Choices

The harpoon moment during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice occurred when California Senator Kamala Harris asked nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh if there were any laws, on the books, that give the government power to protect the male body. With this question she was met with a furrowed brow, some beads of sweat, and not a clear answer. She repeated the question, and Kavanaugh, assembling the few brain cells he possesses, replied thus: "I'm not thinking of any right now."

This exchange lets us know three things: 1) Harris is one bad mutha, and deserves to be a Senate majority leader, 2) Kavanaugh is an unqualified sexist assclown, and 3) it's 2018 and this is where we are. We are in a time where a senator has to pose a question like this, and that the question is met with pause, with a dumbfounded look, and with a muddled non-answer. If anything, this disqualified him for me, this even before all that would emerge about Kavanaugh in the coming weeks. It was a simple "yes or no" question, "no" being the answer, but it was his lack, his reluctance at saying this, pissed me off.

There are numerous things that make Kavanaugh unfit for the Supreme Court (and a lot of it goes beyond the scope of just his opinions on Roe v. Wade and women's bodies), but the strongest stench that permeates off of him is his utter disdain and disinterest of women, and the frenetic need to control said women. I don't care if he has a wife and two daughters, or that his staff is comprised of all-women. Hitler had a mother, and a girlfriend, and women who followed him throughout the Nazi regime. There is no such thing as a "good sexist".

Pushing aside a lot of the ugly that occurred during, and in the aftermath of a hearing where a woman had relay the most traumatic moment of her life to a prying audience of strangers, and an Angry White Man who conveniently made himself the victim made me return to a read that made one of the deepest impressions on me last year. So I write this on the eve of the assured confirmation (barf) for Kavanaugh, and wonder still: will we ever get to a point where women and their bodies are left the fuck alone?

Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, by The Nation writer, Katha Pollitt didn't have to convince me of anything, even at the time of reading it. I have a fierce belief that women, from all walks of life, deserve choices and to rule their lives the way they see fit. I'm against patriarchal-driven governments and churches, and rooms filled with avaricious white men making decisions towards people and matters they know nothing about, and choose to know nothing about when it's all said and done. Pollitt didn’t need 272 pages to convince me that pro-choice is a balm to aid a bulk of our societal ills or that "abortion opponents" (her wording) have ill-informed, insincere thinking, and yet, she converted me, a 100xs over converted, confirmed, and made me stand stronger in my convictions that pro-choice is what I believe.

So why are others so feverishly against abortion? To quote Janet Jackson: "cause it's all about control" --- but control of what?

Pro takes on the heft of such a question and outlines how abortion opponents, and even some defenders, use their words as weapons to terrorize and hold women hostage within their own bodies, and how there are layers to how society as a whole punishes, controls, and shames women ---- particularly women of color, and women who live in a poorer class bracket. Though its a book preaching to the pro-choice choir, Pro is mostly written for the "muddled middle", those who sit on the fence about reproductive rights, or don't think two ways about it. Pollitt dispels a lot of doubt, and puts forth a lot of potent truth, as she gives clear and reasoned arguments to time-worn conspiracy theories and junk science, making sense of what "pro-life" is, what stokes people's fears about legal abortions, and how we should re-frame the concepts of sex, childbirth, and motherhood for the sake of our future.

"In the end, abortion is an issue of fundamental human rights. To force women to undergo pregnancy and childbirth against their will is to deprive them of the right to make basic decisions about their lives and well-being, and to give that power to the state. Moreover, the logic of the anti-abortion movement makes all pregnant women less than full citizens, including those who want to have a baby, because it places the supposed interests of the fetus ahead of the woman’s own interests and deprives her of her rights granted to everyone else: to make one’s own medical decisions and to receive equal treatment under the law."

Pollitt argues that it's this concept of the future that abortion opponents continue to ignore. Often opponents give the impression that they care a whole great deal about women, children, and their health, but the movement has been successful at restricting access to reproductive healthcare based on a patriarchal ideal that women should be punished for sex (in a way that men never are), and take their 'appointed duties' as mothers (this no matter if they are raped, can't financially afford a child, and/or is a teenager who is incapable of even raising 'saved' child). The movement will then take it a step further by voting against, and/or de-funding policies that aid the well-being of children that do exist. In short, they really don't give a fuck about "life", not when children are forced into cycles of poverty, inadequate foster and adoption circumstances, and are under a government that is all too keen to destroy healthcare policies.

While Pollitt does detail some wrongdoing and tone-deaf statements from progressives, and those within Democratic settings (Hillary Clinton's comments might give some of y’all #ImStillWithHer folk some pause...), she is direct in calling out conservative uber-religious sects, and Republican lawmakers as the key womb watchers.

The largest anti-abortion push comes naturally from the "be fruitful and multiply" crowd as they believe that a woman should be a 'virtuous being', as abortions 'corrupt' and allow women too much freedom, freedom that could lead them astray from their domesticated baby making roles they were 'blessed' (aka assigned to) with from the higher powers that be. Though most have diverted away from old school Puritan "burn her at the stake" type of shame, women's virtue and intelligence is still placed into question, this even when they attempt to make a conscious reproductive choice.

"The obsession with women's virtue infuses the abortion debate even for some who want it to be legal. Is she promiscuous? On drugs? Does she want an abortion out of genuine hardship or is she taking the easy way out? If she were a serious responsible person, the thinking goes, she wouldn't have gotten pregnant (Haven't these people ever heard of condoms?). So having an abortion becomes an evasion of the responsibility to be prudent and continent."

Like the uber-religious sects who vote for them time and time again, Republican lawmakers often align with the anti-abortion movement, and do so by protecting it by the law. They too give the impression that they are "keeping order" and preserving the family unit, (as they do whenever their own mistresses become pregnant...) but how are they when they're passing restrictive bills based in scientific ignorance (one such bill has been put on hold at post time), and taking money from welfare programs that support poor families and pool it into "crisis pregnancy centers" that discourage women from having abortions? In my home state of Texas, former governor Rick Perry (aka He Who Fails A Class About Meat), now current the Secretary of Energy, prevented the health department from applying millions of dollars to fund for birth control and abstinence education, this all while Texas is third in the nation for teen pregnancies.

It really floors me how embryos and fetuses receive more government "support" (a word I use pretty loosely), but when a human child is born on this Earth, they are immediately denied proper care and coverage. Also frustrating is how a woman is viewed not as a person, but as some walking incubator. Pollitt has a lot to say about that within Pro, and her chapters that cover personhood are fascinating, as they probe the essential questions: What is a fetus? Why does a woman's life have to derail because of it? Is a woman even a person?

"It is so much easier to focus on the fetus. It has no personality, no history, no motives to be scrutinized. It demands so little of anyone but the woman who is bearing it. In much of the philosophical debate about abortion, that woman barely exists."

Another fascinating angle that Pollitt explores about abortion opponents is how there is an extreme eugenics angle to their crusade, where there is a consistent fear of black and browns out-populating whites, and the white population dwindling more and more as white women become more proactive towards their reproductive health.

"Abortion did not always have this meaning: As long as women were firmly ensconced in the family as wives and mothers with few rights and little social power, abortion was legal or tolerated as a way to save unmarried daughters from shame, limit family size, and protect exhausted mothers from the rigors of yet more pregnancies and births. It was part of women’s messy private business, like periods and miscarriages and giving birth, things men were well advised to leave alone. But once middle-class white women began to emancipate themselves and get involved in public and political life, even if only to join a women’s club or take on charity projects, abortion took on its modern meaning of self-determination and independence and active decision-making."

"There is a steady drumbeat of conservative punditry warning of all the terrible things that will happen if women don't have enough babies. There won't be enough children to fuel consumer spending, enough workers to support Social Security, enough clever young people to invent things, enough Americans to beat the Chinese in the race for world domination. A lot of this literature is vaguely (or openly) racist. It's white women---often euphemistically called middle-class women, educated women, and high IQ women---who are 'letting down the country'."

Such a set-up that "pronatalists" (or rather let's call them what they truly are: white supremacists) covet, Pollitt warns attracts a cycle of poverty and pain, of which most can never, and will never be able to recover from, this all in the name to control those less-fortunate, while keeping a particular population ahead of all others.

As you can tell, there is a lot to unpack in this book, but the heartbeat of this book beats true. Reproductive health and the preserving of it is something that is essential for the social good. When women are allowed to make a choice for themselves, when they are allowed to hold off a pregnancy, or afforded healthcare without strings that it leads to a series of benefits --- from healthier relationships between men and women, to healthier environments for children to thrive, to healthier methods on how we practice healthcare --- this type of empowerment isn't a selfish act, it's a choice that benefits everyone.

This book IS the gospel truth. An essential electric truth that needs to remain plugged in, so we can all see the light.

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from the margins

• Rating: *****
• 258 pages 
• Published on October 14 2015 by Picador