Jen Hawkins
Submitted Article
In “Ending the Abortion Stigma” (The Bengal, Jan. 22, 2014), Jessica Milford claims “one in three women will have an abortion in their [sic] lifetime.” Does this statistic include over 160 million sex-selective abortions (favoring males) in Asia alone? This gendercide, writes Ross Douthat of “The New York Times,” enjoys the “vocal, deep-pocketed American support [of] groups like… Planned Parenthood” (whose research arm is the only source Milford cites in her opinion).
Milford writes on the 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, and on behalf of the 1in3 Campaign, which “encourages people who have had abortions to share their story.”
Firstly, the Roe court is widely criticized for legislating from the bench, and for the constitutional baselessness of its decision, which rejected the explicit right to life in favor of a then-indeterminate one. As Professor Laurence Tribe puts it, “behind [Roe’s] own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found” (Harvard Law Review). Even “Jane Roe” herself (aka Norma McCorvey) testified to Congress in 1998 that “the ‘right’ to abortion [was created] out of legal thin air,” and called her regret over its enactment “a living hell.”
Returning to “Ending…,” Milford decries abortion restrictions, including limits to insurance coverage. Insurance operates on shared risk, pooling money and losses among policyholders; those opposed to abortion cannot be forced to back it through premiums.
Milford protests that reporting abuse or assault is “traumatizing.” Agreed – but by discouraging disclosure, Milford contradicts her own case against “silence and stigma,” thereby aiding abusers, not women. Further, abortion itself can compound the trauma of sexual violence. As sociologist Ellie Lee reports, some survivors equate it to “medical rape” (Abortion, Motherhood, and Mental Health).
Milford also denounces providing information on abortion alternatives and dangers. But failing to make explicit what abortion entails not only demeans fetal life, it undermines women’s right to informed consent. Such suppression is not without precedent; with only one exception, actual methods of abortion go unmentioned in Roe. This telling omission is akin to striking all reference to guns from a Second Amendment case – or defending “enhanced interrogation” by redacting terms like “water” and “board.”
Finally, contrary to Milford’s closing, abortion is no “resource;” it is a brutal symptom of their lack – lack of health care, living wages, job security or child support. As Daphne Clair de Jong writes, those who support abortion as a means of preserving “economic or social status… are pandering to a system devised… for male convenience” (“The Feminist Sell-Out”). Abortion serves no one but the chauvinist whose constituents never demand adequate child care, whose employees never request parental leave, whose indiscretions are swept into the trash and under the proverbial rug.
While I, too, support candor among abortion survivors, I fear that 1in3 Campaigners are ill-equipped to face the anger and anguish with which they may be confronted.
For more information, contact Feminists for Life or Jen Hawkins at ude.usinull@nnejkwah.
