I’ve often said that there is really nothing at all new that can be said in or about the so-called “abortion debate” in this country. I read basically the entirety of the talk.abortion archives on Usenet when I was in college (at least it felt like the entirety) and am pretty sure I saw every conceivable argument for and against state control over women’s reproductive health and lives. But sometimes people articulate things so well that they bear repeating. I’m sure (if my archives were up; le sigh) that I linked to this back when it was first posted, but Bitch Ph.D. has re-posted her thoughts on trusting women, and they really should be heeded.
The bottom line about abortion is this. Do you trust women to make their own moral judgments? If you are anti-abortion, then no. You do not. You have an absolute moral position that you don’t trust anyone to question, and therefore you think that abortion should be illegal. But the second you start making exceptions for rape or incest, you are indicating that your moral position is not absolute. That moral judgment is involved. And that right there is where I start to get angry and frustrated, because unless you have an absolute position that all human life (arguably, all life period, but that isn’t the argument I’m engaging with right now) are equally valuable [...], then there is no ground whatsoever for saying that there should be laws or limitations on abortion other than that you do not trust women. I am completely serious about this.
Let me unpack a bit, because I know this sounds polemical, since I am clearly stating a bottom line. When pro-choice feminists like Wolf, or liberal men, or a lot of women, even, say things like, “I’m pro-choice, but I am uncomfortable with… [third-trimester abortion / sex-selection / women who have multiple abortions / women who have abortions for "convenience" / etc.]” then what you are saying is that your discomfort matters more than an individual woman’s ability to assess her own circumstances. That you don’t think that women who have abortions think through the very questions that you, sitting there in your easy chair, can come up with. That a woman who is contemplating an invasive, expensive, and uncomfortable medical procedure doesn’t think it through first. In short, that your judgment is better than hers.
Think about the hubris of that. Your judgment of some hypothetical scenario is more reliable than some woman’s judgment about her own, very real, life situation?
And you think that’s not sexist? That that doesn’t demonstrate, at bottom, a distrust of women? A blindness to their equality? A reluctance to give up control over someone else’s decision?
Because if you cannot see that, then I don’t care who you are. Male, female, feminist, reactionary asshole. You are acting as a conduit for a social distrust of women so strong that it’s almost invisible, that it gets read as “normal.” The fact that abortion is even a debate in this country demonstrates that we do not trust women.
Jill at Feministe has a slightly different take.
To put reproductive rights in the hands of anyone but the individual whose body is doing the reproducing is to radically infringe on the most basic of human rights. It is in essence to say, “Your very being is not as important as my opinion.” And if we don’t trust individuals to make their own choices about reproduction, given their own unique set of circumstances, why in the world would we trust outsiders — who know significantly less about the whole of any one individual’s circumstances than the individual involved — to make such important decisions for them?
The fundamental point is (my words here): women are human and should be allowed full expression of their humanity. Infantilizing them through state-based restrictions and limitations on something as fundamental as reproduction is a deep and immoral injustice.
NTodd has come around to view all of the yimmer-yammer about keeping abortions “rare” as the condescending nonsense it is. As if women wander in to get abortions like they do to have their teeth cleaned. As if. I mean, of course we want abortions to be rare. We want heart surgeries and appendectomies and liver transplants to be rare, too, but we don’t create slogans for them. Anyway, NTodd:
Obviously Stupak has been a big component in my evolution of thought. Not just the immediate threat to reproductive health, but even more the ancillary dangers I see from so-called moderates, liberals, progressives, etc, who were still fine with a “reform” that threw women under the proverbial bus so long as the bill contained their favored element(s) changed my mind.
Lots more to read by following the twitter hashtag #trustwomen today.
