Same song, sans sarcasm
Whereas the last post was tongue-in-cheek, this one’s all teeth.
Is there life after Roe? by Frances Kissling
The right to a safe and legal abortion is a right women of my age and economic bracket have never had to think about. Even if you disagree in principle with non-theraputic abortion, the ability to terminate pregnancy in a dire situation is still a legal option. It is a choice bestowed by Roe v. Wade that many take completely for granted. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing or a good thing — it’s just a thing. But it is this assumption, this sense of complacency, that has left the pro-choice camp in such a quagmire now. Something that seemed so personal and private is being incrementally villanized because it is so well-hidden.
Reading Kissling’s historical perspective, her theological and moral perspective, her explanations of the woman’s movement’s finer intricacies, puts into place the growing discomfort I feel as I watch Bush, Ashcroft and Co. dismantle the societal walls of personal privacy.
I understand–and come more to this understanding as I read and grow and learn–that morality is certainly not a hard and fast rule — after all, one man’s sin is another’s significant other. What is moral is what society considers moral, and that can be subject to the changing of the “moral compass of the nation.” Whatever THAT is. The general direction the voting population leans. When there’s leaning.
The election and subsequent re-election of Bush reflect that a tilt rightward. The villafication of Clinton–Look! There! An imperfect man!–signals a sick sort of overblown moral expectation. We expect perfection of mere men. We used to wink and nod at that kind of impropriety. (Hello, Kennedy!) Then came the swift turn from the acceptance-laced weddings of San Francisco gays to an amendment limiting marriage to heterosexuals? WTF?
And that was a WTF that gives me pause. Not allowing same-sex partners — who love and care for each other in exactly the same ways as heterosexuals, who have the same needs as heterosexuals — to qualify for societal and legal status is discriminatory. It’s simply not equal treatment. Whose business is it what someone else’s marriage is made of?
Apparently, it is the opinion of many that it is the government’s business. And those same people think that it is also their business how we plan our families.
But that, there: “plan our families.” That is the kind of language Kissling talks about. The cold, static terminology. The stuff we say that makes us seem heartless, detached, and mechanical. I understand, I think, what she’s getting at… but I’m not totally certain that I agree.
The language of abortion is clinical by necessity. It is a clinical procedure, a clearly medical procedure, sometimes a gory procedure. How do educated people talk about these sorts of things except in absolute accurate words? How do people talk about things that are unpleasant?
Answer seems to be that they don’t, or that a large part of society thinks at least that they shouldn’t. But how do we decide if we dare not even speak its name?