"Supergirl," by Rosie McCobb, Copyright 2005

"Three Decades After Roe..." and the Fellas Still Don't Get It

I was doing my patriotic duty by reading the Op-Ed section of this past Sunday's New York Times, and I came upon two essays about Roe v Wade, both written by men, which made me suspicious of a NY Times conspiracy to keep the ladies in diapers:

"Three Decades After Roe..." By William Saletan, New York Times, 1/22/06

"States of Confusion" by William Baude, New York Times, 1/22/06

So I wrote a letter to the Times, which reads as follows:

To the Editor:

After reading William Saletan’s piece (“Three Decades after Roe…”) in the January 22 New York Times, I was left seeing exactly how and why this issue is still not at all understood by the men who serve as the political voice in this country, whether they be members of Congress or the media.


Mr. Saletan suggests that women who affiliate themselves with the Pro-Choice movement – whether they be staffers at Planned Parenthood or your average woman on the street – should start talking about how “bad” it is “to kill a fetus” as a means of courting those who want to outlaw abortion altogether. He also infers that pro-choicers alienate pro-lifers because the pro-choicers “never faced the question of abortion’s morality.”

You don’t think so, hmmm?

Talk to pretty much any woman who has ever contemplated having, or gone through with an abortion, and I would be willing to bet she would discuss the morality of having an abortion. It is a huge part of female culture, and I find it naïve on Mr. Saltan’s part to offer that women don’t discuss these issues. But, to reiterate a truth most women know without having to broadcast it: Every single woman who walks into a clinic – especially these days, when her path is blocked by screaming pro-lifers who wield huge signs showing bloody, mangled fetuses and who assure her that she will “Burn in hell” – feels the weight and sadness of this incredible moral dilemma on a very deep, personal level. And what Mr. Saletan, pro-lifers and many conservatives refuse to concede is the fact that both girls and adult women spend a great deal of time grappling with these issues long before she makes the decision to walk through that taunting picket line and into the clinic.

It is insulting to ask women who have mustered up the courage to make a very serious, personal choice to pander to pro-lifers and the conservative, political majority by scolding ourselves publicly. Can women not be granted the dignity to make tough, emotional choices, like our politicians do, and then stand behind those decisions without publicly denigrating our actions, and therefore ourselves? Mr. Saletan is asking us to revert to a state of being that could easily be construed as bipolar: one minute you’re a cold-hearted woman having an abortion, the next you’re repenting in public?

There is a real danger in asking pro-choice women and abortion clinics to get on the anti-abortion bandwagon, because it sends the message that women should be ashamed of themselves if they have an abortion. It also does, as abortion-rights advocates have argued, shift the focus away from interpreting the laws under the Constitution, to re-creating them based on religious morality; if Samuel Alito can evade answering questions about his own personal morals in the Supreme Court hearings, why can’t pro-choice women do the same if they are lobbying for a constitutional right to have an abortion?

Why not entirely shift the debate away from morals anyway, and focus on ways in which the rest of society can contribute to preventing unwanted pregnancies? The first thing I asked my gynecologist when I visited him last was: “Have they come out with the Pill for guys yet?” He said this was the number one question his patients asked him. What does this tell you? Women are tired of shouldering the entire responsibility for enforcing prevention. Instead of asking women to bond on the “My bad!” ticket, why not ask us to band together and demand that scientists get the lead out and come up with a male birth control pill?

Secondly, why aren’t people like Mr. Saletan and the pro-lifers asking our government what it is offering as an incentive for a woman or a couple to go through with a pregnancy if they are physically or financially unable to provide a stable life for the child? Is it truly any more moral to advocate bringing a child into the world during a time when Americans are stuck living below the poverty line, many members of the middle class have huge credit card debts and only manage to stay afloat by applying for more credit cards, and child abuse cases are so rampant in a city like New York that a seven year-old child needs to be sexually violated and beaten to death before the local government admits that their child welfare office is overwhelmed and understaffed?

It is entirely logical, and smart, as Mr. Saletan suggested, to insist that the government take the Prevention First Act seriously, and to require that sex education, and not unrealistic “abstinence” programs, be mandatory in our schools. I would even go so far as to suggest “Scared Straight” –type programs where pre-teens and young teenagers visit an abortion clinic, or witness what life would be like if they had to raise a child before they were at an age where they could even support themselves. But instead of making abortion an even dirtier word by talking about how “bad” it is, why not entirely focus on the positive ways in which the pros and the cons can bond, and demand accountability from our local and national government, and lobby for real, viable options for a better life?