The failed rhetoric of choice

Chicago Tribune; Chicago, Ill.; March 28, 2002
By Linda R. Monk

It’s Women’s History Month, but feminists can’t seem to get in a good word edgewise. I guess I’m part of the problem. In more than two decades as an active civil libertarian, I never contributed to a group solely focused on women’s rights until last fall. And then my dollars went to a group of Afghani women. Which is odd, because as an American woman I’ve certainly benefited from the increased educational and vocational options made possible by the women’s movement.

I consider myself a feminist, so why don’t I contribute to feminist causes at home? Perhaps one reason is that I haven’t tended to view abortion as the sine qua non of women’s rights. I’ll admit to feeling squeamish about the recent debate over late-term abortions. That’s where the fetus’ skull is collapsed before it is removed from the uterus — as opposed to being dismembered with vacuum suction in an earlier-stage abortion. But still, the “gross-out” factor is higher when you can actually see arms and legs and heads, and abortion opponents made sure we all knew the gory details.

Then I had a friend who needed an abortion well into her pregnancy, though she didn’t know it at the time. She was pregnant with a much-wanted second child. On what she thought was a routine sonogram in her second trimester, the doctor discovered that her baby had severe genetic defects causing massive amounts of fluid along the spinal cord, and would likely be stillborn. The doctor gave her the option of carrying the pregnancy to term, or having an abortion. At first my friend wanted to hope against hope, but then the strain got to be too much. She and her husband decided to go ahead with “the procedure.” No one thought her life was at risk.

But when the doctor began the surgery, he quickly discovered that the abnormally developing fetus had ruptured her uterus and would soon penetrate her intestine — which could easily have killed her. When she awoke from anesthesia, her doctor held her hand and said, “We’re lucky to have you.” I feel lucky to have her, too. Her life was saved because she got to make a tough decision alone with her doctor, without a state legislature playing chaperone.

That could be about to change, because Virginia is at the head of the line of states ready to outlaw late-term abortion — again. Two years ago the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Nebraska law because its definition of late-term abortion was so broad it could have included any abortion at all, and the law failed to make sufficient exceptions to preserve the life and health of the mother. Neither does Virginia’s “medically induced infanticide” law, passed this month. It prohibits virtually all abortions of a “living fetus,” with an exception made if the woman will suffer “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” Only the governor’s signature stands between women like my friend and a death certificate.

Part of what’s going on here is the failed rhetoric of “choice.” If an abortion becomes just another lifestyle option in a me-oriented culture, then it’s hard not to be sympathetic for the fetus especially when you can count its fingers. Feminists warn us that women’s lives are at stake by waving coat hangers as symbols of a bygone age of illegal abortions. But what woke me up is that women’s lives are at risk now — and women I know.

I often wonder if my mother had the “choice” of abortion, would I be here? She was three months from a nursing degree when she found out she was pregnant with me. In 1958, women couldn’t be married in nursing school, much less pregnant. In those days, having a “choice” might have seemed liberating because women had none; today it’s trivializing because they have so many. What’s at stake is not a choice, but a woman’s life.