(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

I don't want this to turn into a massive argument about abortion, but whether you're pro- or anti-choice, I think Slacktivist's post on the history of anti-abortion campaings in Evangelical America is an interesting read; it certainly surprised me quite a lot.

I suppose the best way to articulate my position on abortion is that it's a bit like Just War*: it's never a good thing, but there are circumstances where it's the least evil choice, and sometimes by a very clear margin, and it certainly isn't for the government to make that choice for women (and men) in what can be agonisingly difficult situations - as late-term abortions are, almost by definition. (This is probably a position that people on both sides of the argument will find wrong-headed, but there you go...)

I hope I don't need to say that murdering a doctor in cold blood in church is never, ever OK.

* And I might add that I tend to agree with the Anglo-Saxon penitentials, which required soldiers to perform some act of penance after battle, even in a good cause, because killing leaves its marks on you, even if you were, to pick the favourite military tribunal question, trying to stop a Viking from raping your sister.

Comments

[legionseagle]

I came to my position on abortion, as I came to many other positions, through my mother. I have a - difficult - relationship with my mother, but at least in this field I recognise the validity of her experience and I reflect that.

That was a warning. It is entirely open to anyone to say that these facts which I am about relate would not have led them to the same conclusions. Anyone telling me that these facts could not have occurred, are exaggerated, hysterical or misunderstood will be treated by me with polite but final disengagement in this journal in which I am a guest, and banned outright in my own journal.

The following is going to be quite personal; it is also going to be fairly explicit. I apologise.

When the war broke out in August 1939 (I explain the date for American readers; I have recently been rather shocked over at tor.com by someone telling me that "Hitler had not done anything to make anyone hate him by october 1941") my then teenage, not-yet-my mother was drafted into a munitions factory, a foundry, where they had never had women workers before and both disliked the idea and wished to exploit the opportunity. The sexual harassment my mother (a teenage virgin - a fact which was rather regarded as an incitement than a grounds for deference by her work colleagues in the struggle against the Nazis) suffered was such that when the siren sounded she preferred to stay on the shop floor - of, I remind you, a munitions factory during a Luftwaffe bombing raid than risk what might happen to her in the shelter.

Anyway, she experienced the issue of abortion as follows. She grew used to the smell of pennyroyal tea on the air, and other women workers making knowing comments when they smelt it. And eventually she happened to be the only woman present when another female colleague vanished into the Ladies and refused to emerge, and the charge hand and his superior were too intimidated by "respect" to follow her in there, so they sent my mother in; two decades younger and completely unprepared for what she found.

Which was a desperate, wild-eyed woman who, withdrawing a bloody bodkin (not a metaphor or a quotation, trust me) from her vagina told my mother, "I've done it. And I'll do it again."

I never want to have to stand in my mother's shoes, still less of the desperate woman in the stinking cubicle of that foundry. Obviously, the first step to avoid that is safe, effective, well-researched and non-judgemental availability of contraception. And genetic research so that the sort of conditions which make late term abortion needed now become less needed in future.

But actually any moral position which starts by assuming the threat of pregnancy and the shame of pregnancy is needed to keep young women's legs together has already taken on board the necessity for abortion. They just are arguing about whether the appropriate means is an anaethetised procedure in a clinic or a bare bodkin in a foundry toilet. And actually, most of the antis are really in favour of the bare bodkin. Much more salutary, doncha know.

[tree_and_leaf]

That's an appalling story, and it's because of stories like that that, if there was a referendum on abortion tomorrow, I would vote to keep the law as it is, however much I dislike the fact that situations arise where it's necessary. And, like you, I think the best way to reduce the abortion rate is sex ed, contraception and decent support for mothers (which includes a better attitude to working mothers).

[sara]

The NYT, despite its many problems, has been quietly running a series of articles on women's reproductive health issues in Africa; the bodkin is a step up from what's described in the latest installment from rural Tanzania.

And that's what they'd like us to go back to, these sick rightists. That's what they think we should have. I can't even talk about it rationally.