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by Elisabeth Nussbaum '99 Those people who demand the right to abortion concede the notion that a pregnant woman is inferior to a non-pregnant one. They suggest that pregnancy and motherhood are incompatible with the concept of a fully functioning adult, and that an unencumbered, unattached male is the model for success. By settling for abortion instead of working for the social changes that would make it possible to combine children and career, pro-abortionists have agreed to participate in a mans world under male terms. Pro-abortionists have corrupted feminism by embracing standards which hold that it is permissible to treat unequals unequally and for the powerful to oppress the weak. Women and our community deserve better. Women gain nothing from abortion, but the right to run in place. Abortion does not cure any illness; it doesn't win any woman a raise. But in a culture that treats pregnancy and childbearing as impediments, it surgically adapts the woman to fit in. If women are an oppressed group, they are the only such group to require surgery to be equal. Feminist Frederica Mathewes-Green writes that, in Greek mythology, Procrustes was an exacting host: if you were the wrong size for his bed, he would stretch or chop you to fit. The abortion table is the modern form of Procrustes' bed, one that, in a hideous twist, its victims actually march in the streets to demand. With ruthless efficiency the machine grinds on. Many purport that the unborn is just a glob of tissue. Either way, child or glob, the description of a mid-pregnancy abortion is one that I would be horrified by even if I had seen someone doing this to a kitten. The description of the syringes hub jerking against the mothers abdomen as the fetus experiences the throes of death is horrifying. Early abortions are no more kind: the child is pulled apart limb from limb, and sucked through a narrow tube to a bloody bag. This violence against women, children and our communities can not be denied. Abortion was legally established, hoping to create a new and just society. Indeed there is a call for gender justice that has yet to be realized. Women are physically vulnerable as rape statistics rise and women's bodies are exploited in advertising and entertainment. Unplanned pregnancy understandably feels like an invader, bent on colonizing ones body and life plans. Yet this just society has embraced as essential an act of violence and injustice. In The Brothers Karamazov, a character challenges another as to whether he would consent to be the architect of a new world in which all people would be happy and at peace, but it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature- that baby... for instance- and to found that edifice on her unavenged tears. Not just one death lies beneath our American edifice of justice, but tens of millions, with thousands more everyday. Justice can not be built on such a violent foundation. The last and most terrible cost of abortion that we have yet to realize, is that the offspring lost are not our enemy's, not our neighbors, but our own. And it is not a loss of inert tissue, but a loss of a growing being unique in history. There are no generic zygotes. The one-cell fertilized ovum is a new individual, the most present form of ones self. I'm not arguing that all women need or should be mothers. I'm also not arguing that fault lies solely with the aborter. Our society doesn't value women in their diversity- women as mothers, women as radicals, women as homemakers, women as professional, single and married women, gay and straight. There is one narrow path, one of little choice, for a woman. Society asks us to live and to play a mans game. In accepting only abortion as the choice we have agreed to depersonalize and sacrifice our own bodies as a condition of full participation in a mans world. Mathewes-Green writes that in a healthy society, new life is welcomed and women's awesome powers of fertility are respected and accommodated. Abortion is violence against women and society as we choose not to love each other in our complexity of body and personality. We must advocate for flexible school situations, fairness in hiring, more part-time work, better access to prenatal and obstetrical care, attractive adoption opportunities, family planning choices and research, sex education and help with childcare and parenting. The mainstream pro-life movement claims to value women as mothers, yet it seems their interest value lies only in the rich and the white and the suburban as it is often the same people who vote against welfare benefits for poor and minority women. Sure James Dobson of Focus on the Family values women as mothers and at home. Somehow those lazy welfare moms though, don't count to him. Why don't they just get job? Sure the Catholic Church is pro-life. But, Pope John, why not birth control? Just as pro-abortionists seem to only value women without children, the Church only values us with them. Indeed neither side seems to get it. Abortion is violence. It is violent in the act and even more violent in our general disregard for women and their bodies and their diverse roles. The pro-life movement, must work towards a fully pro-life ethic. If you're pro-life, then support it. Support women and families financially and in policy. Oppose all death and violence- death executed by a prison guard, death of the unborn, or even death of a forest. Be consistent and support life- all life. Those who are pro-choice, must acknowledge the violence of the act. Even in the desperation of no other choice, we must acknowledge that abortion scars. We must never pretend that this is somehow a positive. We must all challenge our ideas of women as indeed there all kinds- and thank goodness!
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