July 5th, 2012
The note’s not from me. It’s from Slate’s Allison Benedikt who’s trying to talk some sense into her feminist friends who think that aborting babies because the babies are girls might be, kind-of sort-of, at cross-purposes with feminism.
I don’t think I could paraphrase Benedikt’s argument with sufficient accuracy, so I’ll just give you the full meat of it:
By all accounts, gender-motivated abortions are not a big thing in the United States. And this legislation, and the sudden explosion of coverage on the issue, is most certainly just another backdoor maneuver from the anti-choicers to chip away at abortion rights in general (see: personhood, chemical endangerment). But the response from the left—which has basically been, this is not something that happens here frequently! Red herring!—is woefully inadequate and also exactly what the anti-choice movement wants. We are uncomfortable, which means they are winning.
It doesn’t matter that sex-selection abortions are rare in the United States. They do happen.And it doesn’t matter how slimy and slippery slopey the anti-choicers tactics are. (Aren’t you used to that yet? They’re good!) What’s relevant is that it’s entirely irrelevant why a woman wants an abortion.
Strategically, it makes no sense to give in to this idea that there’s somehow something a little queasier about having an abortion for gender than, say, for money. These are equally legitimate reasons (or, if you are on the other side, equally illegitimate). One might make you uncomfortable in your gut, but it can’t make the movement hesitate. Because that hesitation—that pause of, well, yes this one is complicated, or, as Amanda says, this one is “unpleasant to contemplate”—makes it that much easier for so many of those other reasons (money, timing, work) to seem a little not-OK too.
Also, let’s just remember that we are talking about fetuses. No matter how many ultrasound pics get posted to Facebook, these are fetuses with female genitals or male genitals—not little girls and little boys. If pro-choicers object to aborting because of the sex of the fetus, aren’t we then saying that abortion is “murdering” girls? Aren’t we basically arguing that a fetus is not a blank slate but a future possibility? That is not the case to make if your goal is to protect abortion rights. Gulp for a second if you must, then get over it.
Best as I can tell, Benedikt’s argument is either: (1) In order to safeguard the rights of women, women must be allowed to select female babies and terminate them exclusively because of their gender. This is the n’est plus ultra of the feminist project. Or (2) The feminist project is subservient to the abortion project and the concept of the “rights of women” is useful only so far as it safeguards the rights to abortion.
Whatever the case, kudos to Benedikt for being so clear-eyed. You can’t ask for much more than that, I suppose.
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Strategically, it makes no sense to give in to this idea that there’s somehow something less queasy about having a dick in you for love than, say, for money.
Catherine MacKinnon on line one.
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Benedikt’s frankness in putting feminists in their place is refreshing, I suppose. But she’s still holding back. The clincher is to explain the choice aborting for sex-selection in the less-queasy, hard-headed economic terms. Women’s health care is more expensive, after all (what with the crazy cost of abortions these days, not to mention the devastating environmental costs and consequences of hormonally-controlled female urine, and the tons of carbon that will inevitably be belched in dealing with it).
Of course, now that this is a national cost concern, the money is no longer (really, was never) just another equally good reason to abort, but a personally unchosen condition that overrides the illusionary freedom to choose, and which society has the legitimate power to affect – choice can be “allowed,” but certain costly choices should be duly taxed and discouraged in proportion to their social irresponsibility (e.g. smoking, eating wrongly, not buying insurance, enjoying the costly luxury of spawning female offspring) and the burden placed on the rest of us who responsibly recognize our communal connection with all life and procreate for the state, according to its needs. Expressing the whole argument and its rational grounds may have hurt feminists’ feelings, but they sometimes lose sight of the big picture and the problem womanhood poses (e.g. irrational hysteria and beliefs in ethereal patriarchal concepts like romantic love, sub-species, and free choice).
Of course, as you know, if she weren’t so impatient with her feminist friends’ unmanly handwringing, Allison could have just pointed out that on these less queasy, more rationalistic economic terms, aborting female fetuses is a win-win for womankind: empowering today’s women with greater access to medical services in the short term; while empowering the fewer women of the future by making them and their daughters a more valuable, rare commodity, with much greater demand, leverage, and clout in the mating/sex market.
With such unprecedented power, our daughters and granddaughters may one day actually use this gift of status we feminists of the present bestow upon them to rise to political positions that allow them to choose the number of females allowed in the next generation. This is what we dream. This is why we fight – in hope of a better world! -
I don’t know why you post these things; you’re the one who has to live with me after I read them. 🙂
Oh, and by the way, “three is a lot.” Yep, we’re doomed.
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Three? Try four!
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Benedikt sounds way too defensive and as we all know that’s no way to promote a movement; you need positive action! Get out there and be proud!
May I suggest in that spirit pro-abortion folks start up a greeting card line? I mean why should those who celebrate the birth of a child get all the postal love?
And if I may even be bolder I’ll give them a great idea for the first card celebrating a friend’s abortion….
“I couldn’t help noticing but….”
“… you got rid of that parasitical non-person in your gut! Congratulations!”
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Excellent idea. After all, in Fargo:
A 36-year-old single mother who was tired of waiting for the right man to come along, has married herself in a commitment ceremony, exchanging rings with her inner groom.
Nadine Schweigert from Fargo, North Dakota, read her vows in front of 40 of her closest friends. According to Channels TV Schweigert vowed “I, Nadine, promise to enjoy inhabiting my own life and to relish a lifelong love affair with my beautiful self.” -
It’s a fantasy to think this way, but wouldn’t it be great to see some adverse impact suits leveled against abortionists? And the suits wouldn’t have to be just gender-based, mind you …
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Wouldn’t matter. We’ve been talking disparate impact in relation to abortion for 2 decades, pointing out that blacks, who represent just 12% of the US population, account for somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of all abortions since Roe. Liberals don’t care, all other issues are subservient to abortion. Hell, even respected liberal intellectuals write pop-econ books (Freakonomics) which hypothesize that crime has fallen over the past 2 decades because blacks have more abortions, AND NOBODY SAYS A DAMN THING.
I’ve said it before: in future centuries they will teach the Roe era (which I define as from Roe to whenever technology makes abortion either unnecessary or truly unacceptable) as a deliberate genocide against blacks. This would not be revisionist history, either. Everyone knows the entire movement was founded by a bunch of people who considered the disparate impact it would have on blacks as a feature, not a bug. And they still do, even if they never talk about it.
Nedward July 5, 2012 at 5:11 pm
Thanks for posting this link to Sassy (or at least one of their former copy editors). Like omigawd