomoly and a willing host (all really important preconditions) - could eventually become a baby. As sungold said, for those who find abortion morally complex, that is the source of the complexity, and once conceived, there is a specificity and concreteness to that particular clump of cells that is different than the abstract potentiality of the never-conceived.
My point in bringing this up is not that those who are unooked by equating fetuses to tumors need to change their language to soothe my delicate sensibilities. My point is that those of us who are ooked by it are not any less pro-choice, and it would be nice if some of the other commenters wouldn’t take one sentence out of a long post out of context to accuse of us of being on some slippery slope to the back alley. There are multiple ways to arrive at a pro-choice position. If I arrive there some other way than you, that doesn’t make me less pro-choice.
And as some of the other commenters have said, you can’t always work this stuff out just by talking to yourself in your head. And the desire to discuss it, in and of itself, doesn’t mean you are trying to slut-shame women who don’t feel any moral complexity. Just because someone feels moral complexity doesn’t mean they are trying to invalidate your lack thereof, anymore than those who found the decision simple are trying to invalidate the experiences of those who agonized over it.
I guess I didn’t explain myself well. The motherhood default is the expectation that women should have to justify to society why they don’t want to be mothers, not the personal pro/con list that I would assume most women of a certain level of socioeconomic and political freedom fundamentally already make (at least outside of certain religious communities). Whether a woman is pregnant and considering abortion or not pregnant at all, this idea that society expects a woman’s behavior and choices to *morally* trend toward motherhood and that she must defend any other choice is what bothers me. I hate that women have to justify to anyone why they make their reproductive choices, but so long as they do, I fantasize about a woman being able to say I have no reason to be a mother and have that accepted unconditionally, rather than deal with the grudging acquiescence toward sensibility when she gives out defensive arguments like I’m not old enough, or I’m not in a stable relationship, or I don’t have a way to support the baby, etc.
And regardless of whether most women have children or want them, majoritarianism is NO DEFENSE of a sexist cultural norm.
Right on, Ms. Kate. I think there’s a LOT of romanticizing that goes on, especially where Motherhood is concerned. It’s like a catchall for everyone’s emotional crap.
I didn’t think I could get pregnant, after trying for a couple of years when I was married. I’d always wanted to have a baby–we adopted our son because he needed a family, not because I thought I was infertile.
When I got pregnant accidentally (by a man I liked a lot but didn’t want to marry, and who didn’t want to be a father), I was surprised at how little regret I felt at ending the pregnancy. It was pure relief, with a tiny bit of sadness that the timing (and man) were so wrong.
If it had been a different man and different situation I wouldn’t have had an abortion, but I was sure as hell glad I had the choice for my particular circumstances (and I’d never give anyone else any crap about their feelings). Anyway, my point is that it just doesn’t matter how easy or difficult it is for someone else–it’s just not anyone else’s damned business.
Because we don’t all agree it should be legal. That young woman in the audience at I Had An Abortion who wants abortion to be legal but not “easy”? To me that doesn’t say that she’s got personal qualms; it says that she’s buying into anti-choice crap about women who have abortions on a whim, in much the same way you or I might decide to have another slice of birthday cake.
And how are women who want all other women to be sad and conflicted about their abortions “allowing for difference”?
You mention divorce in your article. I’ve thought of that comparison myself in the past. Abortion and divorce are both unpleasant choices we resort to when something has gone wrong (or, at minimum, something unexpected has happened) in our lives, and both were hard to obtain legally until quite recently. The thing is that there’s a big difference between saying that we ourselves would feel awful and conflicted if we had to have a divorce and saying that other people are treating divorce too lightly and don’t seem unhappy enough about it and should be made to take more time to think it over. By and large, we accept that couples shouldn’t (and, practically speaking, can’t) be forced to stay together.
I don’t know that you or other young women who don’t see this in “black and white” are making that distinction wrt abortion. And it’s crucial. It’s crucial that those of us who are pro-choice proceed from an understanding that there is no us and them when it comes to abortions. Women who have abortions are in all other respects the same as women who don’t. Even those of us who haven’t had abortions and think we never would — well, many of us will go on to discover we’re wrong about that.
Just so you know, abortion is an emotional issue for me too. I don’t think I can be cavalier about it, and the tapeworm language doesn’t speak to me either. But that makes me, if anything, more pro-choice. Abortion is such an important, intimate and personal decision that the idea of NOT getting to make it for myself, without reference to other people’s feelings or (non-medical) opinions, horrifies and sickens me.
Ha. I did the same thing, Beth–only I was 38, not 15.
Thanks for this, deep6. This is really a very crucial issue in the abortion debate, and, IMHO, what makes it a “debate,” actually. “The motherhood default,” as you have so aptly termed it, is actually a manifestation of pronatalism. Unfortunately, the US in 2008 is a pronatalist society, where there is a prevailing social assumption that every pregnancy is inherently good, not only because the pregnancy might be wanted by the pregnant woman, but because if it is not, it might provide the necessary social pressure to “teach [her] a lesson,” or “make her grow up and take responsibility,” or “forcing her to settle down and give up carousing (or drinking, gambling, drugs, or any vice you can think of).”
In other words, pregnancy is a punishment for having sex, and pronatalists believe that it should never be entirely eliminated as a potential tool to coerce women into behaving in patriarchy-approved ways. That’s why they oppose birth control.
Having said that, I read Courtney’s response, and despite what she says about needing a safe space to explore and work through her own conflicted emotions, she needs to understand that those conflicts are not self-created. Those conflicts come from society, which tells Courtney and all other women that if we choose anything other than the “motherhoood default,” whether through abortion, birth control, or just plain abstinence, we had better have some damned good reasons and in all cases, we’re going to have some ’splainin’ to do.
I disagree with your presumption that everyone SHOULD feel this way. It doesn’t allow for difference, instead suggesting that if I, or other women who feel complex about it, were only more enlightened we’d realize that abortion is simple. Why can’t we agree it should be legal and each continue our own process of self-examination?
There have been several comments on this thread along these lines, that Amanda (or other commenters) said “no one should feel conflict about abortion” or “you can’t talk about your feelings”. Amanda said absolutely nothing of the sort:
She starts off saying it is perfectly fair to ask others to accept your feelings: Amanda (and most of the commenters I’ve read) is complaining is that you seem to want everyone else to feel the same way you do, which isn’t fair at all. In other words, she is put off by the the very same attitude you took offense at.
More supporting evidence that Amanda did not intend to tell you how you “should” feel:
I think it’s actually pretty ironic that Amanda writes a post that essentially says, “You can’t dictate how I should feel”, and this post is interpreted by others as “I am dictating the way you should feel.”
To add to irony, Courtney said that her point was to emphasize how vulnerable she felt in that sitation and to examine her own feelings. And that was misinterpreted by a lot of us as “You should feel exactly the same way I do!”
So everyone seems to arguing about statements that weren’t actually made and intentions that weren’t supposed to be there. Talk about miscommunication!
That’s pretty much the Internet for you.
However, I disagree with your presumption that everyone SHOULD feel this way. It doesn’t allow for difference, instead suggesting that if I, or other women who feel complex about it, were only more enlightened we’d realize that abortion is simple.
I really tried hard to make it clear that I don’t think anyone should feel it’s as uncomplicated as I do. I’m arguing strictly from the point of view that those of us who don’t feel complicated about it are not morally inferior, nor should we be put upon by those who do feel complicated about it to be phony about our feelings. It’s easy to claim that complexity gives one the moral high ground, and guilt trip everyone who doesn’t feel that way. I’m not going to “admit” that it’s complicated, which implies that I’m in denial. And I don’t think I am. Having a serious pregnancy scare in my college days ended all complications I feel on the issue in a quick, brutal way.
Thanks for replying. I just want it to be clear that I think it’s perfectly reasonable for women to be sad or grieve or feel complex. God knows life is complex—an abortion is often a rejection of a commitment to a relationship, or a rejection of a child that might be longed for in a more abstract way, and I don’t blame anyone who feels torn up over these facts. I am not them. My not-wanting-children-ness has made the whole thing clear to me. An abortion wouldn’t be a rejection of a man nor parting from a future part of me wants. But if that’s not true for other women, and I know it’s not, then they should feel as complex as they wish to. I’m just rejecting the notion that people who feel complex occupy a high ground that demands the rest of us tiptoe around them by pretending to feel a way we don’t.
Well, this seems to be the point of Courtney’s article:
Whoops, forgot to close the tag. Reposting for clarity:
Well, this seems to be the point of Courtney’s article:
And no. I don’t want to have to engage in “respectful exploration” with strangers about whether I have a right to my own body, especially if doing so just helps them “fully own” their belief that I don’t. I definitely don’t believe that such exploration — exploration that may make us all feel better but doesn’t accomplish anything politically — is the “ultimate” aim of feminism . I believe there’s a right and a wrong here. If that makes me an intimidating zealot, so be it.
Dorothy, I’m really not sure any of us were hearing judgments that weren’t there. I think we heard loud and clear.
The part about jealousy (envy) and how the writer didn’t think the mother was a bad person is completely contradicted by the image of the unconcerned mother nattering into her phone and yelling at her kid. The “hatred” fits in quite nicely, but the “Oh, I didn’t think she was BAD, I was JEALOUS (subtext: that she could be a Mommeh and still be so blase about Ending the Life of Her Baby)” really, truly doesn’t fit what the writer’s saying. Yes, it’s exploring her feelings, but where we’re supposed to put our empathy in terms of the narrative comes through loud and clear.
I’m not trying to pick on the writer–that’s what I saw. I’m sure different people read it differently, and that’s okay. I don’t care if the writer has complex feelings about her own abortion; I don’t think anyone has any business having feelings about someone else’s. I agree with Elinor–the distinction is crucial.
I wasn’t trying to say ooky feelings about abortion are like UFO sightings. But having strong feelings about being kidnapped by aliens is nothing to laugh at. I’m really serious—people who feel kidnapped by aliens and tortured really do suffer. But the problem is that they’ve defined the cause of their suffering incorrectly and get really defensive when people even timidly suggest that it was something besides an actual kidnapping.
I was tired, and I should have put that better. I was grasping for an analogy to the way that people claim the high ground in a discussion because they’re sensitive, and looking for an example that shows how wrong that is. In the UFO situation, the hallucinating person is suffering greatly, and will use her suffering to guilt people out of saying, “Well, I don’t actually believe in UFOs.” But because UFO belief is a minority concern, we don’t have a problem with feeling like we have to be quiet and put on a phony show of having the same feelings, even though we don’t. But abortion makes a majority of people feel ooky, so we minority people are simply expected to pretend that it bothers us when it doesn’t.
I’m just trying to defend the right to actually not care and not go to great lengths to hide it. I do care strongly about someone else who suffers, and hope for her sanity that she finds the right sources of her suffering and works on those, instead of taking the route suggested by anti-choicers and claim that all female suffering comes from not obeying the dictates of nature.
Quoting myself because I do think I was reasonably clear that I wasn’t comparing feelings of sadness over abortion to UFOs:
Highlighted the important parts to make it clear.
I got that you want society to not simply expect women to want to be mothers. I agree, society should not simply expect that of all women. But your phrasing was such that it seemed that you wanted women to defend their choice to become mothers instead. As a woman who wants to become a mother, I would find that just as offensive as you find the reverse. My point was that I would like us to strive for an expectation that a woman will simply make the best choice for herself, and not have to defend it in either direction.
And apparently I did not make myself clear, either. Pointing out that most women in our society do want to be mothers was intended to ask you not to discriminate against those who do, not to defend the sexist idea that they should want to.
I think that we are trying to get at the same point here, really. I really just wanted to address your phrasing of it, which read to me as also discriminatory.
That’s how I read it as well. And I did find that a bit offensive, mostly because I’m surrounded by women who are ooked out by abortion (at any stage), although most of them are at least nominally pro-choice. And I know how it feels to be expected to keep my lack of feelings quiet to avoid spooking the people I’m around. I can’t have this discussion with my sisters or any of my friends, really, because my lack of sentimentality about this subject leads them to think I’m some kind of selfish, moral-less, crazy person. Especially because I do have kids and I still adamantly support abortion at any stage of pregnancy for whatever reason a woman wants to have one (which really isn’t my business anyway) without question. And I think it should be publicly funded and there should be absolutely no shaming involved.
Because if anything, already having kids inclines me toward less sentimentality about pregnancy/babies rather than more. Quite frankly, much as I love my specific kids, having another would probably kill me (and not because of any physical problem, they’re just exhausting and annoying and the demands of motherhood never end). I hated pregnancy, I hated childbirth, and I wasn’t a big fan of the infant stage. And if I found out today that I was pregnant, I’d be at the clinic tomorrow. Because I am not having another.
Amen.
Courtney E. Martin:
BZZT.
I’ve been to Planned Parenthood on “abortion day” because I couldn’t get an appointment at any other time soon enough for the (not pregnancy) test they wanted me to undergo. So your belief that the woman is definitely getting an abortion is still probably just an assumption and not a fact.
Whether or not she was getting an abortion was not an issue. It’s utterly irrelevant. I don’t think it could be more irrelevant to the question at hand. Let’s say we know 100% for a fact that she was getting an abortion. Does that make it any worse that she was blase? That’s the point. Assume we know for a fact. Does that change how you feel about the phone-gabbing blase-ness?
Dorothy, Amanda said nothing of the sort, but the tone of these comments — and all the yes ITA’s that have followed them has very definitely nucleated around the “how dare you talk about your feelings” position.
The way the thing seems to be falling out is the following, to take a typical example:
“I would never choose to have an abortion.”
Commenter 1: “I don’t mind that you are talking about your feelings, but I just wish that you would at least state your unequivocal advocacy of abortion for other women when you do it!”
“I would never choose to have an abortion, but I support other women’s right to do so.”
Commenter 2: “I don’t see why you feel the need to talk about your own feelings here at all! It’s like you’re criticizing women who do have them!”
“I’m not criticizing other women who have abortions and I support their right to do so, but I would never have one because I’m talking about my inner feelings.”
Commenter 3: “This isn’t about your FEELINGS! This is about LEGALITY!”
So playing the “no one has forbidden anyone from talking about their feelings here” card is disingenuous. If you set out impossible and constantly shifting standards for someone to achieve before they are allowed to talk about their feelings, that is the same as forbidding them from doing it.
Okay, let me ask this — pretend for a moment that you are a young woman who is starting to work this stuff out in her head. You are the young woman who is in the abortion clinic who is muddled as hell about what she thinks about all this. You have to say this shit out loud, because sitting in a corner and thinking it out to yourself isn’t gonna cut it.
How, exactly, can you bring up this conflict such that the real you won’t get pissed off at her? Such that she will have successfully picked her way through the rhetorical minefield set up by the commenters here?
You can talk about it, but only if you reiterate your support for legal abortion!
No wait, you can’t talk about your feelings here! By doing that, you are insulting women who choose abortion without regrets!
No wait, you can only talk about LEGALITY!
No, I’ve seen no one person say all of these things, but I have definitely seen more than a bit of backslapping camaraderie between the individuals who have said these things, with no awareness of how impossible is the obstacle course they all seem to have set up in the process.
Saying that “no one” (or Amanda hasn’t, ignoring the evolution of the comments thread) has forbidden anyone from talking about their feelings is disingenuous when a lot of people here (who seem to be happy to go “ITA!” at one another) have set up an absolutely impossible obstacle course before permission to talk about feelings is granted.
Telling someone they can only do something when they’ve successfully walked backward through a minefield with constantly shifting mines, hopping on one foot while plate-spinning a dinner service for six, is effectively forbidding them from doing it.
So playing the “no one has forbidden anyone from talking about their feelings here” card is disingenuous. If you set out impossible and constantly shifting standards for someone to achieve before they are allowed to talk about their feelings, that is the same as forbidding them from doing it.
I don’t think it’s fair to compile all the various opinions expressed by multiple commenters (who often actively disagree with each other) into a homogeneous “standard”. People on the thread are actually discussing their feelings: even if those feelings are “I’m not really bothered by it”.
The “hostess” made it demonstrably clear in her post that she is not surprised that a lot of women have complex feelings about abortion, nor is she upset at these women or unsupportive of them. As far as the “site standards” go, I can only point to the attitudes of the people who actually pay for the bandwidth: everyone else (including me) is superfluous.
As far as the comments go, each commenter’s opinion is given only as much weight as you choose to give it: no more, no less.
Again, I think it’s highly ironic: a post expressing how women who aren’t conflicted about abortion often feel “silenced” in the discussion suddenly becomes “you’re silencing me.”
Perhaps the most insightful line from Amanda’s post is this one: There’s a massive tendency in our culture to think that one person’s experiences being different from another person’s invalidates one of the two. The comment thread seems to support that concept 100%.
Dorothy
Hmm, so if we criticize any woman’s expression of her personal feelings and thoughts on the subject, no matter how misinformed she is and no matter how gently we do it (and it’s not wise to assume that the expressions of frustration we share on a feminist blog are representative of the way we would treat a young woman who said such a thing to our faces), if we try to persuade her or clarify our position (no, you do not have to have an abortion to be pro-choice), we are being hostile, we are making her walk through a “minefield.”
I was the one who wrote about legality and about seeming critical of other women, and yeah, I’m frustrated when I hear the same “please don’t think I’m a selfish slut just because I support Roe v. Wade (or R. v. Morgentaler)” stuff over and over again. I’m pretty blunt about that while discussing it on a feminist blog. That doesn’t mean I’m going to bite the head off any woman who brings it up with me in real life. That certainly doesn’t mean I would bite the head off a woman who felt upset or conflicted while actually waiting to have her abortion, holy shite.
By the way, the 20th anniversary of R. v. Morgentaler (the one that legalized abortion on demand) is on Monday. Cheers.