The XX Factor: What women really think.

• « Prev | Main | Next »

  
  

  No Free Speech About Women?

  Posted Thursday, July 03, 2008 5:48 PM | By E.J. Graff

  As if Emily's article hadn't left me appalled enough about South Dakota's Orwellian new abortion "disclosure" law, I actually clicked over to read the 8th Circuit's appalling decision. Fortunately, no one else was in the office—everyone's sensibly headed out for the Fourth of July holiday—so they couldn't hear the astonished and foul language erupting from my corner.

  Let me add some thoughts to what Dana has been saying. First, I have trouble believing that any female in the country has failed to think about what's happening in her tummy (to use the technical term) when she's pregnant. I remember imagining it when I was in grade school, putting my hands on my tummy just like my mother did, and thinking about something growing in there. Maybe I was an unusually imaginative child, but every girl knows the story: that collection of rapidly dividing cells could become a human being if not stopped. That's the whole point of getting an abortion: to prevent that cluster of cells from becoming an actual person who is your responsibility. It is insanely paternalistic to suggest that girls and women haven't considered what they are doing—especially, as Dana suggests, if they must make the 350 mile drive to the clinic.

  Second point: that 350-mile drive. Rachael, to me, the point of noting that distance isn't to decide whether or not this dearth of full ob/gyn health clinics in the state is an evil conspiracy, or a consequence of the harsh anti-abortion policies and rhetoric of the past 30 years, or just a neutral fact. The point is that a lot of thought and planning goes into making that trip, and into pulling together the gas money and funds to pay for the procedure.

  Third point: To force doctors to mouth nonsense language that they flatly can't believe about a blastocyst being a human being, or about unlikely and unproven possible consequences—well, I don't think I can finish that sentence. It's appalling. The very fact that the law must mandate such statements reminds you that there is a furious national debate over precisely this question. Which tells you outright that the 8th Circuit was on crack when it said there isn't a free speech issue here: The government is forcing doctors to mouth political beliefs that they do not agree with. What's worse is that the 8th Circuit says that a court shouldn't easily overrule duly elected representatives. Well, yes—except when the government is trying to violate an individual's basic rights. As it is trying to do here. Isn't that why we have a Bill of Rights and constitutional review: to protect the individual from the overreaching state?

  Fourth, the dearth of abortion services IS a consequence of the harsh rhetoric, et al., of the past 30 years. Why doesn't every ob/gyn offer this surgery? Wouldn't they all, if they'd seen the deaths and maimings of women that came before Roe, and could see that legal, medically supervised abortion is a lifesaving procedure? Yes, I am writing this even though, for decades, I have had zero risk of accidental pregnancy. (It always used to be fun to answer a new doctor's or nurse's questions: "Are you sexually active?" Yes. "What contraception method do you use?" None. Their doubletakes were very amusing.) But I have friends, sisters, cousins who need to control their own sexuality and fertility. And I care about women being able to have a say about what happens inside their own organs.

  I realize that I am aiming now into basic disagreement territory, so I will stop. Besides, it's time to start celebrating the July 4th weekend.

  Filed under: women, feminism, abortion, sexuality, South Dakota

About E.J. Graff

• E.J. Graff is associate director and senior researcher at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, where she directs the Gender & Justice Project. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center. As a journalist and author, her work has appeared in such venues as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy magazine, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Good Housekeeping, The Nation, The New Republic, and in more than a dozen anthologies. She collaborated on former Massachusetts Lt. Governor Evelyn Murphy's book Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--and What To Do About It (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Her first book, What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution, has been widely cited in legal journals, reprinted for academic use, entered as courtroom exhibits, and quoted by government policymaking bodies.

PRINT DISCUSS