Author Katha Pollitt, a pro-life advocate, vouches the reclaiming of abortion rights. These "rights" are more than just legal rights, but also the social liberty of making one's own decision, and the right for the general public to be properly educated on such issues. This would do much to liberate women from pervading current social stigma. It's not entirely about women, but it's also about those who, on their volition and peril, and despite bitter opposition, go through with the women's requests. These are the abortion doctors.
I will summarize the text, and of course add my own sentiment to it.
The introduction captures a little history and the framework of abortion. Legalizing abortion didn't just save women from injury and fear of arrest, but also gave them a sense of empowerment. The fact that now women - the carriers of babies - can make their own decision to conceive. The author asks you to envisage the felicity of no pharmacist refusing to fill your prescription of birth control or Plan B, no religious fanatic yelling derogatory things (commonly "baby killer") through clinic parking-lots, no woman apologizing for not having a baby just because she happened to get pregnant, no woman feeling restricted from saying "this just wasn't the right time for me", and ultimately the grandiose support of what she calls "the giants": the large amount of people who are on the conflict-void edge of the conflict-ridden issue as well as those who are not involved. These will determine the fate of legal abortion. The author also states that abortion should have rather been legalized in the grounds of equality rather than privacy.
The author starts by explaining what she means by "reclaiming abortion". Abortion is seen under the insidious light of wickedness, and it reflects as an act of the demoralized, that's often equated with murder and incivility. According to her, we need to see abortion as an "urgent practical decision" that is just as, or if not more moral than the decision to have the child. Abortion is part of being a mother and caring for children because knowing when to bring a child into the world falls under that responsibility. When considering the topic abortion, she wants us to consider the full human scope: sex, work, men, respectful and reproductive healthcare, and realistic and accurate information about sex and reproduction. Etc. For example, a Brown university study found that 16 percent of pregnant fell victim to reproductive coercion and separately, 9% experienced "birth control sabotage". She raises a good point; she says that sometimes when we talk about abortion as being a bad thing, and that there's too much of it, we actually mean that there's too much unwanted pregnancy, too much inadequately beguiling sex education, not enough access to birth control, and even too much poverty.
In her chapter 'What Do Americans Think About Abortion?' she details the landscape of the issue. She discusses how abortion is perceived on a political level, and how such caricatures influence many people socially. Politically, there is much pressure to enforce more stringent mandates. As a result, many conservative states and systems place more onerous requirements and restrictions towards abortion clinics and prospects. She interpolates many polls from many different sources and times, and rebukes at the brash inconsistencies between what people actually think, what people THINK they think, and what they vote for or against. The conclusion easily drawn is that Americans don't have a solid understanding of abortion.
She importantly covers the expedient abortion topic - what is a person? Many abortion opponents injudiciously extend their definition of personhood and thus rally against contraceptives calling them "abortifacients". Religious zeal compels many to protect the fertilized egg, the blastocyst, etc. If this "loss of life" is so important to pro-lifers, then the same level of importance should be applied to miscarriages. Following the same logic, each and every miscarriage should be investigated as a possible crime. Also, vast sums of money should be spent to prevent them, yet its not.
The author reverts back to the social issues of abortion and makes a compelling case for the societal degradation of women. While reading her claims of women being set-aside and unconsidered in the discussion of abortions, I was leery of overly-avid feminism. But honestly, I couldn't help but feel her. Her expostulation was inundated with good examples, a surfeit of facts and interpolated statistics, and well-structured arguments. While it is important to scientifically assess the termination of an embryo, and morally consider the loss of "life" per se, the enervating social constraints and opportunity costs are nevertheless to me a rather requisite consideration. Its abominable that such staunch opponents, in a perceived act of valor (though usually just blind religious conviction), go out of their way to save the unborn while simultaneously engaging in higher dereliction: the lack of action and even support for laws that do help single mothers, especially those impoverished; and the lack of pressure asserted to those who are equally responsible - the father. This contrasts western Europe were pronatalism (i.e. the encouragement of reproductive child-bearing) is part of the reasoning behind strong government support for families. Amusingly, conservatives are doing much to impute responsibility on the woman while liberating (perhaps unintentionally?) men. Considering the fact that many deny evolution and harbor [false] convictions that everything was divinely created less than 10,000 years ago, it's not to hard to fathom that entrenched in their ideologies lay archaic views of females and their roles in society. Women are often the ones reproached, coerced, and subjugated to culture-motivated "expectations". Them getting pregnant opponents say, is a result of their promiscuity and bad behavior. With repugnance, they assert that women should be responsible for the ramifications of their actions. As if fornication or promiscuity is a bad thing. Ramifications for such thinking is worse; birth control pills can't be attained without prescription and emergency contraception is often not available. Pronatalists are so concerned with the hypothetical future of the unborn, aka, the future worker, the future benefit, the future genius that never got the chance to be conceived. But what about the millions of poor people, often the ones we label as "ghetto", "low class", and "incompetent", that they do nothing for. Though benighted many are gifted, good intention-ed, and talented, yet they are plagued by they're environment: a maelstrom of bad influence, failure-ridden expectations, poor social conditions, plus a lack of resources that as a result obscure the proper path to success.
Towards the end, there's an interesting section called the "Six Myths About Abortion". I will not get into any detail but they are:
1. The Bible forbids it
2. Women are coerced into having abortions
3. Abortion is dangerous
4. There are too many abortions
5. Abortion is racist
6. Abortion opponents would never punish women
The chapter "What Do Abortion Opponents Really Oppose?" stresses the lack of concern for women again but this time more eclectically. The name is a hyperbole, a little too much for me. There's still a lot of fruitful information in it. For example, the top states for women's status, where religion plays a relatively small role in political life, have few abortion restrictions. The opposite is true for more conservative states. The correlation between elevated women status and congenial abortion laws may indicate that anti-abortion states are more interested in attacking women's rights than protecting fetal life according to the political scientist Jean Reith Schroedel. Schroedel shows that anti-choice states don't do much to ensure the health and well-being of fetuses and babies when it comes to prenatal care, drug treatment, other exogenous assistance. The same states are at the bottom when it comes to "education, child care, access to food stamps, Medicaid, and welfare" according to her. I've seen this examined before by other intellectuals but not under the light of abortion.
Overall, Pro was a great read. It was very insightful, and easy to understand. The author's tone conveys a sense of urgency and concern. For example, Pollitt's women "empowerment" argument in the introduction is definitely an appeal to emotion, but justified many times later in the text. At times though it seems that she may divert, at least in tone, and over-accentuate semi-subjective female injustice. Nevertheless, this is only in tone because the reoccurring diversions into the female perspective are not superfluous. This is reinforced by what I believe to be the thesis, on page 25:
"...although abortion has been legal for four full decades, for many women in America it might as well not be. It is inaccessible-too far away, too expensive to pay for out of pocket, and too encumbered by restrictions and regulations and humiliations, many of which might not be seen to be one of those "undue burdens" the Supreme Court has ruled are impermissible curbs on a woman's ability to terminate a pregnancy, but which, taken together, do place abortion out of reach."
Insofar as science goes, one of her arguments is that the DNA during the post-blastocyst stages are merely a blueprint for what's to be a person, but not a person them-self. She juxtaposes this to instructions for a house - just an outline - and the conditions from your mother's hormonal mix and the combination of love, diet, and simulation are what makes a person. The author vehemently argues that abortion is a bigger issue than the moral considerations for the zygote/embryo/fetus, because while abortion-opponents consider that, they are at the same time relegating women and their rights to the periphery. She says that the concept of personhood when applied to early human development in the womb makes no sense and is "incoherent, covertly religious, and believed by barely anyone". Even though this is true, I still feel that when it comes down to it, scientific analysis is needed to justify the "worth" of the unborn fetus, at all stages and void of any social/environmental considerations outside the mother herself. On a related note, one big thing missing from the book in my opinion is the analysis of pain. I'm not sure what scientific advancements have been made (or even the field involved - is it biology, neurology, or neurophysiology?) but I am sure to some degree we can measure the amount of pain or suffering we subject the unborn baby to when we abort it. Do those flies that we mindlessly slaughter with our feet, and inflict mass exterminations to with the minimal kinetic effort of our finger feel the same pain and suffering, with their mature physiology and well-developed nervous system, as an aborted fetus? My guess is that the pain would be greater. We may be, as Katha Pollitt says, neglecting of female worth in our society but by the same token we are also (and this is more subtle) overly egotistical.
4.6/5
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