Posted on 07/12/2004 6:55:09 AM PDT by dead
Focusing on the foetus unfairly obscures the context of a hard decision, writes Leslie Cannold.
The documentary by the British filmmaker Julia Black, My Foetus, won't screen in Australia until August 8, but debate has already begun about whether the film should be censored and the impact it will have on abortion politics.
The film, made while Black was pregnant with her first child, reconsiders an abortion she had over a decade earlier. It shows a woman, four weeks' pregnant, having a suction termination, as well as foetal remains at 10-, 11- and 21-weeks' gestation. The filmmaker claims, in an article in The Observer, to present both sides of the "reality" of abortion: balancing what she describes as "shocking, repulsive, and confrontational" images of aborted foetuses with the circumstances and emotions of the unhappily pregnant women.
There is no question that My Foetus should be screened. For one, it is an unprecedented opportunity for the public to see foetal remains accompanied by accurate captions and commentary. For too long, the anti-choice movement has mislabelled late-gestation foetuses as ones aged 14 weeks or younger (the period, not coincidentally, when 95 per cent of Australian abortions take place). For too long, the anti-choice movement has used voiceovers in propaganda films such as The Silent Scream (in which the ultrasonographic images used are so fuzzy and unclear as to be unrecognisable without narrative direction) to imply women who abort are heartless and cruel.
More importantly, pro-choice advocates have long seen the foetus as the property of the other side, accepting the anti-choice claim that conceding the foetus is human and alive means admitting abortion is morally wrong and must be made illegal - again.
Yet, as foetal imagery becomes increasingly ubiquitous (who among us hasn't seen an ultrasound image or an anti-choice billboard?), this position has become increasingly politically risky. Black is right to feel the pro-choice movement must reclaim the foetus, though I disagree with her assertion that the reason the movement has shied away in the past is the "repulsiveness" of foetal remains.
No, the real problem with focusing on the foetus is that it leaves women - literally - out of the picture. A typical foetal image is of a balled-up cosmonaut in a circular, disembodied capsule. It is rare for the line surrounding the foetus to even gesture at its reality as a woman's womb, little less to the geographical relationship of the capsule to the rest of the woman's body (is she sitting or standing? In which direction are her feet and face?).
More importantly than her body, a focus on the foetus leaves the woman's life out of the picture: her partnership status; her ability to parent well; her plans and ambitions for the future. Yet it is precisely this context, and the way the woman approaches and makes her decision, that makes her choice comprehensible, and provides its moral texture and meaning.
The anti-choice movement knows this. That is why the "hard cases" - unwanted pregnancies resulting from incest and rape, or those that threaten a woman's life - split the movement.
While such foetuses are as alive and as human as any other, many anti-choice advocates refuse to condemn women who abort in such circumstances. Better than any other, these cases show it is our judgements about a woman's motives and intentions that determine our moral evaluation of her particular abortion, not any particular characteristic of the foetus. Sadly, experience shows such judgements to be harsher for strangers, and kinder for friends. Abortion clinic staff repeatedly report doing terminations for anti-choice protesters, only to find them - weeks later - back on the picket lines again.
As Black's film testifies, feeling bad about abortion (or, more precisely, feeling bad about finding oneself in the position of having to face the decision at all) is testament that our moral sensibilities are finely tuned, not that abortion is wrong. Most people who choose divorce, particularly if they have children, feel less than exultant about having to make that decision, yet few believe this proves the choice is wrong or should be legally denied.
Black has rarely spoken of her long-ago abortion. Few of the one in three women who will have an abortion in their lifetime do. She says she wants her film to both change that, and the laws that in both Britain and many Australian states that make abortion a doctor's prerogative; requiring women "to plead insanity to end an unwanted pregnancy".
It is a condescending anti-choice myth that women don't really understand the "reality" of abortion when they choose one, and that seeing foetal remains will - to quote anti-choice warhorse Margaret Tighe - "confront them" with the "truth". Women who've had abortions in the past are wise and mature enough to make their own choices, based on their individual needs and circumstances, about whether they tune in next month.
The response of the public will be harder to gauge. But there is no reason, if Black has done her work well - ensuring both women and foetuses remain in the frame - that supporters of reproductive freedom have anything to fear.
Dr Leslie Cannold is the author of The Abortion Myth: Feminism, Morality and the Hard Choices Women Make (Wesleyan University Press, 2000).
"Complexity of choice"?
They're getting a little too nuanced there, about dead babies.
Now class, can anyone point out the illogic of this sentence?
Anyone?
The first baby was "Baby Zero."
We don't have censorship here in America. Bring the film here. America would love to see it. It would be welcomed with open arms.
Give them a break, it's tough deciding between ripping your baby apart limb from limb and evacuating them or partially delivering them and then sucking their brains out.
The complexity of that "choice" must be overwhelming to the point where one has to dehumanize the baby or go stark raving mad.
Of course!
Silly me
;->
I can't understand how anybody could do one, without doing the other. Dehumanizing babies makes a woman, any woman, stark raving mad.
Abortion is not a pretty picture, but it should be looked at hard. Without squinting or turning away. If this movie is truly a hardhitting documentary, perhaps it should be required in public schools rather than graphic sex and oral sex education crap that is foisted on them now.
After Moores "I hate the American people" film, I'd love to see the left attempt to censor it. They'd make even bigger fools out of themselves.
"Complicated" is a favorite word in liberal duckspeak, along with "shades of gray," "judgmental," and of course "choice" and "anti-choice."
That is the discussion I have had with some of my younger students. That you have to call it what it is-- Killing your child because ________. (Of convenience, it was incest, it was rape, you may die).
When pushed into a corner, we all will fight to survive. We all have to look in the mirror and see who we really are and what we are capable of doing.
If you can still do it, then you learn something about yourself. (Not necessarily a good thing).
The film, made while Black was pregnant with her first non-murdered child, reconsiders an abortion she had over a decade earlier.
How long before we see a high resolution ultrascan of a fetus in the act of being aborted? Would that be a "snuff" film?
The reason there are so many single-issue abortion voters is that these women aborted their children in the past and can't afford to see it called what it is today.
I don't know the stats on how often abortion is performed to save the life of the mother (by murdering the unborn) but lets take a look at the rape stats here in the US:
According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, in 1999 (most recent year I have on hand) there were 18,759 arrests made for forcible rape. Lets assume that 10% of those rapes were committed against post-menopausal women.
16,883 rapes which may have resulted in pregnancy.
Lets assume that of that number, 25% of the rapes were committed against women during their non-fertile cycle (I know, the percentage should be much higher).
12,662 rapes which may have resulted in pregnancy.
Lets assume that of that number, another 25% of the rape survivors were using a method of birth control, such as Norplant or the pill, which would have deterred pregnancy.
9,496 rapes which might have resulted in pregnancy.
Lets assume that of that number, another 25% of the rapes were committed by a man using a condom (ask any detective, they'll tell you how common that is since the advancement of DNA testing).
7,122 rapes which might have resulted in pregnancy.
I'm not going to reduce the number further, although I could, so lets just look at what we have.
According to the CDC, in 1997 (again, the most recent year's stats I have on hand) there were 1,186,039 abortions performed in the US.
What percentage of 1,186,039 is 7,122?
BTW, I'm not trying to say that I endorse terminating a pregnancy caused by rape. Why impose capital punishment on a preborn baby for a crime they did not commit? I'm just pointing out that pregnancy resulting from rape is far less common than the pro-aborts make it out to be.
I don't have a calculator handy, so I had to do this in my head. I got .006%.
(If I didn't divide right, cut me some slack)
You've got a great head for numbers! You win the prize. We can safely assume that less than 1% of reported rapes committed here in the US result in pregnancy. I have no idea what the stats are relating to a pregnant woman's life being jeopardized by a continued pregnancy, but I'm willing ot bet that its less than 5% of all abortions performed. I'm also willing to bet that a significant percentage of those abortions are performed post-22 weeks. My point, basically, is that the overwhelming percentage of abortions are performed for convenience, nothing less.
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