Response Post April 5

Judith Arcana’s approach to the abortion debate is a completely new point of view to me. Due to the environment in which I was raised (catholic school in a notoriously conservative state), abortion was only ever brought up as a moral question of life and death; it was never approached as a women’s issue, the focus was always on the well-being of the unborn rather than the mother. Only when I came to Colgate did I become familiar with the logic behind a pro-choice mindset. Very superficially, I had always summarized the debate this way: on one side there were people who saw an unborn baby and thought abortion was a moral question of life and death, on the other side there were people who saw an embryo and were fighting for the right to choose. Arcana’s argument throws my rudimentary understanding out the window. She makes the compelling pro-choice argument that women are aware of the life and death situation of an abortion decision. She says women do not need to hide behind rhetoric that makes light of the decision. Instead, she thinks that it is better for them to openly accept the true weight of the choice; it will allow them to make an informed decision and accept responsibility. Arcana claims that maternity begins with conception, which is an argument I would have never associated with a pro-choice stand point. But by making this claim for the purpose of supporting a mother’s right to choose what is best for her child, I think Arcana strengthens the pro-choice case.

Response Post 4.4

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.

Leading Post: Anon & Arcan

Anonymous – “How it all Began: I Have Had an Abortion”

This short piece focuses on the movement to decriminalize abortions in Europe. Women were restricted and so were physicians who felt restricted by the law to perform such operation. Furthermore, there were many women that died because of illegal abortions. These women hoped that decriminalizing abortions would not only decrease the number of mortalities related to unprofessional abortions as well as pave a path towards liberation for women.

These women were correct; as soon as the restriction on abortion was lifted, there was an immediate decline in abortion-related death. The organization of women who protested anti-abortion laws confessed publicly to having abortions before and are speaking for the right of every other women to choose to have one as well. This public campaign and confession attempts to take a taboo topic and deconstruct it to make society face it. By confessing in public, they’re upsweeping the topic of abortion from underneath the rug and forcing society to consider the rationality behind decriminalizing abortions.

What I found to be interest in the beginning was how the upper-class German women, through the manipulation of magazines and other media outlets, was trying to give the impression that German women are better than the Americans, the British, the French. They didn’t want liberation and there was “no anger” as a German woman put it (356). This I find to be absurd and also shows how feminists break off into class and often get caught fighting each other instead of the oppressing systems.

Lastly, this text pushes the fact that the fight for abortion is much less about abortion than it is about seeking self-determination for all women.

Arcana – Abortion is a Motherhood Issue

What I found to be immediately eye-catching about Arcana’s piece was how she singled out the biological construct of a woman and emphasized the sexual reproductive system. By doing this, I think she highlights the toll of childbirth on a woman’s body that many tend to overlook. She only gave birth to one child and she can feel and imagine the toll it had on her once “youthful cervix” (225).

We can understand why she started off with this as well because it relates to her background. She performs abortions and she is speaking about abortion in this article to argue that the topic should be not separated from other discussions involving motherhood. It is very much related and for the sake of convenience, we tend to separate discussions of abortion from discussions of contraception, sterilization, and the mothering process. Arcana insist that we lose value to the conversation when we separate it out. Opponents of abortion utilize this “scatteredness” and isolates one thing to attack advocates of abortion, usually singling out the fetus/baby and forgetting about the mother who has the responsibility to raise this child for the rest of her life. A choice that should belong solely to the mother is instead made open for public discussion and indoctrination of ideas. Our society does not accept that “every women who choose to abort a pregnancy is justified in her decision,” (226).

Arcana touches on something separate from the political argument as well. In the recalling of civilizations in the past and in different parts of the world, she brings up that these societies have respected “that matters of life and death belonged in the hands of the mothers,” (226). A woman should not be shamed and ridden by regret and guilt because a society decides this punishment. It’s not fair and Arcana insist that we need a society that is open to recognizing our “joys and sadnesses, our regrets or reliefs,” (227). After all, no one should ever tell us how we should feel.