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.

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%.

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.

Some clarifications: it was, indeed, the day for abortions at the clinic so everyone there was getting an abortion.

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.

ks, queen mother of the peach pie
January 25, 2008 at 4:42 pm

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.

Amen.

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.

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.

I guess I didn’t explain myself well.

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 regardless of whether most women have children or want them, majoritarianism is NO DEFENSE of a sexist cultural norm.

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.

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:

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 wronglike 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.

Highlighted the important parts to make it clear.

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!”

Dorothy, I’m really not sure any of us were hearing judgments that weren’t there. I think we heard loud and clear.

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.

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.

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.