Judith Arcana’s article is incredibly powerful and emotional. After reading it, I was left with a mixture of feelings about abortion. I have always considered myself pro-choice, but some things about this article made me question my stance. However, other points of Arcana’s reinforced my decision to be pro-choice.
I liked how she mentioned that every woman she encountered took her decision to abort very seriously. The author tells everyone that the women did not take the decision lightly or make the decision quickly…even the women who were far too young to be pregnant. I think that there a stereotype exists about women who get abortions. Often times these women are thought of as careless, lazy, promiscuous, etc. I think that Arcana does a good job of destroying this stereotype, and shows the readers that the people she has worked with in abortion clinics are really torn apart by their decision.
I did not react well to parts of Arcana’s article. Maybe this is wrong of me, but I felt truly disgusted when Arcana discussed how she (in the span of five years) learned how to perform abortions, got pregnant, gave birth, had a miscarriage, had an abortion, and then had surgery to become sterilized. I really disliked how she listed these things like they are everyday occurrences, because these are all big life events! The way she listed them made me think that Arcana is careless about the way she treated her body at one point in her life.
The other point that I took issue with was when Arcana mentioned that every woman she encountered at the abortion center had a justified reason for getting an abortion. I know that I said Arcana debunks the stereotypes about women who get abortions, I have a hard time beleiving that every single woman has a justified reason for needing an abortion. For example, if a woman simply doesn’t want to use protection with her partner (but has the resources to purchase condoms), is that abortion justified? I suppose Arcana has a point that women who abort pregnancies all feel that they could not properly raise a child at that point in their lives, but I still question her idea that all abortions are justified.
For the most part, I agree with you. I also identify as pro-choice. As a pro-choice individual, I disagreed with Arcana at what point someone becomes a mother and the necessity of her framing abortion as a matter of life and death. By framing abortion this way, it implies that abortion is killing, and I do not agree with this. I also agree with you that the way that she frames the 5 years in which she "racked up almost all of my major uterine experiences..." has the unintended consequence of discounting the significance of these events and comes off as callous. I especially do not think that this was purposeful when, as you explain, she suggests that every woman she encountered weighed her decision to abort heavily. However, I disagree with you in questioning this position, because as I think that abortion is every woman's right, it is not up to you or me to place judgment on the reasons behind a woman's choice to exercise this right, and so I agree with her idea that all abortions are justified.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Callie on nearly every point she makes in her post. I too was forced to take a look back and re-asses some of the areas which I considered regarding abortion after reading Arcana’s article. I think it was a VERY good rhetorical strategy for her to stress the gravity at which people held their decision to abort. While I agree with Lisa that I inherently believe it is a woman’s choice and thus I shouldn’t judge someone’s reasons, I think it is important in the broad scope of the abortion movement that people (mostly pro-choice people) realize that the stereotype of someone haphazardly choosing to terminate her pregnancy is usually NOT the case. I think in the long run, this is an important point to stress. I also was offended by Arcana’s description of her 5 years in which she listed the events in her life as though this was the proper course of action or that they were decisions which she made easily as her manner of describing them implies. I thought that this part of her argument was actually counterproductive to her argument as a whole. While controversial, I also have to agree with Callie on her point of justified abortions. Personally, I think it should always remain a LAST resort. If women could have avoided unwanted pregnancy by abstaining or using proper methods of birth control (of course this excludes all circumstances in which a woman is NOT given these options) then I think that is her, and his, responsibility to do so. I think it is the unprotected, irresponsible sex results in a pregnancy which in turn is to be terminated which has given abortion such a terrible reputation. Perhaps if these number of abortions were limited more people would be willing to support the abortion movement as a whole.
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