Thursday, July 03, 2008 - Posts
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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.
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Dana,
Even though we sit on opposite sides of the abortion debate, I am also uneasy with South Dakota's law compelling abortion doctors to tell women that they are terminating the "the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being." There are a million and one better ways to reduce the number of abortions, from better sex education and better access to birth control to charities who work tirelessly to support women who choose to keep their child or keep the pregnancy and give the child up for adoption. And while I do think pre-operative counseling for women seeking abortion is beneficial and would support laws mandating such counseling (it seems like some in the pro-choice movement are acknowledging the emotional and psychological difficulties that some women who choose abortion face, as there are pro-choice groups springing up that offer counseling to women post-abortion), this particular law seems unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds.
But I'd like to address another part of your original post. The fact that there is only one abortion clinic in South Dakota is not that remarkable and I'm guessing has little to do with the state's abortion laws. South Dakota's population hovers below 800,000. North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming—states with similarly huge square mileage and tiny populations—also have a single abortion clinic each, at least according to Abortion.com. For the Dakotas, at least, it's been that way since the late 1980s. Such a lack of services isn't limited to abortion providers. Any kind of medical specialist could be a half-day's drive away, depending on where you live. An ob-gyn can be an hour or more away. You might find the dearth of abortion providers unfortunate, but it's not a conspiracy.
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But the point, Melinda, of my hypothetical story about the pregnant woman in South Dakota is that neither she nor her doctors necessarily hold the belief that abortion is the taking of a life. The doctors who require her to sign aren't "pointing out" that there's "a person in there" (or "a human being," in the carefully parsed words of the bill). They're being compelled by the state to go through the motions of simulating that belief, which, I'm sorry, is a Stalinesque absurdity that serves no purpose I can see besides terrorizing that individual patient and driving a wedge into Roe v. Wade nationwide. Doctors in South Dakota, or anywhere else, who are morally opposed to abortion have an option: They can work in a practice that doesn't offer the procedure. In fact, that's what the vast majority of women's health practitioners in South Dakota already do. But for women seeking what is still, whatever one's personal beliefs about it, a legal medical procedure, the options in South Dakota (and if copycat legislation has its way, elsewhere as well) are rapidly narrowing.
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I agree with Will Saletan that it is an abomination that the late Leona Helmsley wished her potentially $8 billion foundation to go entirely to the dogs. Uber-narcissist Helmsley left one of her largest personal bequests, $12 million, to her badly behaved (surprise!) Maltese dog, Trouble, an amount cut to $2 million by the judge overseeing the case. Looking at the photo of Helmsley's taut, rotten face cuddled up to Trouble, the only creature on earth who could bear the sight of her, fills one with faint longings for the return of Marxism. Helmsley's newly revealed preference for her foundation's mission does not have legal standing, so let's hope the trustees ignore it completely. How much better if they decide to do something useful with the money, follow Warren Buffett's lead, and give the pile to the Gates Foundation. If they do honor their benefactor's wishes, be prepared to see that the best-endowed professorship in the country is the veterinary school that establishes the Leona Helmsley Chair in Canine Anal Gland Impaction.
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Actually, Dana, I am a big fan of moral bullying, and wish it had been more effectively used to keep us out of Iraq. I'm hopeful that eventually, through better moral bullying, we will join other civilized nations in outlawing capital punishment. And it is only by building a moral consensus - bullying, if you prefer - that we'll ever see a real reduction in the number of abortions performed in this country every year. I'm not so sure I approve of the particulars of the law Emily wrote about; if the evidence is iffy on whether having an abortion is any more likely to lead to depression than giving birth is, for example, then doctors obviously shouldn't pretend otherwise. But as to whether they are being "forced to lie'' when they point out that there's a person in there, we will never agree. I get that if you don't see an abortion as the taking of a life, you'll see this exercise as offensive. But if you did see it that way, why would you blanch? (You'd still expect doctors to behave with compassion -- and if these are the same doctors who perform abortions, why wouldn't they?) But why would people who sincerely feel lives are at stake think, "Darn, I'd like a shot at saving those lives, if only I didn't have to go so far as to make women read a piece of paper and then sign it; that I will not do!'
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Emily’s piece about the new abortion bill set to go into effect in South Dakota has me madder and sadder than anything I’ve read in some time. (Actually, the last thing that got me into this state was also in Slate: In Steven Greenhouse’s story about the scarcity of vacation time in America, he mentions that the United States is one of four countries in the world without required paid maternity leave. The other three are Swaziland, Liberia, and Papua New Guinea.)
But back to South Dakota. Imagine you live there—in Rapid City, say—and you want an abortion. Who knows why? Maybe you’ve been raped; maybe you’re in an abusive relationship with a partner on whom you’re financially dependent; maybe you’re only 15. Or maybe, for reasons that are nobody’s business, you just really don’t want to have a baby right now. The point is, you need, with some urgency, to schedule a medical procedure that’s been legal in this country for 35 years.
So you get in your car, if you’re lucky enough to have one, and drive 350 miles to Sioux Falls, where the state’s lone abortion clinic is located (let me repeat that: a state with an area of 77,121 square miles has only one clinic that will perform abortions). How you get time off work to make this six-hour-each-way drive, what you tell your family about where you’re going, or how you get past the protesters screaming outside the clinic is not my concern here. No, I’m thinking of the moment when, filling out the paperwork for a procedure that (like many medical events in life) may already have you ambivalent, worried, and scared, you’re asked to sign a statement attesting that what you’re about to do will “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” To translate: We’ll help you terminate that pregnancy right away, little lady—as soon as you admit in writing that you’re a murderer.
The trauma induced by this forced confession probably will scare a few women out of the clinic (hell, all it took for Juno was an ugly waiting room), and thus slightly increase the population of South Dakota. But it seems incredible that the state legislature, with its Justice Kennedy-inspired concern for the “depression” and “increased suicidal ideation” that abortion supposedly brings about, haven’t considered the harm that might come as a result of being forced to sign such a document (in the presence of a doctor who, as Emily points out, is also being legally compelled to lie about his or her beliefs). I’d hope that even those opposed to abortion, whether for themselves or as a matter of public policy, would blanch at the idea of such state-sponsored moral bullying.
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Pixar’s latest kiddie masterpiece, Wall-E, did some massive damage at the box office on its opening weekend. As A.O. Scott recently noted in a New York Times essay about Kit Kittredge (watch this space for more on that film), Pixar has yet to build a movie around a girl protagonist. But Wall-E does prominently feature a pretty bad-ass lady: Wall-E’s crush object, Eve, a sleekly minimalist commando-bot with an itchy trigger finger. What kind of girl is Eve? One XX Factor-er wondered whether Pixar had intentionally made Eve beautiful but dangerous. The hapless Wall-E “is attracted to her,” she noted, “yet fears she will destroy him or, at the very least, come to his house and mess up his stuff.” Is Eve some kind of femme fatale? (Or, given the fact that she looks like a floor model from a Japanese tech show, is she an electronic dragon lady?) I, for one, found Eve’s wanton destructiveness hilarious, and it occurred to me that she actually evokes a specifically male comic archetype—the powerful brute who can’t control his own strength—which I think makes her even funnier, not to mention a little subversive. In other words, I think she’s more Small Wonder than Angelina Jolie.
Eve also fits into another classic comedy narrative: the chic, competent career woman who falls for a bumbling but sweethearted schlub. Do you think Judd Apatow got a consulting credit for that?
The more I thought about it, though, what Eve reminded me of most was the world’s first Eve—in particular, the vision of her found in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Like her namesake, robot Eve’s initial design objective is to incubate the first stirrings of life; it’s no coincidence that she’s shaped like an egg. And the biblical Eve was pretty destructive in her own right. (“Oh, honey, about that whole ‘ruining our chances at immortality and losing God’s everlasting favor’ thing: Totally my bad.”) But even more significant in my eyes, both Pixar’s film and Milton’s poem are about the importance of finding a true partner and companion. The famous last image of Paradise Lost shows Adam and Eve standing outside the gates of Eden; as they prepare to begin a brand new life in a brand new world, they take hold of each other’s hands. If you saw Wall-E, you know that it’s pretty much a 100-minute pantomime about a boy robot trying to hold hands with an oblivious girl robot—before they go repopulate the Earth. The good stories never change, I guess.
Also in Slate, read Dana Stevens' review of Wall-E and see what critics are saying about the new Pixar film in Slate V's Summary Judgment.
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