There's not much original in my reaction to the SCOTUS decision on Gonzales v Carhart--an attack on women's autonomy and power, a relegation of women to subhuman vessels for procreation, a callous ignorance of and disregard for the tremendous responsibility, pain, and risk that women are heir to simply because they are born female. I also hope that women of all ages who react with "Eeeewwww," when asked if they are feminists will begin to get a glimmer of what our foremothers fought for--and what we STILL have to fight for.
Feminisms is a series of weekly feminist diaries. My fellow feminists and I decided to start our own for several purposes: we wanted a place to chat with each other, we felt it was important to both share our own stories and learn from others’, and we hoped to introduce to the community a better understanding of what feminism is about.
Needless to say, we expect disagreements to arise. We have all had different experiences in life, so while we share the same labels, we don’t necessarily share the same definitions. Hopefully, we can all be patient and civil with each other, and remember that, ultimately, we’re all on the same side.
The organization MADRE has a clearly thought-out position on reproductive rights and women's human rights:
Reproductive Choice and Women’s Human Rights: A MADRE Position Paper
If a woman cannot choose whether, when and with whom to have children, her other life choices—if or when to marry, where to live, and what kind of work to pursue—are limited. In fact, reproductive choice is inextricably linked to the full range of women’s human rights, including participation in public life and access to opportunities for political and economic empowerment. At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo (ICPD), governments committed for the first time ever to respecting and protecting reproductive choice as crucial to women’s overall health and as a basic human right. But more than ten years later, governments and policymakers around the world continue to seek control over women’s fertility as a key to advancing fundamentalist political agendas and regulating population growth. Such policies—whether they deny women the right to limit their fertility or, conversely, deny women the right to have children—are anti-choice because they subordinate the rights and desires of individual women to the pursuit of policy objectives.
I'll skate right over the fact that every damn one of the justices concurring with this opinion have at one time or another have sworn, practically in tears, that their "reverence" for precedent knows no bounds--yet overturned a seven-year-old Supreme Court decision without qualm (I know this, because no qualm was to be found in the opinion).
As a woman who gets irrationally passionate about the beauty and transcendent importance of language, and rationally although borderline violently passionate about its misuse, I could barely walk straight after reading the Syllabus and actual majority opinion of the SCOTUS decision (written by Justice Anthony Kennedy). This will be the focus of my rage this evening.
I've read through the Syllabus and majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and concurred with by Alioto, Scalia, Roberts, and Thomas. I am picking out transgressions of language that echo 19th century forces that denied women rights to their own property, their children, and without sympathetic spouses AND financial wherewithal, reproductive choice. I hear as well reverberations of fascist Germany, one of the premier abusers of language in all of human history.
Here goes: Distinction between an unborn fetus and what the majority justices repeatedly refer to as a "child" revolves around the language of the legislation--"delivers a living fetus," instead of "delivering an unborn child." Simply by quoting both sets of language, the justices twist a medical procedure into a delivery.
This is pretty technical, however. More telling is the language on page 5 ("The Act's stated purposes are protecting innocent human life from a brutal and inhumane procedure and protecting the medical community's ethics and reputation." And, referring to a previous case which came to a completely different conclusion, ". . . the government may use its voice and its regulatory authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman." Of course, a Republican Congress "determined that such abortions are similar to the killing of a newborn infant."
Now this, on page 6 of the Syllabus: "The Act also recognizes that respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in a mother's love for her child. Whether to have an abortion requires a difficult and painful MORAL [caps mine] decision . . . which some women come to regret. In a decision so fraught with emotional consequence, some doctors MAY [caps mine] prefer not to disclose precise details of the abortion procedure . . ." "The State's interest in respect for life is advanced by the the dialogue that better informs [systems, professions],and EXPECTANT MOTHERS [caps mine--notice they did not use the term "pregnant woman."] I'm getting tired. The Syllabus goes on to argue that a "D&E," rather than "partial birth abortion," accomplishes the same purpose.
No, it does not (I'm adding links to medical sites explaining that as well as many other ramifications of carrying and not carrying specific fetuses to term). Not only that, but the justice insists on using two terms, "D&E," dilation and extraction, and "partial birth abortion" when they refer to only ONE procedure--creating dilation and removing the fetus. Injecting the fetus with a lethal dose of chemicals (thus preventing the need to kill the fetus any other way--regardless, there is a fetus that is not going to continue to develop) is a tremendous risk to the pregnant woman because, and this is incredibly important, the woman and the fetus share blood and other fluid systems. The fetus IS NOT ABLE to survive on its own, and lethal chemicals injected into the shared system can easily kill the pregnant woman.
Harvard Medical School information site: What Do You Know About Abortion?
Despite the legal and moral debate surrounding abortion, approximately 1.3 million women in the United States end a pregnancy each year. The majority of abortions are undergone to terminate an unplanned pregnancy, and roughly one-half take place during the first eight weeks of pregnancy.
Go to www.everydayhealth.com/PublicSite Click on "Health A-Z, then A, and find "Abortion" for an excellent set of articles
"Respect for human life." Women are human and understand that respect whether or not they are mothers. The decision to have an abortion is only a moral decision if the individual considers it to be so. Emotional damage to a hideous degree has been done to young women by so-called "Christian" congregations who take her, with her difficult medical procedure in her past, and spending so much time pointing out to her that she has transgressed that she ends up spending the remainder of her life in self-flagellation. THIS is the emotional damage of abortion--judgmental aggression
My personal belief is that abortion is not part of the first line of devices and medications that women currently have, depending upon economics and level of control by outside parties, to prevent pregnancy. It is to be fervently hoped that pregnancies are prevented, rather than women having to subject themselves to a medical procedure with inherent risks. That said, we all (as women) know how many ways there are to become pregnant that do not allow for birth control methods to be in place; there are multiple gradations of coercion into sexual intercourse for a woman who would rather not, ranging from chemical dosing and emotional blackmail to outright forced rape.
Although women's freedom to choose sexual partners should also include their freedom to engage in sexual intercourse when and with whom they please--the reality can involve force, and it can be a woman's desire to have the freedom of choice she is entitled to but which is denied to her by the patriarchal force demonstrated by Justice Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, Antonio Scalia, and Samuel Alito.
The only Supreme Court Justice in U.S. history who ever was pregnant or gave birth was Sandra Day O'Connor. She had an effect when she was a part of the U.S. Supreme Court. Every other woman in the United States has been designated a vessel for the production of the State's subjects.
There are innumerable resources to continue this discussion--please be generous and post them.