Today is the 36th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, and that means it’s also Blog for Choice Day. Unlike last year (and more like myself), I have little interest in the theme, pro-choice hopes for Barack Obama and the new Congress.
I’ve decided that I want to write about something else. I want to write about the right to abortion and how it intersects with the issue of sexual violence. It’s no secret that these are two issues that are perhaps closest to my heart, and I care and write about both regularly on a broad spectrum. I think that the two issues are highly related. Simply, both are reproductive justice issues. Both are reproductive health issues. And both are sexual rights issues.
In practice, the two are directly connected on a regular basis. Sexual violence accounts for a particularly large number of teen pregnancies, many of which do end in abortion. Adult women are also prone to pregnancy as a result of rape, especially depending on who they are and where they live. Those women who have the highest risk of rape — say, immigrant women or women living in the Congo — also have the highest risk of getting pregnant as the result of that rape. They also, due to oppressed status, have the least access to abortion services and are most often forced to carry to term, or to attempt risky abortion procedures themselves.
Most visibly — and again, intersecting oppressions are generally responsible for which issues are most visible — sexual violence and abortion rights intersect when it comes to abortion restrictions. When potential abortion restrictions are put on the table, newspapers almost inevitably report breathlessly that the restrictions even apply to women who have been victims of rape. If they don’t apply to women who have been raped, it’s reported in a way that presents the restriction as therefore reasonable. And of course, hardcore anti-choice groups and individuals adamantly oppose exceptions for rape victims for any abortion restriction, whether it be forced ultrasounds, parental notification, “informed consent” or all out abortion bans.
I’ve long made clear my view that while the hardline “no exceptions for rape victims, because a baby is still a baby” rhetoric makes me throw up quite a bit in my mouth, it is at least consistent with their espoused ideals. This is still certainly true. But just as true is the fact that this rhetoric tells us something important about what is behind the words about “babies” and “life.” It tells us about how those who spout the words view women’s bodies.
The question most often asked by anti-choicers defending their “no abortion ban/restriction exceptions for rape victims” stance is “why should a baby have to pay for someone else’s wrong?” Yes, rape is horrible, they say. Just horrible. But the baby is a human being, and it deserves to live — no matter who its father is or what he has done.
On the surface, this sounds all well and good (or at least intellectually consistent). But I notice something else. I notice how strikingly similar this rhetoric is to the other rhetoric that anti-choicers use for abortions had by women who are presumed to have not been raped, and not just in terms of “fetus=baby.”
No, the question of “why should a baby have to pay for someone else’s wrong?” is common all around. There is usually a wrong implied by anti-choicers in all unplanned pregnancies. And usually, that wrong is heavily implied to not be on the part of the man who didn’t strap on a condom, but on the part of the woman who wasn’t “smart enough” to “keep her legs closed.” You know, the one whose bodily autonomy now hangs in the balance.
So really, in their heart of hearts, are they referring to rapists when they ask why a baby should have to pay for someone else’s wrong with abortion? Or are they just engaging in rape apologist rhetoric about women who shouldn’t have been wearing that, or who should have fought harder? (Or are they only referring to rapists in the cases of “real” rape where the woman was a horribly brutalized Christian virgin?)
Assuming, even, that they are referring to the rapists, an important question still lingers: what about women? I know, it’s a radical thought, but really: what of them? Why should they have to pay for someone else’s wrong? What about their lives? Don’t they matter a damn bit? Or again, are we just assuming that they are partially at fault for the wrong committed?
Of course, anti-choicers will argue that we’re looking at disproportionate interests/rights. The “baby” has a life; the woman just has “convenience” and her lazy, selfish desire to not have a physical reminder of her traumatizing experience every second of every day for 9 months, not to mention a child created by that rapist at the end of 9 months.
In fact, regaining control after a rape experience really can be about a woman’s life. Thankfully, I don’t know the trauma of having been impregnated as the result of rape. But I do know the trauma of rape itself. And I know, or can read in tons of readily accessible literature, about how rape takes away a sense of control over one’s body. It can, in fact, heavily make one question who that body belongs to.
And anti-choicers want that answer to be the government. In spite of the fact that the right to an abortion after rape really can be about a woman’s life — since a woman may be easily made suicidal over a forced pregnancy as the result of rape, or simply traumatized forever because of it — anti-choicers think that a fetus’ rights overrule it. When forced to choose between the life of a fetus, and the life of a woman (and often thereby her fetus due to simple biology), anti-choicers choose the fetus time and time again.
Of course, most Americans disagree. Most Americans think that rape victims deserve a right to abortion. But significant numbers also support restrictions on abortion in other cases. As a result, pro-choice organizations and advocates do admittedly exploit the rape angle in fighting anti-choice legislation. Rape victims are, seemingly, the perfect case for tugging at people’s heart strings.
Why are rape victims treated like the holy grail in abortion arguments? And why do supposed abortion “moderates” think that they deserve special treatment?
Granted, the most vulnerable people do deserve most of our concern, so to some extent focusing on their needs above the majority of American women who need abortions is appropriate. However, it would be silly to pretend that there is no political angle here that has little to do with social justice. And I think that this focus traces back to ideas about who is to blame, and to women’s sexual rights.
In other words, only some women are seen as worthy of having sexual rights. And it’s the women who have already had their sexual rights violated. In order to gain sexual rights, women first have to have them abused.
Further, those women then have to prove that they deserve those sexual rights, no matter how unfair the criteria for proof is. They usually have to report their rape just to have access to a medical procedure; they may have to provide a name of their rapist, or provide DNA samples from their aborted fetus for “evidence.” And then they still may be forced by law to undergo ultrasounds and diatribes about how having an abortion makes them a bad person.
Basically, they have to “prove” that they’re a rape victim by playing the part of the right kind of rape victim. The “real” rape victim. The good, moral chaste rape victim. And so either way, rape victim exception or no rape victim exception, women’s bodies are commodified and devalued.
This tells us something about the abortion debate itself — something that most of us probably already knew. Anti-choicers say that their stance is about “babies” and how those babies are valued. For that reason, they’d prefer to push women out of the picture all together, and ignore the fact that even if a fetus was a “person,” that would still make two people whose bodies are facing serious consequences. They prefer this because otherwise, we’d also have to also discuss how women’s bodies are valued.
And the answer to that question when it comes to the act of committing rape, the act of denying a woman the choice of an abortion, and the moment when those two acts intersect, is the same. Not at all.
I support Roe vs Wade, I support “choice,” and I support reproductive autonomy and non-coercion of all kinds, because women deserve better.
[...] cross-posted at Feministe [...]
Wow, Cara, what a powerful post. Thank you for writing!
Interestingly, I also wrote about the connection between sexual (and domestic) violence and abortion, but I did so in the context of actually answering within the theme (which I don’t usually do).
There is a parallel to your argument in how health insurance handles abortion. I am a federal employee, and for political reasons, Congress has decided that federal health plans will only pay for abortions of medical necessity, or in cases of rape or incest. If you had sex voluntarily and got pregnant, you’re on your own.
Imagine having to bring forensic evidence to your appointment at the clinic to show you really are a “good girl” who had the misfortune to be raped, and therefore are deserving of having your health plan assume the costs of the procedure.
Compare this with other medical care. If you drive drunk and crash your car, federal health insurance will pay to treat you even though you broke the law, endangered others, and are to blame for your injuries.
Women who want abortions are treated worse than drunk drivers for purposes of federal health insurance.
Makes me think responsibility is a discourse, changing according to the interests of the speaker. Funny to think in the case of anti-choice discourse, the ‘baby’ shouldn’t pay for the mistakes made before him (and yes, I also think the burden of those ‘mistakes’ is placed on the mother – or, in an alternative interpretation, the mother is merely a vessel in which the ‘baby’ develops). Yet, in the context of racial issues, next generations carry with them the responsibility for the previous generations’ choices and power arrangements.
Without saying that one version is more ‘right’ than the other, I think this shows how the discourse of ‘responsibility’ is flexible and each instantiation is loaded with the meanings that suit the speakers.
“In other words, only some women are seen as worthy of having sexual rights. And it’s the women who have already had their sexual rights violated. In order to gain sexual rights, women first have to have them abused.”
This jumped out at me because it fits with what would probably be my PhD dissertation if I ever went back to school to do it. I don’t know if my theory holds up, but here is what I’m thinking: female sexuality is defined by injury.
Physical and/or emotional assault on a developing girl’s sense of wholeness is the foundation for what is then called “female sexuality.” IOW, injury to the self is the sine qua non of female sexuality.
Wow. I can’t believe I’ve been carrying this thesis around for more than 20 years and haven’t really addressed it. There’s so much work do!!!
And why haven’t I done my PhD or in some other way articulated my insights? Because I’ve been busy surviving…
“I support Roe vs Wade, I support “choice,” and I support reproductive autonomy and non-coercion of all kinds”
Me too.
Thanks for writing this.
Forgive me if this is a tired argument, but I haven’t heard it before and would appreciate your views on this:
Say person A is dying of kidney failure and needs a kidney. There is only one person (person B) who is an appropriate match as a kidney donor. Person A will die without the kidney. Can the US government force person B to supply the kidney?
Why not?
[...] almost missed Blog for Choice day- I haven’t been checking the internets dutifully enough, and we’ve been out all day – [...]
Thank you, Cara. Really powerful. An excellent post. I really appreciate it when we dig below the word “choice” to really examine bodily autonomy, sexual rights, and abortion with a powerful lens.
Well it’s only a “tired” argument in the sense that it’s one pro-choice people use in reverse. And it’s not hugely related to this thread. But for some reason I’m in a playing along mood, and will assume that you’re commenting in good faith.
Of course not. The U.S. government cannot — correction, seeing forced c-sections, should not be able to — force surgery of any kind. It can’t force a Christian Scientist to undergo medical treatment to save their own life, so who the hell could think that the government has a right to force anyone to save someone else’s life with their own body parts?
I have trouble answering “why not” because the very concept of “why” so boggles my mind. But: surgery is dangerous. Though a person can live without their kidney, they can die during surgery or from complications. It can put them out of work for months. It can be a highly traumatizing experience. They’re screwed if someday something happens to their other kidney. And because it’s their body part. No one can be forced to act as a life support system for another human being. It violates our most basic civil liberties. Each and every person has the right to life and liberty, but it ends at another person’s right to life and liberty (except of course in cases of self-defense from violence). Each person does, or at least fucking should, have sacred rights over what happens to their own body.
You can think that Person B is a major, major asshole for refusing to save Person A’s life. But Person B is under no reasonable terms a murderer. And the same applies if Person A is a fetus (“baby”) and Person B is the pregant woman carrying it.
Serendipity, also note that under common law in general there is no legal obligation to save someone from any sort of danger even if you can do so with no danger to yourself. (The one big exception is if you were the one who created the danger.) This is a L-O-O-N-G tradition we’ve had. Some states have passed laws mandating people to assist others, but these laws are not very popular, have been written for extremely narrow circumstances, and cannot be applied where the putative rescuer is placed in any sort of risk.
Cara: that was a thoughtful reply. I guess it wasn’t clear from my post, I am pro-choice and this position is so obvious to me that I sometimes have difficulty engaging with pro-lifers at all. The argument I laid out was of course intended to be a pro-choice argument (I’m surprised it could be read as a pro-life one!)
I asked for opinions on it because it seems to me to be a pretty shut-down argument against the pro-life position. The nice thing about it is that whether “life” is defined to begin at conception becomes irrelevant. Hell, you can grant that life is the glint in the postman’s eye and banning abortion is still unjustified.
No one can be forced to act as a life support system for another human being. It violates our most basic civil liberties.
This is a succinct way of putting it. I guess the only way out for the pro-lifer is to suggest that, unlike donating a kidney, enforced pregnancy is not dangerous, painful and invasive enough to qualify as violating a woman’s civil liberties. This is the way John McCain went in the debates. He sneeringly said: “…health for the mother. You know, that’s been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything.” The contempt on his face when he said it was pretty despicable.
(http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/oct/08101601.html – near the end)
The alternate route is of course to claim that women have brought pregnancy upon themselves and now have to bear the consequences. This of course leads us to the topic of the original post. Anyway, I’m sorry I wasn’t strictly on topic. I just wanted to get some good feedback on this argument so I can be as prepared as possible when I have to explain to someone why abortion access should be considered a basic human right.
Serendipity, also note that under common law in general there is no legal obligation to save someone from any sort of danger even if you can do so with no danger to yourself. (The one big exception is if you were the one who created the danger.) This is a L-O-O-N-G tradition we’ve had.
Exactly. This is why I feel the argument is convincing.
Ha! Well I guess that something got confused along the way, somehow :)
But of course that’s not true. Pregnancy an be dangerous and painful and certainly is invasive. I understand that I speak as someone who never, ever wants to bear children, but to me having another living creature (“person” with rights or not) live inside you is pretty much the definition of invasive!
To which I follow up with the car crash analogy. If I crash into someone else’s car due to my own negligence/drunkeness/etc., and the person I crash into is seriously injured, no one can force me to give that person a blood transfusion or whatever, even though I’m clearly responsible for their injury.
Thank you!
Thank you for that excellent post. You mentioned sexual rights and I wondered whether you would be interested in signing our petition:
http://www.15andcounting.org/