Abortion Gang

Conservative thinkers have long embraced the idea of “American exceptionalism;” that is, the idea that the United States, as a nation, is qualitatively different from other nations: we are, by virtue of being one of the first Western nations founded on ideas of liberty and equality (you know, for White, land-owning men), somehow unique in history, in the eyes of God, or by whatever standard the person invoking the term deems credible.

The idea is derived from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1831), but it’s more recently become a recurring trope used by Republican presidential candidates:  Mitt Romney writes, “This reorientation away from a celebration of American exceptionalism is misguided and bankrupt”; Sarah Palin’s America by Heart has a chapter entitled “America the Exceptional”; and Rick Santorum preaches, “Don’t kid yourself with the lie.  America is exceptional.”  Get it?  We’re different.  We’re better.  We’re the exception.

Of course, none of these candidates were talking about abortion when they made these statements – but the idea of exceptionalism is surprisingly consistent in both areas of Conservative rhetoric.  It seems to me like the “My country is the best and most exceptional country in the world” is just a step removed from the “My abortion is most necessary and my reasons are the most valid, and my abortion is the one acceptable abortion of all the abortions ever.”

Our blogger Lauren has previously written here on the Abortion Gang about “The Exceptions” and why the “I’m-pro-life-except-in-cases-of-rape-and-incest” or “I’m-pro-choice-but-not-after-X-number-of-weeks” frameworks are so problematic.  But the personal exception takes these even further. Because, don’t kid yourself, anti-choicers get abortions every day.  And each one of them in “the exception.”

I recently finished reading Carol Joffe’s Dispatches from the Abortion Wars, and she illustrates this concept perfectly:

The palpable sense of isolation and corresponding lack of solidarity with other patients were for me one of the most interesting things to emerge from this study. “I am a Christian – I am not doing this casually,” clearly suggesting that others in the waiting room were not so thoughtful and moral… Perhaps the starkest example of isolation came from one woman’s response to the question of whether she would “ever consider being part of a group that supports people who get abortions.” Her answer was an emphatic no.  As she put it, “I wouldn’t support them because… it [might become] a habit for everyone.” The speaker was a twenty-year-old mother of one, about to have her second abortion.

Even more extreme were those stories of clinic protestors who then showed up inside the clinic when they or their daughter had an unplanned pregnancy: “The provider community wrly describes this unique patient group as ‘the women whose three acceptable exceptions for an abortion are “rape, incest, or mine.”’”  For even more examples, please read Joyce Arthur’s excellent essay “The Only Moral Abortion is my Abortion.”

Perhaps the most startling example of such exceptionalism is from “Don’t-kid-yourself” Rick Santorum.  Days after discovering her fetus had a fatal defect, Santorum’s wife Karen came down with a fever, an indicator of a dangerous infection.  Inducing labor at 20 weeks gestation – nearly a month prior to viability – was the only sure way to save Karen’s life.  So, the Santorums did what nearly any family would do: they decided to save the mother’s life and proceed with inducing labor, even though that would assuredly cause the fetus’s death.  One might call this procedure a partial-birth abortion.  Except, Santorum wouldn’t call it that because he’s opposed to abortion, believes abortion providers should be jailed, and calls exceptions to save the mother’s life a “phony exception.”  Unless, of course, the life being saved is that of his wife’s.  Because his reasons were different.  Their reasons were better.  Their case was the exception.

Unfortunately (and ironically), it is not the tenets of liberty and individual freedom that Conservatives claim as the basis for American exceptionalism that translate into their stance on abortion, (as such beliefs would necessitate freedom of choice and access to abortion) but the idea of superiority and self-righteousness that endures.  What unites these paradigms is the stubborn unwillingness to acknowledge the validity of experiences outside of one’s own.

When it comes to abortion, there are no exceptions to the rule; the exceptions are the rule.  Every abortion is different.  Every person seeking an abortion has their own reasons and their own story.  No exceptions.

With the 2012 elections fast approaching (less than 430 days until we cast our ballots) the perspective presidential field is becoming clearer.  With potential nominees like Donald Trump, Tim Pawlenty, and Mike Huckabee having already decided against running, the nomination is wide open.  Currently there are 4 or so people who seem to be the “front runners” in the race, and their views on reproductive rights are nothing short of alarming.

Ron Paul

Before entering politics in the 1970’s, Paul worked as an OB/GYN.  During his time in the medical field, he delivered more than 4,000 babies.  He says that this experience has led him to his view that life starts at conception.  Paul says that he is “an unshakable foe of abortion” and claims that he has never dealt with a pregnant woman who medically needed an abortion.  He was the prime sponsor of HR300, a bill that would overturn Roe v. Wade and put the power to regulate the legality of abortion in the state’s hands.  While Paul’s 2012 campaign has received more support than his 2008 campaign, it still seems unlikely that he will be able to secure the nomination.

Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann is the only woman being considered for the nomination, yet is one of the most anti-choice.  During her congressional campaigns she was endorsed by the Susan B. Anthony List, an organization that promotes women in politics who oppose the right to choose.  She also signed the “2012 Pro-life Presidential Leadership Pledge” which states that if elected president she will only nominate “pro-life” appointees to the Supreme Court and certain Cabinet and Executive Branch positions.  By signing the pledge she also promises to defund Planned Parenthood and advance anti-abortion legislation, if elected president.  At a recent debate she was asked if abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or incest, and in response she told the crowd that she was 100% pro-life.

Before getting involved in national politics, Bachmann and her husband volunteered as “sidewalk counselor” and frequently prayed outside abortion clinics.  She has spoken in support of other sidewalk counselors and worked to stop tax dollars going to hospitals that perform abortions.  Like Paul, Bachmann’s chances of getting the nomination are unlikely.

Mitt Romney

After an unsuccessful 2008 run, Mitt Romney is back to try for 2012 and seems to be the most likely nominee.  Romney has the experience, political support, and money to orchestrate a successful run– he is also the most moderate, but tends to flip-flop on important issues.

Until 2005 he identified as pro-choice and even made donations with his wife to Planned Parenthood.  While Romney stated that he personally opposed abortion, he strongly supported the right to access abortion services.  In 2005 though he did a complete flip-flop and vetoed a bill that would expand access to emergency contraception.  While not directly affecting abortion access, this signaled a change in his position on the matter.  It is still unclear what his specific views on abortion are.  He opted not to sign the Pro-Life Leadership Pledge that Michele Bachmann and other candidates signed, so this could be signaling another change in Romney’s personal views.  Even so, it seems unlikely that he would be able to gain the support he needs from the Conservative Republican leadership if he came out as pro-choice.  

Rick Perry

Aside from Romney, Rick Perry is probably the most likely candidate.  He has the power and connection to do it, and being Governor of Texas (as George W. Bush was before he was elected) doesn’t hurt either.  Perry also happens to be the most outwardly anti-choice of any of the candidates.  He too signed the Pro-Life Leadership Pledge, but that was almost unnecessary given the laws he’s been putting in place in Texas.  Earlier this year Perry labeled a new abortion regulation law as an “emergency”, pushing it into debate ahead of truly pressing issues like Texas’s unemployment and healthcare problems.  Recently key portions of that same law— which would have forced women wanting to have an abortion to see the fetus on a sonogram, listen to a heartbeat, hear a scripted anti-abortion speech read by their doctor, and wait another 24 hours before being allowed to have the procedure done— were struck down by a judge.  Perry has also worked to nearly eliminate all family planning funds and keep Texas schools teaching abstinence only education (even though it doesn’t work).

What about President Obama?

While we may not always be happy with how President Obama is representing the pro-choice movement, I think we can all agree that he is better than any of these people.  He may not always listen to our ideas, or react the way we would like him to, but there’s no way that any possible Republican nominee would be better.  It is important that we not blindly follow him, but it is also important that we look at the competition and realize how much worse it could be; and that is why I will be voting for Barak Obama in the 2012 elections.

When discussed in relation to motherhood notions of gender are even more punishing for women. In a study using identical resumes for 2 women, participants consistently rated the mother as 10% less competent and 15% less committed than the non-mother. Only 47% of mothers compared with 84% of non-mothers were recommended for hire as head of the marketing department for a start-up communications company. Not only that, but the mother was docked in her salary by a whopping $11,000 (Correll, Benard & Paik, 2007). When antis discuss abortion as a matter of convenience, are they considering that a mother is less hireable and worthy of significantly less salary than non-mothers? How can $11,000 be considered a matter of convenience? In a follow up study, employers were sent resumes for 2 applicants, both of the same gender. Men, whether they had kids or not, received the same number of call-backs. But women who had kids were subjected to a significant “motherhood penalty” and received half as many call-backs as their identically qualified childless counterparts (Crosby, Williams & Biernat, 2004). And the kicker? Women are punished for displaying “masculine” traits such as aggression just as much as they are punished for displaying “feminine” traits such as compassion (eg. Bolino & Turnley, 2003, and others).

Recently I watched “The Fly” (the 1986 version) for the first time. I have had this film on my shelf for almost two years now; my reason for avoiding it was that I am obsessed with Jeff Goldblum and I was afraid that seeing him all gross and decomposing would make me love him less. I know how ridiculous that sounds.

The thing about being completely in love with Jeff Goldblum is that, unlike many other stars to whom I am attracted, he tends to, in general, make pretty good movies. I think this must be difficult as an unconventionally attractive person, particularly one with a very distinctive cadence, so it is all the more admirable that the Goldblum ouevre has very few misses. So I was fairly confident that “The Fly” would be good.

For those who haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it – but I also recommend staying away from this post until you have seen it; I know it’s ridiculous to post spoiler warnings for a 25-year-old film, but I do plan to discuss a plot point that I did not know about before watching and I just want to make sure you’re prepared. Also I find it tiresome to do plot summaries so if you haven’t seen it and want to keep reading, better start googling.

“The Fly” has been understood in some circles as a cinematic metaphor for AIDS, although David Cronenburg was reportedly surprised by this interpretation as he had intended the film to be about disease, aging and death in general. In the cultural context of the 1980s, though, even an unintentional reference to AIDS makes a lot of sense and the interpretation has stuck – even I thought that was what it was about, going in. What I didn’t know was that this film deals unflinchingly with the abortion issue and more generally with bodily autonomy.

What I loved about the abortion theme was that there was no hemming and hawing over the politics of it; it was simply a choice that Veronica needed to make, and once she made it even the slimeball ex-boyfriend was fully ready to help her out. If this film was made today I am certain that either the pregnancy storyline would have been cut altogether, or there would have had to have been some obligatory consideration of the “pro-life” viewpoint before she could ultimately go ahead with it. How dreary it is that we have regressed so much.

There are moments in the film that were so real, I felt as if Cronenburg (and Geena Davis) must have spent some time hanging out in the counselling offices of abortion clinics. When Veronica sees Seth in the last stages of deterioration and decides she needs to go ahead with the abortion immediately, Stathis reminds her that it is the middle of the night. “I need it out of me! Now!” she screams. What clinic staffer hasn’t seen that level of desperation before? I know this is Goldblum’s star-making role but I think Davis was note-perfect. Her whole story is a woman who falls in love with someone who changes, and becomes something different than she thought – whether from disease, or obsession – and when she finds herself pregnant, she has to decide how much of that man she wants in her life through the potential child. Also it might end up being a giant maggot. We’ve all been there. And Seth’s fear that the child might be all that is left of the pre-disease him…I have a friend whose partner died, and at the funeral his mother said to her (my friend) that she had hoped she might be pregnant, that her son might have left her with a part of him to carry on. This is a real thing in the world.

I was thrilled to find this plot in “The Fly” – it’s not unlike going back to rewatch “Dirty Dancing” and finding the abortion part, that I didn’t understand as a child, is actually amazing and realistic and integral to the story and themes. It’s not so much about films showing abortion as it is about them portraying it realistically. Everything about “The Fly” is a total mind fuck (this is Cronenburg after all), so finding this ridiculously straightforward, unquestioned abortion plot is such an unexpected gem.

Of course, after Veronica decides to have the abortion, Seth kidnaps her from the operating table and brings her back to the lab, where he wants to fuse himself to her and the baby, creating “the perfect family”. Holy social commentary, batman! At this point I may have been reading too much into it but I really think there is a lot going on here regarding not just Veronica’s immediate physical safety and that aspect of bodily autonomy, but also the idea of the nuclear family and gross antichoice dudes who won’t “let” their girlfriends have abortions. And the idea of marriage as a solution for unintended pregnancies. It’s 1986. There is a lot going on, friends.

Obviously there are a lot of themes interwoven throughout “The Fly” and it is not just a straight up horror movie, but I think bodily autonomy is one of the main ones and it manages to deal with a lot of complex issues around that, possible because it buries them in horror. It’s like Frankenstein! Or more contemporarily, it reminded me a lot of “District 9” (upon which it was clearly a huge influence). But it really can be viewed as a complex narrative of the abortion decision: the feeling of violation, the uncertainty about who the baby might be if it is born, the complicated emotions of the men involved, the urgency – it was all there.

Nothing delights me more than when I consume some pop culture that is unexpectedly feminist. And best of all, the makeup effects were so good I could barely even tell it was Jeff Goldblum under there, so my undying love emerges undamaged. Good movie night.

Gloria Steinem speaks, and as much as possible, I listen. That’s because Steinem does not mince words, and in one five minute video clip of a speech at the 2009 Rashbaum Ceremony, she puts words to the feeling I’ve had for more than three years, “No matter how hard I tried to feel guilty… I couldn’t.” She’s talking about her abortion in the 1950’s, before the procedure was legal, before she found feminism, before she became who we all know her to be today. She only felt, she said, “free” and that all was “at peace within the universe.”

By saying she “felt at peace with the universe,” Steinem is talking neither about terminating a pregnancy nor being a mother at that point in time. She’s talking about the rightness of her universe being found in her ability to make her own choice, take responsibility for her own life, and beginning to know herself as a human and woman. She says in this video clip that women and men should have the ability to make their own choices about their bodies, “from the skin in,” and she’s right. When she felt at peace is when she was able to do just that.

So when anti-abortion voices, media outlets, bloggers, and so forth contend that “abortion hurts women” or that “post-abortion mental trauma is real,” it’s nothing more than their adjusted campaign to strip women of their (already eroded and not complete) right to make their own decisions about their own bodies.

Susan Faludi, author of the well known book Backlash, suggests that movements against women’s advancement in areas such as reproductive rights have not been overt in suggesting women should lose autonomy; rather, the “backlash” movements reinvent themselves to appear “pro-woman” or akin to “woman’s empowerment.” When we see anti-choice groups say they are “pro-women,” it’s not that they really think they’re “pro-woman,” they just know that type of language is endearing to masses of people and deceptive in a very non-aggressive way.  When something is cloaked in “positive” rhetoric, it must be positive, right? Well, that’s what anti-choice proponents want you to think.

Aside from the vast medicalization of women’s bodies in the past few decades, which lead in part to the “diagnosis” of “mental illness” after a woman has an abortion (which studies have completely dis-proven, by the way), anti-choice groups have increased their “pro-woman” rhetoric, re-framing their cause to look like they care about women in a number of new ways. They want to “help” women make the “most informed choice” by forcing them to have ultrasounds and look at the screen before having an abortion. They force women to go through a waiting period before an abortion in order to ensure women “make the best choice.” They picket on corners outside clinics to “persuade” women from making “wrong choices.”

But here’s the best example: anti-choice proponents say abortion causes guilt so intense a woman’s life after abortion is rife with suffering and depression, thus, outlawing abortion is necessary because they “care” so much about women. The problem here is that overwhelmingly, when researchers, doctors, counselors and the like actually ask women about their feelings post-abortion, the most common response is relief.

Just as Gloria Steinem says in the video above, she felt no guilt, only a sense of rightness in the universe. Asking women what they feel and respecting their choices is actually caring about women, not cloaking discrimination in words that sound pro-woman.

What causes the guilt is not a private medical procedure, rather social forces that tell women over and over again that making decisions about their own bodies is wrong. Anti-abortion proponents capitalize and exploit this guilt, making offensive and inaccurate claims like abortion is “murder,” that abortion isn’t “normal,” even though 1 in 3 US women has had an abortion by the time she’s 45, and the legal medical procedure has been around for thousands of years and has only recently (last 100 years) been controversial.

Faludi wrote Backlash in the post-70′s era; the 80′s and 90′s are the subject of her thesis. Yet, today the backlash can be seen in the countless attempts in state and federal governmental bodies across the nation to de-fund abortion providers, place harsh restrictions on access, and spread misinformation to the media and constituents. Swaddled in “pro-woman” rhetoric anti-abortion proponents continue to get vast amounts of air-time locally and nationally to spread their misinformation and lies about the “guilt” that abortion inflicts on women. Of course, no one asks women, “how do you feel?” Anti-abortion folks project the theme and set the tone of the debate, forcing people to internalize the lies and misinformation as fact, and thus, succeeding in demonizing abortion.

But what about the facts? If one were to actually ask the public, the majority of adult respondents to a 2011 Time poll have said they either agree that women should have the right to terminate an early pregnancy or mostly agree (45% and 19% respectively). A 2011 Gallup poll shows that adults agree that women should be able to terminate a pregnancy and abortion should be sometimes legal. The same poll found the majority of respondents considered themselves pro choice by 49% percent. And CNN 2011 poll found that 65% (a vast majority) think that funding for abortion should continue.

Gloria Steinem never felt guilty, instead she felt rightness in the universe. This is incredibly powerful not only because Gloria said it, but because it shows the necessity for women to have the ability to make their own reproductive choices. The amount of Backlash-themed pro-woman language cloaking the sinister aims of anti-abortion proponents is disturbing and has in many ways worked to erode the rights Faludi, Steinem and many others worked to secure.

Asking women how they feel about abortion, knowing women disproportionately don’t feel guilty after the procedure, and listening to a woman’s experience are all crucial in continuing to wade our way as activists, patients, pro-choicers, and women through our time’s backlash.