I … just … can’t be one of those people—the scornful masses who if given the chance would spew at millions of girls and women each year who find themselves ruefully, unexpectedly, unjoyously and secretly pregnant:
“You gonna have that baby!! You hear me?!”
The noisy & ever nosy anti-abortion crowd has always been about one thing: judging females in their child-bearing years—essentially judging girls and women most of their lives. Their cause is about butting into millions and millions of lives in which they have no business telling how to react and what to do in the matter of unintentional pregnancy. Female lives matter. Those who pursue an abortion are people who for many reasons (all no one’s business) know they cannot have a baby at this time in their lives.
The Texas all-boys club who swiftly banned abortions at six weeks of pregnancy, AND for some bizarre reason encourage any nut in the country to sue people ‘involved’ in assisting an abortion in the state, is just showing their hind ends to the rest of a weary world. Why not brand the female with a scarlet letter A?
Ever since Roe v Wade became law in the early 1970s, safe abortion was a private option. I don’t remember when abortion was illegal. I mentioned that to a sister as we marched in the national women’s rights protest against the Texas abortion ban. Her response to me was “I do!” Our country’s elderly women have not forgotten the hangers, back alleys, unlicensed assistants and other gruesome methods and humiliations endured by many a teen or young woman prior to 1973. Deaths by self-induced and unsanitary abortions were so numerous and known to most women, feminist Gloria Steinem referred to it as “our Vietnam.”
The decades since abortion was legalized in the U.S., the anti-abortion crowd seemingly swelled and grew self-assured and politically empowered. Not only did they intimidate and scorn anyone trying to enter a women’s public health clinic, they also commenced to blowing up the facilities one by one, shooting physicians whose practice included abortions, and publishing names and addresses along with other personal and family information of anyone associated with medical centers where abortions are performed. In short, the fanatical anti-abortion crowd was notorious for death threats. Many physicians were murdered by the same people, practically all men, who claim to be pro-life.
Why is everybody getting to decide except the pregnant?
Perhaps if men had a better track record about unintentional pregnancy, abortion would be rare. But male hormones, AKA male teen-agers, and grown men who find their lover pregnant have had a long history of fleeing the scene. If truth be told, they may be the first to suggest abortion. These are private conversations after all. Abortion is quite likely many a man’s first reaction. It takes a very special teen-ager or man to accept his consequences of ‘creating a new life,’ of suddenly becoming a father, of acknowledging his offspring, and finding a way to support his new baby. But alas, this touching scenario is more fiction than the rule. And every woman knows it, and girls will learn it.
Who was the ’70s feminist who chided: If men got pregnant, abortion would be a legal holiday? I heard Cher say it. She’s in that senior women’s group who remember when abortion was illegal, a dirty word, a dirty secret—a shame. I don’t. In college I heard rumors of girls who traveled out of state to have abortions … fearing in Texas they might run into their parents. That’s how ashamed they were. Many of my generation as young girls felt unable to talk to their parents about being pregnant. Then the anti-abortion crowd forced the conversation by making abortion a parent’s decision. No minor could obtain an abortion without her parent’s consent. How awful.
The poor girl has to tell her parents she’s pregnant when they don’t know she’s sexually active. In my day, a lot of parents would have flown off the handle if hearing the news. I never bought the ‘pro-life’ side that parents are supportive and loving. The reality I saw was parents pressing for the new life, their grandchild after all, and giving little if any consideration to their pregnant daughter, what she wanted to do.
Life’s a mess. No doubt about it. Trouble is, women deal with life’s messes all the time … and men just don’t have to. Take the Texas abortion ban that assumes pregnancy at six weeks after a missed period. Doctors don’t even want to see a patient who thinks she’s pregnant, even if a home pregnancy test confirms it, until she misses two periods. This is the messy reality of which the Texas Legislature and Governor are unaware—and every 21st century woman in America knows it and are both laughing and fuming. See, men, women aren’t like finely tuned cars, having periods every month like clockwork. Sometimes the female body just doesn’t want to have a period for one or more months. May be due to stress. May be weight gain or weight loss. May be over exercising. May be hormonal changes. Texas Legislators don’t know any of that either. Did I mention there are tens of millions of women out here, each with her own cycle of which is in reality out of her or any man’s control? Meanwhile, contraceptives have been known to fail. I noticed Plan B’s off the shelf at pharmacies, well maybe just in Texas.
To be a woman is to be out of control. We who are female accept our fate. Yes, those of us with more testosterone would like to live like men: free a whole lifetime unencumbered without bras and monthly hygiene products. Must be nice. Especially between the years of 10 to, oh, 55. It’s as if God has blessed men and cursed women.
Wait a minute. That’s exactly what men want us to think. They’ve written it into laws and cultures for centuries, only in my lifetime to have been overturned. And it’s been a great lifetime for women since the 1970s, since 1973.
Heart & Soul
Like everyone in America, for years I wrestled with the issue of abortion. Scientists disagree on the moment life begins; they don’t all agree it’s at conception. That is a belief not a biological fact. When younger, I would have judged a girl or woman if she had an abortion. You shouldn’t have sex if you don’t want to get pregnant, I would have thought, as indoctrinated. But along my solitary spiritual path, I experienced moments of profound enlightenment—on this issue of abortion, which as long as I can remember has never ceased to tear this country apart.
First enlightenment: In the 1980s the Reagan/Bush administrations mandated a survey of women who’d had abortions. The purpose was to find how abortion impacted the mental health and physical well being of these women. The survey took years to complete. The findings were supposed to conclude, as society believed way back when, that women who’ve had an abortion are emotionally unstable and their lives a wreck. But that was an old wives’ tale. The modern survey found that a good 98 percent of women who had undergone a safe and legal abortion not only completed their education whether high school or college but suffered no lingering emotional distress, went on to marry and have healthy children, and even work satisfying and rewarding careers.
That two percent or so who maintained abortion was the worst decision of their lives and they could never forgive themselves for what they considered murdering their unborn offspring, well among the general population 10-14 percent suffer anxiety and neurosis caused by assorted past traumas. Abortion itself did not create mental illness in a woman, the report concluded. This was according to the former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
Second enlightenment: I support abortion but wondered about the ‘soul.’ Was abortion killing a human soul? There are cultures in the other half of the world that believe a soul does not enter a body until a few months after birth. A large number of pregnancies end in miscarriage, 30 to 50 percent, most in the first trimester, sometimes before a woman knows she’s pregnant, and more sadly in the second and third trimesters. Collectively we mourn the life that was … as if fully formed and created, vibrant and healthy … in our minds. Miscarriage is heartbreaking. We even name the unborn before fully formed, before entering our shared world and breathing on their own.
The divide of our society on abortion is stitched into the fabric of American history and our puritanical past. Today we believe our Puritan ancestors were uptight miserable people so sure of themselves, certain they were the Elect bound for heaven and everyone else doomed to hellfire. It is ironic that a couple hundred years later ‘the scarlet letter,’ a story from America’s past based on Puritanical prejudices, remains an A, with all the same judgement, scorn, and sexual imagery forced deep down into the human subconscious. Hypocrisy drives people insane. As a modern country, leader of the Free World, we’ve been better off leaving judgement to God while privately following our individual spiritual convictions.