The American Taliban: Our Domestic Femicides
There was a story in the Times a few months ago:
MEXICO CITY — “Criminalizing abortion is unconstitutional, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday, setting a precedent that could lead to legalization of the procedure across this conservative Catholic country of about 130 million people. The unanimous ruling from the nation’s top court follows years of efforts by a growing women’s movement in Mexico that has repeatedly taken to the streets of major cities to demand greater rights and protections.”
That’s Mexico, not usually considered a bastion of democracy–but now, compared to the U.S., that’s what it is. Half (actually more) of the population now has a basic human right they lacked before, and half of our population is about to be deprived of it, and instead be subjected to the most coercive, intrusive bodily assault that our own domestic Taliban can muster. That’s who they are, the American Taliban. They should all get together, somewhere in the hills of Peshawar, and give each other opium highs. But to return to Mexico:
The story is accompanied by a photograph taken in the state of Hidalgo, in which the state legislature had lifted the abortion ban on its own. The photograph is of women, mostly young and all wearing masks, celebrating that triumph. What is striking about it is the absolute joy on the faces (above the masks, to be sure) of those women. They are thrilled: their lives have just been uplifted by the long-sought achievement of a fundamental human right.
I emphasize this photograph, because so often in mass media the defense of legalized abortion is cautious, even apologetic. It can sound as though the speaker is trying to emphasize that of course we’re for legalization, but we don’t mean to underestimate the seriousness of the decision to abort; we know there’s serous opposition to it even among women and that women sometimes regret having resorted to it; anyhow it’s not as frequent as the naysayers complain, and hey what about rape and incest?
Yes, and there was serious opposition to the end of slavery, to votes for women, to anti-lynching laws, to gay marriage; and still is to the rights of trans people. People regret lots of things they thought they had to do. And so what?
It’s a human right, a women’s right, a right that a man will never need to invoke for himself, and so–unless two people had a genuine agreement to have a child together and one now wants to revoke it — it is not the business of anyone else in the world. No one has the right to tell me whom to vote for, and no one has the right to force you to have a child. All the authoritarian power in the world cannot give that right to a single human being.
And let me add here the most decisive point of all. No one (except perhaps for an abusive parent or spouse) can force a woman to have an abortion. Planned Parenthood may counsel a woman to have one after she lays out the conditions that are making her think of it, and may arrange it for her if that’s her decision. But that’s the most of it. There is no coercion involved. That’s left to the–-mostly men–in sate legislatures, and to Donald Trump’s Supreme Court.
Finally, as for supposedly serious thinkers” like all the Ross Douthats and David Brooks’s among us, I simply say, “Get over it.” Why should anyone have the slightest interest in your opinion about fetuses or anything else that you might think relevant to a woman. So far as I know, no man has ever carried a fetus to term for one week, let alone 15 or 24. Women are perfectly capable of comparing their feelings about fetuses to their feelings about becoming mothers. Every year in the world, millions do that make the decision that you don’t want them to make. Millions. Who the hell asked you? Opinions can’t abolish the rightfulness of a human right. As once before, I quote what the political philosopher Kathy Ferguson once said to the political philosopher George Kateb, “If you’re against abortion, George, don’t have one.”
I have no respect for anyone who uses the language of the fetus to justify coercion of the meanest sort. And especially not for the Political Party that has made that coercion, to go along with the nihilistic anarchy of “gun rights,” the most essential part of their move to Fascism. As it is, in state after state, especially the Old But New Confederacy, a fetus has more rights than a woman–who essentially has none, not even right of choosing life over death. That last sentence is not hyperbole, but an actual fact. In at least one state (South Carolina) doctors are by law required to save a fetus instead of a mother’s life if the two are incompatible. And in many hospitals in such states, that’s the practice even without legislation. Here are some other facts and comments:
Headline: “I Am a Woman, In Texas, Raising a Child With My Rapist.”
“What’s at stake in this case matters to the countless girls and women who have been raped — including those who, like me, were raped by a father, an uncle or another family member.” (Michelle Goodwin)
“In answer to Chief Justice John Roberts’s question about why 15 weeks wasn’t enough time to make the choice to have an abortion, I’d like to give a partial answer based on my experiences as a counselor. An 11-year-old came in with her grandmother to learn that she was 18 weeks pregnant, not just gaining weight.”
“In effect, the United States without Roe would look very different for different people. For women in Democratic states and women elsewhere who have the means to travel to a clinic, abortion would still be accessible. For poor women in many Republican states, traveling to other states for in-clinic abortions could be prohibitively challenging.”
“It is another Mississippi case poised to roll back constitutional rights, opening the door for another age of Jim Crow, only this time the targets won’t be Black bodies but women’s bodies. (Although any rollback in abortion access will most likely disproportionately affect Black women, who sit at the intersection of race and gender.) In the late 1800s, opponents of progress had exercised a methodical, decades-long campaign to subjugate and oppress Black people. The same has been done to women by the opponents of abortion.” (Charles Blow)
“In Texas, the lives of women and children simply don’t matter.” Not at all if they’re poor or black. Welcome to the future.
