I Am 100% Pro-Abortion
If that idea bothers you, get over yourself.
1.
I am not addressing myself to the crazy people. I speak only to those of us with somewhat like minds and without deep concern for what others may say or think about us.
This is not a policy statement, a legal opinion, or an argument in favor of a particular linguistic tactic. I am not a legislator, an activist, a professional moral philosopher, or an advocate in the career sense.
I am a person invested in female flourishing as a practical and ethical matter. I could not function as I have, could not live as I have, without a profound belief in my own autonomy and in that of each woman. And from this perspective, I suppose I am “pro-choice” and “pro-reproductive rights” in the shallow, necessary, realpolitik sense but I am also, at my core, one-hundred percent pro-abortion.
It is a thing that exists, that has always existed, that will continue to exist for the next 3 or 4 generations before humans extinguish ourselves on this burning planet—maybe even longer than that if some ragtag group of us finds a way to thrive underground or up in space. Abortion is a positive good. Abortion reduces suffering and increases the human capacity to better ourselves. To think otherwise is to cling to myths and nonsense.
2.
A close friend who’d grown up Catholic was one of the first I knew to have had an abortion. A very baby-oriented person who definitely hoped to have a family one day, she mourned the choice she made, possibly even regretted it, and yet she articulated her feelings to close friends and otherwise kept living her life. She was still young, in her early 20s like me, unsettled romantically, professionally, and geographically. The would-be father was not a good man.
Life is full of sad things. People who genuinely believe women need to be shielded from sad or hard things cannot have actually spoken to many human beings ever; otherwise, they’d understand that every person’s life is full of very sad, hard, sometimes even tragic things. To deny a woman the opportunity to experience something that might be (or might not be) deeply sad to her is to treat her like a doll. I won’t say “like a child.” Even children ultimately can’t and shouldn’t be sheltered from the everyday tragedies in this world. Trying too hard to do so does not lead to healthy children or healthy adults.
This friend of mine never got the family she wanted because she didn’t live past 27. She was killed by a car while riding a bicycle on vacation.
3.
I never had an abortion but would have obtained one if necessary, and probably without the same kind of sadness or spiritual guilt that my friend felt—although who knows? We can’t predict how circumstances will affect us if we’ve never gone through them.
I have never been pregnant, although I did try very hard to become pregnant for about three miserable years. In the course of trying to bully my body to do something it just wasn’t going to do, I grew attuned to its profound, unsubtle messages. A deep somatic self rebelled against every chemical intervention from the fertility industrial complex. A deep somatic self—one that was normally quite libidinous—grew disgusted at the very notion of sex, especially sex on a schedule, sex with a procreative purpose. A deep somatic self succumbed to intense anxiety and depression. My mind tried to force my body into making a baby; my body did everything it could to escape the agenda, including a brief flirtation with suicidal notions.
I couldn’t will myself into a pregnancy; I also can’t imagine gestating an unwanted fetus. Both seem like forms of intimate violence without the need for an abusive partner.
Without bodily autonomy, without the ability to fully read and heed the messages emerging from deep inside ourselves, there is no liberation.
If rape is a form of harm, then so is forced birth, and for the exact same reasons. This is obvious or should be to anyone—or at least, to anyone who doesn’t grotesquely minimize both experiences the way certain theocrats seem to do.
4.
Don’t tell me you care about “the unborn.” Nobody actually cares about all the would-be lives that might have been lived. It’s emotionally, neurologically, morally impossible. You’ve attached yourself to a flickering impulse in you that doesn’t rise to the level of moral intuition or deep somatic messaging. (You can’t have deep somatic knowledge on behalf of other bodies.) It’s just a flinch you’re experiencing. Get past it.
Nobody actually cares about other people’s inarguably alive babies, at least not in terms of the whole world or even their entire hometowns. Does this need to be demonstrated? Isn’t it obvious already?
Nobody actually cares all that much about the full, manifest lives of people who may live a few doors down from them, if they even know their names. Admit this.
Look inside yourself and count on one or maybe two hands the number of people you genuinely keep inside your circle of deep concern. The number of people whose sudden death or disappearance would crush you. It’s a small number, I guarantee it.
I know and have known hundreds, maybe thousands of people over my highly convivial life. There are many whose funerals I will attend. There are many I will cry over. There are many whose occasional company I will miss.
There are really not too many whose absence would make it impossible for me to function in my own life for even a few days. Please examine yourself and find that it’s exactly the same for you. We are not built to attach to that many people at any given time. Not unless our attachments are shallow—unless they lack true intimacy. Our “ride or die” posse is tiny. Maybe it’s down to just one person. I’m fairly certain I would not give up my life for anyone at all—not even my beloved only sibling, who should also never give up hers for mine—with one notable exception: my almost-adult son. To whom I did not give birth. He is my chosen human, the one person whose demise might make me jump off a roof in despair. And even if I survived that—even if my body insisted on staying alive—I know I’d never find another attachment that begins to approach such deep and abiding concern.
We are not built to care, truly care, for more than a few people at a time, unless we decide to care about abstractions, in which case…I always have to ask…who are we neglecting while we focus on helping strangers en masse? I’m sure we’ve all heard stories of public do-gooder types who’ve treated their own family like shit.
5.
The people who support a nationwide abortion ban are the exact same people who believe men should dominate in all aspects of life, private and public. That’s an easy enough story to see. (Here’s a good piece by Peter Beinart that puts this ugly narrative together in one place.)
The people who want abortion safe and legal but “rare” or with “restrictions” are still a problem, in my view. Again: I am not talking about political expediency or advocacy language. I am talking about an ethical stance. From the perspective of female flourishing, there is no good reason for waiting periods, parental permission, scare-tactic sonograms, or any other legal measure to keep a girl or woman from accessing needed healthcare. There are, instead, the following moral duties:
to offer free, universal, evidence-based sex education for all individuals beginning just before adolescence if not earlier (young children are not developmentally equipped to do anything with basic biological information before they are sexually mature, and pre-loading them with some facts might just keep them from walking around with dumb false ideas that could end in unwanted pregnancies one day);
to ensure girls and boys, young women and men, all have equal access to excellent educational opportunities and life aspirations;
to let young girls understand that, contra the myths about how males differ from females, they are sexual agents who will experience desires all of their own and thus have full control of and responsibility for their choices,
to provide plenty of neutral but expert counseling for young women and men struggling to deal with their feelings or the consequences of their actions, including unwanted pregnancies that occurred without rape or coercion;
to teach girls and women that it’s never their job to be nice or cheerful or smiley or kind, especially if they are sensing danger;
to let all young people know that there are both joys and pitfalls when it comes to sexual exploration, as well as (sometimes) unintended emotional reactions in themselves and their partners;
to provide free or inexpensive contraception everywhere possible;
to accept that even with all these preconditions in place, there will still be unsafe sex, rape, incest, accidents, impulsive behaviors, and so forth among people of all ages and it would still be best for a pregnant person to be provided abortion as an option—quickly, safely, efficiently, inexpensively, and with no religious or authoritarian bullying involved.
Yes. It’s true. I’m a dreamer. Either that or I’m secretly Danish.
6.
I always hated the political slogan about keeping abortion “safe, legal, and rare,” although I understand why it needs to exist. The “rare” part is a sop to those who refuse to deconstruct their own nonsensical attachment to and projection upon other people’s pregnancies. I go back to what I said above. Nobody truly cares about other people’s living babies in a robust way because it is impossible to care that much about anything or anybody at that quantity. To say so is to stretch the concept of “care” beyond all recognition or usefulness.
Now, if you want to argue that unwanted pregnancies should be rare because they waste resources, including the energy and time required to be a fully flourishing female human being, I’m with you. The way to reduce unwanted pregnancies is to attend to the moral duties I listed above.
Not because abortion is tragic. Not because it’s sad. Not because it’s medically risky—it’s much safer than bringing a pregnancy to full term, especially in a country like ours with a truly abysmal healthcare “system.” Certainly not because it’s immoral.
Reduce unwanted pregnancies and support abortion for the exact same reason: to ensure the full freedom and flourishing of half the human beings in the world.
###
Once again you have nailed it. Since the leak of the Doss decision I’ve been nursing this rage over it but I didn’t know why. You put into words what so many people are feeling. What a gift you have!
Preach!