Mossy Monkey (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} mossymonkey) wrote,@ 2009-06-01 10:18:00 |
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Tilling the Soils of Abortion
Last November, after the election of Barack Obama, I asked my students if they were surprised that a black man had become president. None of them were. Then I asked them if they thought a woman would ever be president in their lifetimes--and note, these students are primarily between the ages of 18 and 20.
They laughed.
As many of you probably know, one of the few doctors in this country who perform(ed) late-term abortions, Dr. George Tiller, was gunned down in his church in Wichita yesterday.
Being not equipped to bear children, I'm not especially qualified to discuss abortion. If more males of the species had that attitude, maybe Dr. Tiller wouldn't be dead. But I can say this: abortion isn't really about "life" or when life begins. It isn't even about "choice," though by being about women and their bodies, this is a convenient way to package the issue.
Abortion is really about social justice, or rather, the lack of social justice for women. If women were finally given the sort of control over their lives and bodies that men have over their own, late term abortions would not be an issue. Hell, even if women earned as much as men, abortion might not be as much of an issue, since, in our culture, money may not bring happiness, but it sure does open up one's options.
When those students laughed at the notion that a woman would be president in their lifetimes, it brought home very quickly that even in their middle-class security, they aren't that far from the poor girls who get pregnant to have someone to love because they're still taught that the only way their lives will have value is if they are pregnant. When those students laughed, they added strength to the glass ceiling. When those students laughed, they made it that much more difficult for single moms to make it in the future that those students will control.
I was in college myself when the so-called "Summer of Mercy" shut Wichita down in 1991. Dr. Tiller was the focus of that protest. At the time, it seemed like an inconvenience to me, but, despite my pro-choice stance, I supported the protesters' right to do it. I still do. However, now I realize that what they were really protesting is a symptom of the ills caused when an entrenched structure of power refuses to change enough to actually make women's lives better. What I know now is that they're more than happy to go to jail for overstepping the bounds of their protest, but they're terrified of spending the money to create the social support structures that would actually help women and their families live empowered lives.
Nobody has been shot for it yet, but the lack of universal health care is another such symptom. It's been killed in the minds of Democrats even before it has had a chance to be discussed. But it, too, demonstrates that as a nation we're much more willing to protect privilege and power than to do what we know is beneficial and right. Perhaps we haven't shot anyone because of it since the victims of our current health care mess just die quietly, and many of them expectedly. Abortion is a flashpoint because we like to believe in the innocence of "new life" and have to believe in the corruption of those "sluts" who get pregnant outside of the exisitng structures of command and control--have to if we want to go on justifying the existence of those structures.
Yesterday, I heard many disingenuous protestations of horror at the assassination of George Tiller from religious fundamentalists. Granted, they don't want their movement to seem violent and thuggish. But where are their voices of horror when others of their ilk preach male "headship" and that a woman's place is in the home? Where are their great energies for protest when girls' choices are curtailed by poverty, misogyny, indifference?
Where were their shouting voices when my students laughed?
Update: Randall Terry, formerly of the Operation Rescue anti-abortion group that organized the 1991 "Summer of Mercy" just called Dr. Tiller a "mass murderer" for the umpteenth time while claiming that his rhetoric had nothing to do with Dr. Tiller's death. Now, let's think about this. If you had run across Hitler or Pol Pot at the height of their powers and had a gun in your hand, wouldn't you be duty bound to kill them?
You can't spend two decades calling a man a mass murderer and then claim your words had nothing to do with the man's assassination. I'll go to bat for Terry's right to say these things, but he has no right to back out of the responsibility that comes with using those words.
But let's take this one step further. If abortion really is murder, then why isn't everyone who disagrees with it out killing doctors who provide it? These same people have no qualms about supporting the pointless and unprovoked war in Iraq, but they haven't got the guts to take care of the "Mengele[s]" they see among us?
Methinks it's because they don't really think that killing a fetus is actually the same as killing a fully-formed human being. It's the idea of innocence they're protecting, not the fact of a full-fledged human life.
Last November, after the election of Barack Obama, I asked my students if they were surprised that a black man had become president. None of them were. Then I asked them if they thought a woman would ever be president in their lifetimes--and note, these students are primarily between the ages of 18 and 20.
They laughed.
As many of you probably know, one of the few doctors in this country who perform(ed) late-term abortions, Dr. George Tiller, was gunned down in his church in Wichita yesterday.
Being not equipped to bear children, I'm not especially qualified to discuss abortion. If more males of the species had that attitude, maybe Dr. Tiller wouldn't be dead. But I can say this: abortion isn't really about "life" or when life begins. It isn't even about "choice," though by being about women and their bodies, this is a convenient way to package the issue.
Abortion is really about social justice, or rather, the lack of social justice for women. If women were finally given the sort of control over their lives and bodies that men have over their own, late term abortions would not be an issue. Hell, even if women earned as much as men, abortion might not be as much of an issue, since, in our culture, money may not bring happiness, but it sure does open up one's options.
When those students laughed at the notion that a woman would be president in their lifetimes, it brought home very quickly that even in their middle-class security, they aren't that far from the poor girls who get pregnant to have someone to love because they're still taught that the only way their lives will have value is if they are pregnant. When those students laughed, they added strength to the glass ceiling. When those students laughed, they made it that much more difficult for single moms to make it in the future that those students will control.
I was in college myself when the so-called "Summer of Mercy" shut Wichita down in 1991. Dr. Tiller was the focus of that protest. At the time, it seemed like an inconvenience to me, but, despite my pro-choice stance, I supported the protesters' right to do it. I still do. However, now I realize that what they were really protesting is a symptom of the ills caused when an entrenched structure of power refuses to change enough to actually make women's lives better. What I know now is that they're more than happy to go to jail for overstepping the bounds of their protest, but they're terrified of spending the money to create the social support structures that would actually help women and their families live empowered lives.
Nobody has been shot for it yet, but the lack of universal health care is another such symptom. It's been killed in the minds of Democrats even before it has had a chance to be discussed. But it, too, demonstrates that as a nation we're much more willing to protect privilege and power than to do what we know is beneficial and right. Perhaps we haven't shot anyone because of it since the victims of our current health care mess just die quietly, and many of them expectedly. Abortion is a flashpoint because we like to believe in the innocence of "new life" and have to believe in the corruption of those "sluts" who get pregnant outside of the exisitng structures of command and control--have to if we want to go on justifying the existence of those structures.
Yesterday, I heard many disingenuous protestations of horror at the assassination of George Tiller from religious fundamentalists. Granted, they don't want their movement to seem violent and thuggish. But where are their voices of horror when others of their ilk preach male "headship" and that a woman's place is in the home? Where are their great energies for protest when girls' choices are curtailed by poverty, misogyny, indifference?
Where were their shouting voices when my students laughed?
Update: Randall Terry, formerly of the Operation Rescue anti-abortion group that organized the 1991 "Summer of Mercy" just called Dr. Tiller a "mass murderer" for the umpteenth time while claiming that his rhetoric had nothing to do with Dr. Tiller's death. Now, let's think about this. If you had run across Hitler or Pol Pot at the height of their powers and had a gun in your hand, wouldn't you be duty bound to kill them?
You can't spend two decades calling a man a mass murderer and then claim your words had nothing to do with the man's assassination. I'll go to bat for Terry's right to say these things, but he has no right to back out of the responsibility that comes with using those words.
But let's take this one step further. If abortion really is murder, then why isn't everyone who disagrees with it out killing doctors who provide it? These same people have no qualms about supporting the pointless and unprovoked war in Iraq, but they haven't got the guts to take care of the "Mengele[s]" they see among us?
Methinks it's because they don't really think that killing a fetus is actually the same as killing a fully-formed human being. It's the idea of innocence they're protecting, not the fact of a full-fledged human life.
