My women’s studies class is coming along very well this semester. (We spent the morning working through the concept of “coverture”, with a brief break to discuss Iroquois attitudes towards menstruation).
I did not share with my students my pleasure that the House today passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. The legislation defines “unborn child” as “a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.”
It’s been a long journey for me towards the pro-life position. I grew up in a household in which abortion rights were celebrated. Until just a few years ago, I was a regular contributor to Planned Parenthood. As recently as the 1996 election, I volunteered at a NARAL campaign event. Many folks close to me have gone through abortions, and I have witnessed the tremendous pain that an unwanted pregnancy can bring to a young woman’s life. I have great compassion for those who do choose to terminate their pregnancies. But my understanding of the nature of human life and of the body does not allow me to continue to support legal abortion. It’s been a painful journey, not least because my conversion has caused dismay and anger among old friends who remain committed to abortion rights. I remain conflicted as to what the best legal and cultural strategy is against abortion, as I worry about both babies and mothers dying as a result of illegal abortion. I’m still on this journey.
But I do notice this: the percentage of my students in women’s studies who see abortion rights as critical to their own sense of feminism has been dropping in the past decade. Students were, as I recall, much more active on the issue seven or eight years ago than they are now. Obviously, I have changed my curriculum, and that may play a part. But I also think there is a larger cultural shift going on, a shift away from an earlier era’s obsession with individual autonomy. When I first started teaching women’s history, I emphasized the abortion struggle as the great struggle of our time. I haven’t believed that for years. I have long since shifted from a belief that rights are paramount. Happiness is what my students want, not radical autonomy. Happiness without relationship is not happiness for my students; they hunger to be valued, to be recognized, to be seen. They are tired of a culture that teaches them they ought to be at war with their own bodies and their own femininity. They are overwhelmed both by our culture’s obsession with beauty and thinness and by our culture’s increasing unwillingness to value motherhood. They are starting to see that abortion is a war against the flesh and against nature in a way that anorexia and plastic surgery are acts of war against their own bodies. And though I may get my credentials as a feminist male pulled permanently, I am doing everything I can to teach them to value themselves not merely as rational, independent agents, but as unique and precious women. Biology may not be destiny, but the war to master and distort and control female flesh must stop. And I have come — with reverance and reluctance — to believe that abortion is a critical part of the war against women.
Okay, rant over. I’ve spent my lunch hour on this, and now need to go and lecture on Louis XIV.
If i’ve said it once, i’ve said it a thousand times, you’re barking up the wrong tree! People need to get off the abortion/anti-abortion bandwagon and hop aboard the birth control express!
Great post, Hugo! If it makes you feel any better, some people have threatened to pull my feminist credentials over the abortion issue too. I’ve gone round and round with the best way to approach it too, and don’t have all the answers, but the connection your making between abortion and all the other ways our culture wages war against our bodies is an important one.
Well, Kelly,it all depends on what types of birth control we are talking about… and even birth control (as you know from my class, though you may disagree) can be part of a war against women’s bodies…
Hugo, I would never challenge your claim to be a feminist. I do wonder, though, whether a man teaching a women’s studies course isn’t under a kind of obligation to represent, not just some viable version of feminism, but mainstream feminism? To put it differently, shouldn’t a man in this position strive to bracket any personal views he may hold, and serve simply as a guide to an established body of knowledge? I’m not sure about this, and it’s an issue you’ll have thought about much more deeply than I have. But I know that I would say this or something similar about a white guy teaching an ethnic studies class, for instance. There are plenty of African-American scholars and activists who have some sharply critical things to say about their community — but if a white man got up in front of a class full of black students and said the same sorts of things, that would be pretty offensive, wouldn’t it.
Dear brother, I absolutely agree. And I do teach several “mini-narratives” at once: the traditional liberal feminist view that focuses on the expansion of individual rights, the Marxist feminist view that focuses on economic justice issues and their impact on women (you have been good about pushing me there, a radical feminist view that argues for the re-visioning of the entire social order, and yes, the Christian feminist view that takes an essentialist view of creation and the body but also demands greater dignity and respect for the female sphere.
Do I do all perfectly? Heck no! And I realize that my maleness and my whiteness makes those areas where I am more conservative stand out in sharper relief. Criticism accepted, frater, but I soldier on.
I disagree with Pip. One of my favorite profs is an older, white, Jewish male history prof from the Bronx who frequently teaches a class covering women’s history in America. Going into the class I expected a female prof and was surprised when I saw him. But within minutes it was obvious that he knew what he was talking about and that he was passionate about it. Had he stood in front of us and said he understood how women think or feel or pretended to be something he’s not, then I would have taken issue with that.
I think the same holds true with the example you gave. I took a Sociology class about race and minority relations. The prof was African-American so I thought she would be an excellent teacher. While she is very intelligent (she now teaches at Johns Hopkins) the course fell flat. She sat at a table and read her lecture word-for-word from a piece of paper on the table in front of her.
I find it disturbing that “feminist” has become a dirty word in our society so much so that some people (men and women alike) who say they heartily support equality between the sexes are loathe to call themselves feminists. Men can be feminists as much as women can and their perspectives are equally valid. I think the best teachers are the passionate ones and along with passion comes opinion. Expressing one’s opinion often leads others to consider theirs. What good is an established body of knowledge if you aren’t engaged in truly thinking about it?
Good point, Amy, thanks — and indeed, as you put it nicely, “with passion comes opinion”. The trick is to not allow one’s opinion to be expressed so passionately as to exclude alternative views and positions. And I have to be aware that many women are uncomfortable voicing dissent when confronted with a passionate male authority figure.
What I find funny is all this hysteria over the bill from people like NARAL.
California, long known as having some of the most liberal abortion laws, has also had a longstanding equivalent of this bill. It’s codified as criminal abortion. But you don’t see them freaking out about that, because, it, like this isn’t really worth getting worked up about, even to the zealots, except to scare people into giving money. That’s also why you hear about Roe v. Wade depending on a 5-4 majority, when it’s really a 6-3 one.
And besides, I thought they were all about “choice.” If a woman CHOOSES to bear her child to term, and someone else interferes (for example, tire iron to the stomach, which is what prompted California’s criminal abortion law), isn’t that the truly anti-choice thing that should be punished?
Generally, my problem is with them calling pro-lifers “anti-choice,” as it is clear that they have as much of a particular outcome in mind as the lifers.
I always, always use the terms “pro-choice” and “pro-life”. It is an absolute prerequisite for civilized dialogue to call folks by the terms they wish to be called.
I was just commenting on the choice of words vs. the ideology.
I’d still like them to explain how, if this is such a huge threat to abortion, the fact that California has had an identical law for over 30 years hasn’t hurt the abortion industry in this state.
As a disabled person, I made up my mind early on both abortion and euthenasia, the first time I heard the devilish argument that there is a life not worth living, and that being disabled is ipso facto grounds for late-term abortion. I have my dignity not because of what I can do, but because of who I am. My dignity isn’t dependent on whether I’m convenient, on who or how old my mother and father are, on how many sisters and brothers I have, or how much strain I’ll put on the family finances. I have dignity because God ordained and created me, as he does every unborn child, disabled or not.
I should say that I am supported in saying the above by large numbers of Disability organisations, and that this belief has translated into a passionate pro-life activism. I pushed my whole family to stand outside the Lyndhurst Hospital for my first ever political protest, not the other way around.
A thousand amens to your penultimate comment, John!
Hugo, you are a good, noble and honest man. i wish there were more professors like you. You are doing admirable work.
annie
i agree with your sentiments, but isn’t forced motherhood part of the the war on women’s bodies? aren’t back-alley abortions and coat-hanger deaths more of an outright act of war on women and women’s lives? i understand and sympathize with your ideas about the life of the fetus, but realistically, babies still die, and so do women, because it comes down to a health-care issue. abortion has been around as long as anything else, only now we have the technology to make it less of a game of russian roulette… it’s a health care issue. truly, birth control and education are the answers to this severe ethical dilemma, and the ‘abstinence-only’ proponents should be… i don’t know, forced to care for all the world’s unwanted children. sorry to weigh in randomly and late on this… followed a totally unrelated referrer link to my own blog. :)
“a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.”
In other words, they want to make it OK to kill test-tube embryos–mustn’t nix the chance that we might benefit from a cure for Alzheimer’s, eh?–but it’s perfectly OK to ban the Pill. Pro-life, my foot.
Hugo, I realise you’re an intelligent fella and you command a lot of respect on the feminist blogging circuit. I appreciate you stopping by at my blog to give me some info on the “men’s rights” lot. I’m hesitant about posting here, but I feel compelled to say that this post was the first thing I read on your blog, a while ago, and that I do not like its message. I feel - and other friends of mine who read this post also feel - that you come across as condescending. We found your comparison of abortion to cosmetic surgery particularly offensive. I am trying to be cautious because I don’t want to leap in accusingly: I can tell that you are not like my mental image of a pro-lifer. But my gut feeling is that a woman must have control of her own body and her own reproductive decisions. I don’t think that abortion is as unnatural as you suggest - a huge proportion of pregnancies end in miscarrige, and some animals can reabsorb their young in times of stress. Of course I believe that abortion should be minimised via good sex education and freely available, effective contraception. But from a practical point of view, I believe that if women are desperate enough (and some will be) they will get abortions, legal or not. To me, it seems irresponsible for even pro-lifers to want abortion made completely illegal.
I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on this.
Helen, thank you. In the aftermath of the Amy Richards debate (also found on my sidebar), I made the decision to stop blogging about abortion. I was simply too conflicted, too emotional, too overwhelmed. Were I writing this post now, I would have avoided the rhetoric I chose in the final paragraph. It sounded good, but it was divisive and a bit unfair.
I may yet come back to blogging abortion, Helen, but for now, am taking a break to prayerfully consider what it is I truly do believe.
Peace to you! You are blogrolled.
Hugo, I had a look at the Amy Richards thing, although I didn’t read it all. Thanks for the link - maybe I should have come up with a name that didn’t start with an A. I’m not sure I like being at the top! :-) My blog is likely to be quite militantly pro-choice, so you have been warned!
It will be interesting to see how our ideas develop, as we seem to be complete opposites in many ways.