Monday, July 07, 2008 - Posts
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I want to take advantage of what Maureen Dowd dubs the celebrity divorce moment (Christie Brinkley, Madonna) to talk about how this great American pastime figures for the rest of us. When David and I did the Slate V feature in which we spent a day no more than 15 feet apart, I got one overwhelming response from women: How could you do that? I could never do that! That would be torture! For a while I wondered whether people were exaggerating their horror. After all, how hard could it be to spend a mere 24 hours tethered to the man you married? Annoying, maybe, but torture? And then I came across a story in O called "Divorce Dreams." New York Times reporter Ellen Tien begins the story with a portrait of her bumbling fool of a husband, who lies, always says exactly the wrong thing, scratches his armpit at a parent-teacher conference and then "absently smells his fingers." These anecdotes are not recounted in Lucy-and-Ricky good cheer. The story's first sentence is: "I contemplate divorce every day." Three paragraphs in, I was shocked that someone would write this way under her own byline about her living husband, and not her ex. But apparently I am an idiot. The premise is that women of certain class, flush with financial independence, yoga-toned arms and infinite choices, all yearn for divorce every day. The other ones, who say things like, "My husband and I never fight," or "My husband is my best friend" are either willfully deluded or liars. "Beneath the thumpingly ordinary nature of of our marriage—Everymarriage—runs the silent chyron of divorce." So, help me out here, ladies. Is this true? Am I living in a fantasy land? Or is Ellen Tien as bitchy as she seems?
Read the rest of the XX Factor conversation about divorce and the way men and women treat one another in print.
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Rachael,
All right, you caught me on my own overheated rhetoric (see what I get for posting at 6 p.m. on the Friday before a holiday weekend? I had a great time at Boston's beautiful fireworks, by the way—hope you had a fab weekend too!). No, I do not believe that being willing to perform abortions should be a requirement for getting and keeping a medical license. However, polls show that for the past decades, upward of 80 percent of Americans believe that abortion procedures should be legal at least in some circumstances. Presumably, then, that's also true of upward of 80 percent of physicians.
So, why aren't life-saving abortion procedures taught in medical schools' ordinary ob-gyn classes? Why don't 80 percent of women's ob-gyn practitioners offer the procedure, at least sometimes? Why must the procedure be ghettoized in special clinics, performed by only the few who are willing to risk their lives to save women from having their uteruses pierced by coat hangers, protected by extreme security procedures?
Because performing abortions at all—in any circumstances—brings in credible death threats, murder attempts, and sometimes murder. The 20 percent (or fewer) of Americans who believe it should never be legal to free a woman of an unwanted pregnancy—even if doing so would save her life—have scared the rest. That's what I mean by the overheated rhetoric. I should have added "and homicide."
EJ
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EJ,
I hope you had a great holiday weekend. I don't want to wade into general disagreement territory, either—I suppose most of us have our heels dug in deeply enough that we're not going to change one another's minds. But I wanted to address a few points that you made.
If indeed the "harsh rhetoric" has made abortion less accessible, isn't that a reflection of the unease that a large segment of the population has with the legality of abortion? Just because it's legal doesn't mean that we pro-lifers are going to sit quietly on the sidelines. And, no, just to be extra-super clear, I'm not condoning murderous scare tactics like clinic bombings. But speaking out against abortion, protesting outside clinics, and voting for pro-life candidates are fair and legal ways for pro-lifers to express our belief that abortion shouldn't be legal. It's not a perfect analogy, but death-penalty opponents haven't been quieted by court rulings that uphold the legality of executions, and indeed their protests and agitation have led to more humane executions and more challenges to the death penalty.
You ask, "Why doesn't every ob-gyn offer this surgery?" You wouldn't compel doctors to perform abortions, would you? Even I don't like the South Dakota law that forces doctors to say things they don't believe. It would be far more troubling to force doctors to perform a surgery that violates their own moral code or, in their eyes, the Hippocratic oath (which originally mentioned abortion). How many wonderful doctors would we lose because pro-lifers wouldn't go into the specialty? And what about doctors who are pro-choice but uncomfortable actually doing the deed? What an incredible internal conflict! A doctor could spend most of her day working to bring healthy children into the world and then spend another fraction of it doing the opposite. How do you walk into one exam room and tell a woman that, despite years of trying, she won't be able to have children of her own and then walk into the next room and tell someone else that you'll terminate her unintended pregnancy? Surely there are some doctors who see only the woman as their patient and can make that separation, but there have to be some who see the woman and her child as patients.
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This abortion ruling strikes me as a lot like the religious culture-war debates, where we spend a lot of time fighting about symbolics and very little about things that matter (a creche vs. faith based funding, abortion language vs. actual access) The language suggested by the South Dakota law seems wholly beside the point. For one thing, sonograms make it obsolete. By now, women requesting an abortion usually have to undergo a sonogram to make sure there is a heartbeat, etc. If that doesn't shove in your face the reality of what you're doing, I'm not sure what will. For another, this is yet another case of a liberal straw (wo)man that hasn't existed for at least 10 years, if it ever did. Things have changed a lot since the "My Body, My Choice" protest days. In the literature, in the movies, on TV, there hasn't been a portrayal of a woman casually undergoing an abortion since, since ... Murphy Brown? No wait, she was an unwed mother. Even she didn't get an abortion. ... In fact, I don't know if there ever was one. And it's been a few years since even Naomi Wolf occupied middle ground. What woman desperate for an abortion will bother reading the fine print? And if she does, what will she feel more than the pang that was already there?
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