May She Be the New Jesus (so to speak)

May She Be the New Jesus (so to speak)

I have something to say about the recent Supreme Court decision that upheld the ban on late-term abortions, whether or not the pregnancy endangers the woman’s life.

I’m a pragmatic contextual ethicist with a spiritual sensibility, and I cannot be silent. I cannot pretend that I don’t understand the next step in this game. If you stop for a moment to think about it, what will be required next is blindingly obvious.

A dead woman.

All you vultures will sit there and watch it happen. Obviously, a pregnant woman will not be able to bring a case where a pregnancy is endangering her life. The system just doesn’t move that fast. The situation is even worse than that. Not just any dead pregnant woman will do.

She has to be the right woman, doesn’t she?

I’m just cynical enough to realize that any number of women will die before anyone squeaks, before this debate will have a chance to heat up in America.

Don’t you understand that the simple death of a pregnant woman isn’t enough?

In this climate, the woman’s life will have to be perceived as “mattering” before anyone will risk the fight. She’ll have to be perceived as a true and noble victim, above reproach from any quarter. She won’t be a drug addict, and she won’t be poor. She’ll have to be married, I suppose, and maybe even a fundamentalist (that family will get the ultimate wake-up call!). She’ll be white… ya think?

Will the anti-choicers be so comfortable, even then, with the women-controlling agenda? Will they understand then the consequences of their ineffective abstinence-only pseudo-education, their hypocritical opposition to birth control and family planning, their avoidance of the contributing issues of poverty and ignorance and rape and domestic violence and drug addiction and all the rest?

Maybe it’s possible to oppose abortion in theory, because they haven’t thought it through to the moment when some “special circumstance” involves their kith and kin, when their daughter or sister or cousin or wife or mother or aunt or friend stares at death? Or will they be as fanatical as Jehovah’s Witnesses, who refuse blood transfusions even to save a life?

I hope you hold this fatal reality as a heavy, heavy burden upon you. In many places, abortion is already legal, safe, but unavailable even in the first two trimesters. Here in Georgia, a pregnant woman now has to look at an ultrasound first, as though she were unaware of the reality, as though she were a child in need of a lesson from her superiors. Now, even saving the life of the woman isn’t enough to satisfy their heartless cause? What’s next, stoning?

Will you ignore her pleas (and perhaps those of her partner) as her death approaches? Will you continue to prioritize the life of a fetus over the life of a grown woman then? When she is dead, will you offer to support the motherless babe – if it lives? Will you offer to shoulder the burdens of whatever medical or economic issues may arise?

The legal system has no right to override the choice of a woman or the advice of her medical team, but that hasn’t stopped them from sentencing some pregnant women to death with this ruling. The ones who swung the new and harsher Supreme Court were male, of course, but these days there are actually women who would have done it (more’s the pity).

One woman will be chosen to represent all those women who will die because of this unethical ruling. She won’t want to be chosen. She will not have chosen this destiny for herself. You will have chosen it for her by allowing this country (in this way as in so many other ways) to become what it is today.

She’ll be your corpse, and her blood will be on your heads.

You will have killed her by intervening in realms where you don’t belong: entering into the arena of an individual woman’s hard choices, disrupting her rightful ability to decide what is best in her own unique circumstances, overriding the medical expertise of her doctor and medical team, stepping between a woman and her God, and disregarding the support (one can hope that all women have some support) and advice and help of her friends and family. You may create a widower or an orphan. You may induce trauma in cases where the man, who was at least equally responsible for the pregnancy, may well feel responsible for her death as well. Or you may reward a rapist, who will walk away unscathed, triumphant.

You will have killed her with all your little misrepresenting slogans. You will have killed her by refusing to be accountable to reality, by making it impossible to talk about this issue in any realistic way, such as one that actually takes into account the wide range of circumstances that a pregnant woman may be facing. Roe v Wade was the attempt to find a solution, and you’re on your way to overturning it.

You will have killed her by refusing to face a set of controversial and difficult issues as responsible adults, citizens and leaders. This is bigger than your little power struggles. You should be listening to a wide range of women’s experiences, in order to put together an understanding of the different kinds of situations that women actually face – including their regrets and their gratitude. Choices are hard, and situations are complex. We should be teaching contextual ethics, not inhuman dogmas.

Heartless cads you are, on both sides of the debate, if you cannot step back into the complexity of reality and the range of what matters in human experience.

When you’ve killed this resonant symbol of a woman, you will not be able to say that you did not know what it is that you did.

You’ll refer to her by her first name when you use her and punditize her and sling her name around in your mouths – as if you knew her, as if you cared.

I hope she has the presence of mind to cry out “why have you forsaken me?” as she dies, and I hope her husband and family distribute the video all over the world. I hope her image becomes an ikon.

Keep on the lookout for her corpse. It may take a while for the acceptable sacrifice to appear, the one who will be pristine enough to satisfy all of your many requirements – and yet lack the resources to leave the country.

Sooner or later one will come who will reanimate this issue – with her death.

May her resurrection in the public sphere be powerful.

May it blast you like the proclamations of the ancient prophets.

Pass it on.

12 thoughts on “May She Be the New Jesus (so to speak)

  1. Excellent, Heidi. This one really made me think.

    A woman need not die to become iconic. Woman is an icon by virtue of her being. Unable to mimic her miraculous body, men attempt to subdue her. Yes, this ruling – and the new Georgia law – is just another subjugation by the theocracy that still believes in original sin and moral superiority. No one walks away from this unbloodied, and I guess that’s the way the SCOTUS wants it: lust and blood-lust all folded into one.

  2. I realize this probably isn’t very appropriate and don’t honestly expect you to post this… But, on your own you might get a kick out if it.

    Q: What’s a Christian abortion?
    A: A pregnant daughter.

    Okay, so its coarse.

  3. Heidi, as a “pragmatic contextual ethicist with a spiritual sensibility” do you think there are situations where it would be wrong for a woman to choose to terminate her pregnancy? I am assuming that you do not reject the concepts of right and wrong because in my understanding those notions are central to the work of an ethicist. I am not expecting you to generate a black and white decision matrix, but I would be interested in your shades of grey.

  4. Vance – Welcome back, and thank you for the question.

    It’s a strange question. I am no fan of abortion per se, and I wish that all women were in a position to welcome their pregnancies. In my desire and fantasies, the world would be a happy place, full of joy and laughter and friendship and love. I wish a lot of things, but this is the reality in which we exist.

    My answer is less than systematic, but I opted out of systematic theology/philosophy for a reason. I am not an absolutist, but rather a contextual (some would say “situational”) ethicist. I believe in thoughtful analysis, including all the factors that affect the choice in a specific instance, and in ranking relative priorities – including religious beliefs, community standards, material realities, and the like. For each person, in each community, at each point in history, these might be reflected differently. We each speak from where we stand, and we are in some sense projects “under construction” for our entire lives. Although complexity and some amount of ambiguity are very anxiety-provoking for some, I find in them a source of hope. It’s not “wishy-washy” to admit that life is a complicated matter at times, and that major decisions are worth thinking through in the context through which they have arisen.

    So:

    Yes, there are situations in which I believe it is ethically wrong for a woman to terminate a pregnancy. This is not an issue with easy answers. Abortion is not an easy decision to make, nor should it be. Abortion is a controversial subject for a reason.

    My concern has more to do with the power of that decision – which is each woman’s to make – being taken from her. Perhaps it is unfair, but I can’t help believing sometimes that if men were the ones who got pregnant, the whole debate would be framed somewhat differently.

    My own judgment is that the longer one waits – or has to wait – to terminate a pregnancy, the more problematic it becomes to do so. I would rather see an abortion done at 8-10 weeks than later. I would rather see a late-term abortion than a baby in a dumpster.

    I do not approve of woman using abortion as a form of birth control, or being irresponsible about family planning in general (although men share in that responsibility, it more often than not is left up to the woman).

    I do have problems with gender selection as a reason for abortion. If that is the only reason, it does not seem sufficient to me.

    I have issues with women who use abortion as a way of punishing men – that’s not often discussed, but I don’t idealize people.

    I wish that I could think of some way to preserve the rights of the father, but I can’t. Ultimately, the woman is the one who pays the price – with her body, with her life – and so she has to be the one who makes the decision. I think that most women involve the man who got them pregnant if they can. Sometimes a woman fears to bring a baby into the world because she doesn’t want to subject her own child to the abuse that she hasn’t been capable of escaping.

    Having (like many women) been the victim of rape, it is difficult to imagine the strength that would be required to carry such a baby to term. Some people can choose to do that, and redeem the situation – for others it would be like being raped again. And then, what about the welfare of that child, born into that situation (especially if it was also an incestuous rape)?

    Then there are other situations – abject poverty, drug addiction, psychologically disturbed women or those in a state of denial about whether they’ve even had sex, etc. When you are familiar with some of the seamier aspects of human existence, there are no end of examples of situations where, when you look at the entire set of circumstances, you can see the reasons why abortion might be the better choice. At the least, there should be provision for psychological and medical consultation for all pregnant woman – not to push a decision either way, but to help her make her own decision in a timely manner.

    I count as friends a couple who were so opposed to abortion that they refused to do any prenatal testing – why would it matter if they weren’t going to consider terminating? (My own choice would always be to have all the available information – even if one chooses to go forward, it’s better to know in advance, and line up resources and so on. But that’s me.) Their little girl was born with what turned out to be fatal genetic defect. Yes, they enjoyed her, but not for very long. I don’t think they regretted their decision (although it would be difficult to admit to anyone if they did), but everyone should have a choice on that. In my preliminary research on a doctor that I was referred to once, I discovered that there was a case in which he didn’t tell client that there was something wrong. He was Catholic and suspected that she would abort, so he simply withheld the information. The baby had a very short, painful life – and the parents found that there was nothing that they could charge him with – they tried “wrongful death” but of course it didn’t work. This same doctor had a girlfriend of mine up in stirrups and chose that time to let her know that he was aware of her feminist political activity. As a result of a surgery he did on her, she had to have a hysterectomy.

    In my own case, I had a pregnancy where there was no heartbeat at 8-9 weeks. It was an unexpected pregnancy, but not an unwelcome one. I went through a number of tests to make absolutely sure that the pregnancy was not viable, then on the advice of my doctor had a D&C when the miscarriage wasn’t happening. The year before, I had an ectopic pregnancy that very nearly took my life as well, and the doctors didn’t want to see me in the emergency room again, especially not so soon. They were concerned about my health. I count too.

    Some right-wingers would consider both of these scenarios to be abortions. Some right-wingers want to see to it that doctors are not trained even to perform these very necessary procedures.

    When a baby is wanted and welcomed into the world, there is no greater experience. I loved being pregnant and still grieve my two losses. I was incredibly comforted when I learned that there is no brain activity that early in pregnancy. That’s one of the reasons that I feel that if an abortion is what is chosen, then it needs to be done as soon as possible.

    There are women who have had abortions or have given their child up for adoption, and have profound regrets about having done so. Their experiences count, too, and they should be heard. However, their experiences should not be generalized onto everyone. There are many, many women who are grateful that they were able to terminate a pregnancy early, safely – and for them, even with regret (and I think regret and grief are entirely appropriate) they made the choice they felt they had to make.

    I would like to see a process – that wasn’t tilted to either side – to help women make decisions like this. In some cases, the choices on all sides are hard. Generally speaking, Americans seem to be a bit undereducated on how to make ethical decisions. Listen to the experiences of others, look at rules and traditions, ask yourself how your decision might be affected if the situation were altered, etc. We tend to simplify too easily. Sometimes the question of whether something is right or wrong needs a few more steps of consideration.

    The point is that there is a wide range of attitudes and situations. I would not be so opposed to this (stacked, divided) Supreme Court decision if it had medical provisions for the mother’s health. I would not be so opposed to it if family planning centers and education were not being cut, if young women especially had the care they need to make decisions earlier. Third trimester abortions are very problematic, but I still feel that it is out of place for the government to intervene in medical decisions or to step in to override the woman’s choice. People opposed to abortion are free to choose not to have one.

    As I pointed out in the post, it is the height of hypocrisy to oppose abortion while promoting abstinence-only sex education (in countries where HIV/AIDS is rampant, opposing condom use could be considered genocidal). It’s pretty clear that the agenda is to control women (as the religious right has no problem acknowledging) and to get votes from their somewhat manipulated base.

    The thought of mandatory abortions fills us with horror. Then we feel the intrusion. Because it is so complicated and so controversial and so difficult, I think the government oversteps its bounds here. They’ve been eroding Roe v Wade for some time, using a murdered pregnant woman to try to establish a new status for the fetus that didn’t even exist in the religious world (as I found out when I tried to find rituals or symbols to deal with my own grief).

  5. Clarification:
    1. Is the supreme court upholding a state law? Because that’s their job.
    2. Can the mother still have an early C-section to avert danger? Because that would put it in the realm of reasonable for the Supreme Court.

    I don’t disagree with you, but I recognize that once a baby is developed enough to survive on life support, a large segment of the population is going to call it human. And the state, since it’s their job to decide who lives and dies, doesn’t want to give that right to the medical profession.

    Also, there are only 1000 late term abortions per year, which is not that high of a number. We’ve got 30k dying of the flu and about the same in car accidents, about 700k dying of heart disease. I’m just not sure the Supreme Court is too concerned. However, this article is light on details, and so is my brain.

    If it’s a state law, the Supreme Court should definitely uphold the position, since that prevents a federalist tyranny, and you should work to effect change on a local level. If you think otherwise, maybe you think the federal government should stop states from recognizing gay marriage and allowing states to decriminalize marijuana.

  6. I must say that I completely disagree with you when you say that by not allowing a women to kill another person we are responsible for her death. If we allow abortion at any stage, we are condoning the murder of children. I believe that this is a positive step in the right direction. And yes, it would be heart breaking to watch a loved one that will die if she doesn’t choose to kill her baby. However, I know myself, and all my family and friends, would rather die than end the wonderful life that is growing within us.

    1. So – if as a pregnant woman you wish to sacrifice yourself for the sake of an embryo or fetus (which is life, but not a person) then you have chosen to place the life of the woman in a far distant second place. You look like you’re a man from the email address, and if so that’s just insufferable – YOU don’t get the choice to sacrifice a pregnant woman. It is so totally not your call. Isn’t that a rather personal decision? Would you like the government to force abortions? It makes just as little sense for the government to force to someone to carry when to do so would kill the woman. If an individual woman chooses that, it’s her choice – and some women do. You can make whatever moral judgments – in line with your personal beliefs – that you want. If, as a woman, you would choose to die so that the child would live, that’s your choice, too, and you can stick your partner with raising the child without you. But not everyone would choose that, nor should they be forced to. The life of a fully-grown adult woman is worth more, in so many ways, than you perhaps want to consider. She is not simply an incubator.

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