My life in books

For some time now, I've been watching the full-tilt assault on reproductive rights in the US - and the less aggressive but equally troubling one here in Canada - with growing concern. It was a hard-fought battle, and one I remember well, to win those rights, and to see them being eroded in less than a generation is a sad thing indeed. Fortunately for Canadians, our struggle took us farther, to the full decriminalisation of abortion, which makes it harder to turn the clock back all the way here - though by no means impossible, and we must be vigilant, especially when conservative elements hold political power. But in the US, where abortion remained a matter of law, rather than a private medical decision between doctor and client, it has seemed to be much easier for the anti-choice forces to pass one new requirement or limitation after another, slowly curtailing reproductive freedom under many disguised. But as an outsider, dependent primarily on sporadic exploration of a foreign media, I remained unclear on just how serious the situation was in the US, and on what points the debate is currently focused. So when I heard of Katha Pollett's new book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, I was eager to read it. And almost from the first page, I found my fears confirmed:

Between 2011 and 2013, states enacted 205 new restrictions—more than in the previous ten years: waiting periods, inaccurate scripts that doctors must read to patients (abortion causes breast cancer, mental illness, suicide), bans on state Medicaid payments, restrictions on insurance coverage, and parental notification and consent laws. In Ohio, lawmakers have taken money from TANF, the welfare program that supports poor families, and given it to so-called crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) whose mission is to discourage pregnant women from having abortions. (That’s right: Embryos and fetuses deserve government support, not the actual, living children they may become.) Twenty-seven states have passed laws forcing clinics into expensive and unnecessary renovations and burdening them with medical regulations intended to make them impossible to staff. Largely as a result, between 2011 and 2013 at least 73 clinics closed or stopped performing abortions. When these laws have been challenged in court, judges have set aside some of them, but not all. The result: In 2000, according to the Guttmacher Institute, around one-third of American women of reproductive age lived in states hostile to abortion rights, one-third lived in states that supported abortion rights, and one-third lived in states with a middle position. As of 2011, more than half of women lived in hostile states. Middle-ground states, such as North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin, have moved in an anti-choice direction. Only twenty-three states could be said to have a strong commitment to abortion rights. In 2013, only one state, California, made abortion easier to obtain.

Pollitt's book, however, is not intended as reportage so much as it is a revitalisation of the understanding of full access to abortion as an undeniable element of reproductive healthcare, and hence a social good (note: where Pollitt refers to women as those immediately affected by pregnancy and issues of access to abortion, my remarks on the text are intended to include in this category those genderqueer, non-binary and trans* people who, while not identifying as women, may also experience pregnancy and require such access). Pollitt summarises her main points as follows:

In this book I make many arguments, but let me mention three. First, the concept of personhood, as applied to the zygote, blastocyst, embryo, and, at least until late in pregnancy, fetus, makes no sense: It’s an incoherent, covertly religious idea that falls apart if you look at it closely. Few people actually believe it, as is shown by the exceptions they are willing to make. Second, the absolutist argument that abortion is murder is a mask by which people opposed to the sexual revolution and women’s advancement obscure their real motives and agenda: turning back the clock to an idealized, oversimplified past when sex was confined within marriage, men were the breadwinners and heads of families, Christianity was America’s not-quite-official religion, and society was firmly ordered. Third, since critiquing what came before does not necessarily help us move forward, I want to help reframe the way we think about abortion. There are definitely short-term advantages to stressing the anguish some women feel when facing the need to end a pregnancy, but in the long run presenting that as a general truth will hurt the pro-choice cause: It comes close to demanding that women accept grief, shame, and stigma as the price of ending a pregnancy. I want us to start thinking of abortion as a positive social good and saying this out loud. The anti-abortion movement has been far too successful at painting abortion as bad for women. I want to argue, to the contrary, that it is an essential option for women—not just ones in dramatic, terrible, body-and-soul-destroying situations, but all women—and thus benefits society as a whole.

As Pollitt points out, the standard narrative requires that pro-choice activists buttress their advocacy with comments describing abortion as "the lesser of two evils" or presenting abortion as a harrowing choice for those who decide to terminate a pregnancy. A person seeking an abortion is expected to express ambivalence, sorrow, regret. Abortion is often characterised as the action of frivolous or irresponsible people, young, unmarried and/or engaging in transgressive sex. And so on. Pollitt would have us challenge that narrative.

Abortion is often seen as a bad thing for society, a sign of hedonism, materialism, and hyperindividualism. I argue that, on the contrary, access to legal abortion is a good thing for society and helping a woman obtain one is a good deed. Instead of shaming women for ending a pregnancy, we should acknowledge their realism and self-knowledge. We should accept that it’s good for everyone if women have only the children they want and can raise well.

Pollitt takes a thorough look at the key questions surrounding positions on abortion, and effectively demolishes not only the anti-choice arguments, but also the propensity of many on the pro-choice side to allow their opponents to frame the discourse.

She addresses the issue of the personhood of the embryo/fetus, and the logical, if not always elucidated, consequences of the belief that it is a person from, as some insist, the moment of fertilisation. She examines the ways in which anti-abortion (and anti-contraception) arguments and laws are in essence about policing female sexuality and socially-prescribed gender roles.

At the heart of opposition to legal abortion is an anti-feminist, anti-modern view of relations between the sexes: Women are (or should be) maternal and domestic, men are (or should be) energetic breadwinners, and sex is a powerful, dangerous force that must be narrowly channeled, with parents controlling girls to keep them virgins and women refusing men sex in order to corral them into early marriage with babies soon to follow.

Exploding myths used by abortion opponents to paint abortions as dangerous, and those who have them as either hedonistic and thoughtless or victims of manipulation by parents, Pollitt exposes the hypocrisy of anti-choice advocates who value the fetus but not the person who bears it or the child it will be after birth. She draws aim on the conservative agenda in which opposition to both contraception and abortion goes hand in hand with opposition to everything that might make the lives of actual living parents and children easier, from paid parental leave and flexible working hours to subsidized day care programs to minimum wage legislation and welfare, showing that the real goal of conservatives is to negate the advances made through feminism and other social justice movements and send women back to a limited role where they are dependent on men.

As an American-centric treatise on the current state of abortion rights, Pollitt's book is highly informative - both well-researched and highly accessible. As a call to reclaim abortion as an essential and positive part of reproductive health care, it is inspiring. As a reminder that the work of feminism is not yet finished, that we do not yet live in some glorious post-feminist society, it is invaluable.

Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics and Culture, Katha Pollitt

This is a collection of columns that were published in The Nation between 1994 to 2001. As gentle reader has probably figured out by now, I think Pollitt is one of the more worthwhile feminist analysts of what's going down in American culture and politics these days, and Subject to Debate is a fascinating look back at what was going on, from a feminist perspective, during the Clinton years.