Dear Wendy,
There is not so much to know. Well, maybe, that I have designed and taught a postgraduate course to medical staff in "Problems and Ethics in Science, esp. Medicine". It was a new course of its own kind, nearly 20 years ago, and a very new course for me, too. I had to find my own way through much, including the need of a sensible and responsible population control, but not through conveyor belt abortion but through responsible - and yet extremely enjoyable- sexuality.
I also got shocked by the cold and heartless attitude of people claiming to care for women - or is it "wimyn"? I wonder sometimes: Is that a new species? If so, then I might prefer dinosaurs - the didn't chuck away their nature - that they died out was not their fault - as ours could become. So, here my answer to an interview of a specialized (and proud) "abortion-doctor" on the BBC, London:
8 September 2009
BBC – The Interviewk
Bush House, London , UK Dr. J. Boost
theinterview@bbc.co.uk / haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk jboost45@yahoo.co.uk
Ref: Interview of Ms. Gracie with Dr. Susan Whitman (?) on Abortion.
(Please, forward this to both of them)
Dear old Auntie Beeb,
When someone specializes in one activity, they tend to have a reason for doing so. And I can even understand Dr. Whitman (I hope I’m getting the name right – but just call her Susan), especially after she heard her grandmother’s taunting story. It cannot be good to feel guilty for the rest of your life. And what grandma did as a silly young girl was manslaughter - this granting her that the death of her friend was not intended – but to know and accept a danger is often seen ‘de jure’ as conditional intent, and would qualify the act as murder. And doing that to your friend can be nothing but hard. <Grandmother and some friends tried to “help” a classmate to abort*>
Nobody should feel a need to commit such an act – and nobody should feel a need to have it done! Being pregnant is not a curse, nor is an embryo or foetus a cancer that must be removed! There are reasons which make such a hard decision necessary – and Susan is wrong when she claims that women don’t feel bad when they have an abortion. Some yes – but some don’t feel bad when they sell their bodies either. But the vast majority of women do feel a terrible loss when a child is not allowed to live – for that is the way it feels, and the way it should.
In Japan, I hear, a small funeral ritual is held for the unborn child. That is good, because it gives the family, mother as well as father, and possibly siblings, the needed outlet for their grief – which is much better and honest than the feel-less throw-away attitude of our “choice-fanatics”. It is better for both sides, those who lose that part of their family, and the child who loses the most cherished part of human existence: life. And it still values the lost child as what s/he is: a human being. Even when only three months old, the foetus has a neuron system, can feel, is human.
Susan answered to that with the notion that “the fetus can be anaesthetized, to feel no pain in the procedure”. This was Susan’s favourite and most frequent word: “the procedure”. Now, if the act of abortion was necessary, call a spade a spade: say “operation” – not some euphemistic cover-up! If life or health are in danger, operate the danger away – and grieve - because the embryo or foetus is not guilty of any wrong, is an innocent child.
What frightens here, though, is Susan’s description of a doctor who acts as if she was working in the death chambers of Texas or Virginia: first anaesthetize, then kill the convict. Even though I do not agree with the taking of any life, unless in real defense of another life –be it a mother’s or anyone else’s- I still find it even more shocking to see an unborn innocent life put in the same kind of category as a murderer.
I know, I read that kind of analogy before, in a NYT forum, where feminist “choicers” talked about a “bleeding blob”, “exploiter”, or “invader”, when they meant unborn child, intended for execution. In such a view, of course, an innocent unborn child would be the same as a rapist and, thus, “deserve all he gets” (that child also being preferably male, as in general selective practice).
If that be so, then, any law that made the killing of a pregnant woman a double murder is wrong. Likewise: the young man who hit his girlfriend’s tummy, at her request, and after she had done so before, should not get a life sentence in prison for murder – while she had only used her “right”, according to Roe vs. Wade.
Roe vs. Wade is based on perjury anyway. Norma McGovern, alias Jane Roe, was never raped, and she did not abort her child. Therefore, whoever uses Roe-Wade as an argument pleads for the “Right to Lie” – and that is used in about 50% of rape accusations [viz. Holland (UK) Duke (US) etc.]. Worst of all, the Supreme Court who, thereby, and by rejecting Norma McGovern’s three-times request of annulment, have created a precedence declaring “Perjury a Women’s Right”.
And anyway, although I agree that an underage child should not become a parent, I disagree that this should give only girls a right to request an abortion. Therefore: would Susan perform that “procedure” on the request of a boy who was raped by his baby-sitter or teacher? So far, the boy would not have the right to refuse being made a father “against his will” (as Susan Brownmiller so correctly called it in her book) but, instead, would be treated as the perpetrator and sentenced to 20 years of financial and emotional punishment (done in several courts in the US).
Also, did Susan, not a single time, mention anyone but the pregnant woman wanting an abortion – as if no one else were involved. Isn’t that utter arrogance? Are not children the product of two persons of complementary sexes? Are they not carrying both parents’ genes? Are they not fulfilling both parents’ dream of immortality? Does Susan wish for Huxley’s “Brave New World”? Is the world entirely female? Are all children the product of mythical Parthenogenesis having become physical fact? Or does Susan believe so much in Dolly the sheep? (Who was actually short-lived and infertile.)
I know: there is something wrong in this. But what is it? Susan spoke of “empowering”. That frightens even more. Royal power? Imperial power? Women’s Power? Power over life and death? Power over our property – children and men? Power as in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo? Barbara Ehrenreich seems right that “we have to rethink and define Feminism after that”. Because a False Feminism has mislead us into a self-centered emotional and moral shallowness which endangers our Humanity.
Let us not lose that. Children are not easy living companions – but neither were we. If our parents had thought of us in that same way of: “I love this one – this one not – this one – this one not ….” they would have noticed that creating a child is having a child – for good – not like a car or new TV from the sperm bank (sorry: shop). And we would not feel like “Oh, I was chosen!” but “Oh sh.. – they could have dumped me”. We would get poorer – much poorer.
And that is where I pity Susan – and many so-called “choicers” and other “feminists” (and I use the inverted commas with a meaning). Maybe, I sound old-fashioned – and I am:
There is a deep difference between living and being a consumer –
and I prefer life, because I am human.
Dr. Joan Boost
