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The abortion debate brought home

Jill

Another reason to support abortion rights: You really never know when it’s going to be you.

I mean, my wife and I have always been pro-choice, but we never expected to actually confront the Choice. After all, we’ve been trying like crazy to have children. We had already undergone two in-vitro fertilization procedures before this last time, when we put back five embryos, despairing that any would take. Beforehand, the fertility specialist asked us if we were OK with “reduction” — also known as selective abortion — in the event that too many took hold. We said yes, not really appreciating what that meant.

To our delight, four set up residence. Our initial joy, however, was tempered by the realization that we would have to lose two to keep two. For the last couple of months, Tina and I have discussed our options with our doctors, gradually wrapping our heads around this personal and private decision — only to have the government invite itself to the conference at the eleventh hour.

Read it all.

50 thoughts on The abortion debate brought home

  1. Thanks for sharing this, Jill. I think it’s really important for the prochoice movement in general to do away with the “it’ll never happen to me” mindset of middle-America.

  2. It’s an immensely painful story to read, and I was so glad the Times ran it. I especially appreciated the frankness about how the decision to keep the girls was made.

  3. To add to what Miranda said, I think it’s so important to get stories out there that reflect the wide range of people and events that the abortion issue touches. The anti-choicers try so hard to convince people that this is about irresponsible women or teenage girls. I think that anyone should have safe access to abortion on demand, but unfortunately some people need to be reminded that it CAN happen to them.

  5. I know he means well, but some of the language rubs me the wrong way — “My wife and I just had an abortion”, “I wasn’t going to allow that” etc. I’m not saying that a decision like this doesn’t affect the potential father, or that he shouldn’t be involved; of course he should be. And it’s good to hear stories like this from a man’s point of view as well, because these are issues that affect everyone in the situation. But ultimately it is not up to him to ‘allow’ the pregnancy to continue or not, and it is certainly not both he and his wife who are having the abortion. I don’t know why, but the whole tone just sounded as though his wife was not a separate person at all, “we had to put her in the hospital” etc.

    Oh, and in my opinion “promiscuous, lazy or selfish singletons” deserve appropriate healthcare as much as anyone else. We are people too!

  6. It’s a very nice piece, but I find it especially interesting that it was written by the father. While I appreciate that his wife may be too exhausted and physically compromised by her complications from the pregnancy itself, hearing this sense of surprise and its transformative power demonstrates something on which I can’t quite put my finger. Am I angry that a man who has reached his 47th year and tried for years to get pregnant has never really considered what abortion might be like and that it might be something he might find necessary? Am I irritated that these stories, being told by men — who come to the debate comparatively late — seem to be considered more relevant and more persuasive than the stories of women who have actually made use of abortion? Much as I appreciate a diversity of pro-choice voices, reading this story — and, to some extent, the story of the blogger forced to make the decision to save his wife by way of abortion — make me frustrated on some level. How can married men, men who are expectant fathers, not understand that the abortion debate affects them? While I’m happy for him to have had a conversion with respect to the seriousness of the issue, having his story printed in the LAT seems to give him more hairpats and gold stars than he deserves (and certainly more than his wife would receive had she written the same article — can you imagine the reaction to a woman who implanted four embryos writing that she didn’t realize a reduction constituted an abortion? Yegads. But he, you know, he’s just the husband. Not like he needs to read any pregnancy books or anything.).

    I have a special sensitivity to this stuff, I think, because I’m in the early stages of pregnancy and am finding preposterous how awful the books about pregnancy are. The books are all written for the mother, and what little they write about partners is pathetic. It’s always a man, always a husband, and the only stuff he needs to know is that he’s the financial provider, that it’s okay if he’s not excited about the baby at first (because he’ll get used to the idea), that he should prepare for his wife becoming a gassy, lunatic harpy, and that he might not ever want to have sex ever again once he sees the baby come out, so mom will need to work on that once she’s lost the baby weight. It’s enraging how much the guys are let off the hook, and it’s clear that even well-meaning men let things go on without getting informed themselves about this major medical event going on in their homes, one that directly benefits them. So I don’t so much think that this writer is a bad guy, but he sounds very, very typical, and I find the publication of his story as something especially worthy of attention as feeding the permitted male ignorance (with concomitant moral legitimacy) that permeates the patriarchal approach to pregnancy.

  7. The “we had an abortion” struck me as well. I guess to some it seems a natural extention of the “we’re pregnant” trend, which also rubs me the wrong way. Maybe because I’ve heard too many “jokes” about how the man suffers from pregnancy, too. From all the demands of his wife, har har.

  8. The thing is, I don’t think that we — women — are the audience for these particular stories. Men are the audience. They’re specifically designed to make men aware that, yes, abortion affects them, too. It’s not just something that the woman does or doesn’t do, and they passively go along with it — someday, their wife/girlfriend may be dying and they may have to make the decision between her life and the fetus’ life. Just as we take these stories more seriously when they come from someone of our gender, men take these stories from other men more seriously than they would yet another women’s story that they don’t think really affects them personally and never will, at least not until men have uteruses.

    Given that childbirth has been very safe for women for at least the last 50 years, I think that a few pertinent reminders to men that, yes, shit happens and you will have to participate in the decision or even make it yourself are not entirely out of the question.

    Though I have to agree that with this particular story, the man is being treated much more kindly than the woman would be. Man who makes abortion decision = sensible, level-headed person. Woman who makes abortion decision = silly, hysterical person. Grrr.

  10. Some wanted to know how we decided to keep the girls … Some studies show offspring of older fathers (I’m 47) run a higher risk of autism, and males are four times as likely to be autistic.

    Ugh. I don’t envy them the choice they had to make… which to keep, which to let go… but culling out males to avoid autism? Yikes. I have a son with autism. I’m not sure I like the idea of screening them out by gender.

  11. I don’t envy them the choice they had to make… which to keep, which to let go… but culling out males to avoid autism?

    They had to make the choice somehow. (Remember it was also partly based on the position of the fetuses.) I don’t condemn them for the choice they made, essentially an attempt to improve their chances of having two healthy babies. I also wouldn’t have condemned their choice if they had decided to keep the boys because the prejudice against girls is so much greater and, the way things are going, a girl born today may find herself seeking an abortion in a back alley someday. It’s a grim choice to have to make, but it wasn’t one they could avoid.

    (Incidently, I have borderline Asperger’s syndrome, and also wouldn’t condemn someone for aborting a fetus because it might end up like me emotionally either. I wouldn’t want another child to go through what I went through growing up either and if my parents had been able to screen out that defect by prenatal screening resulting in my never having been born…well, you’d probably just have someone else arguing with you instead;)

  12. I’m not sure I like the idea of screening them out by gender.

    Good thing they screened them out by likelihood to end up with a disorder and not by mere gender then.

    People get so defensive when others make a choice they wouldn’t have. Who cares how happy you are with your autistic son? It isn’t relevant to this particular family who’d rather have non-autistic children, period. Frankly, if people don’t want to raise autistic children, it’s probably best for autistic children not to be born into their families.

  13. I don’t think people do realize how risky multiples can sometimes be.

    A friend had two implanted, and those two became three when one split into identical twins. Selective reduction isn’t really even discussed for “only” triplets. They asked about it–due to medical problems she’d had in the past–and they were told it was “only” triplets.

    Pre-e kicked in at 18 weeks, and she went onto bed rest and medication. The triplets were born at 25 weeks, unfortunately undeveloped for even 25-weekers due to the pre-e and medications. All three died by what would have been their 30 weeks gestation.

  14. Mnemosyne, I agree.

    I actually think the recent availability of pro-choice articles from a married man’s perspective are extremely useful in reaching people (read: conservative and libertarian men, and the occasional antifeminist woman) whose knee-jerk raction might be that only sluts get abortions and therefore we can’t have effective slut-shaming if legal, safe abortion is available (I’m using their language here; I’m all for Sluthood as it has been defined in feminist circles). It’s the oldest trick in the book to get sexists to see the humanity of women and the necessity of feminism – ask them to think about if their wives, daughters or sisters were subjected to the same kind of treatment they tend to defend or at least dismiss when it happens to strangers. Only the coldest of cold authoritarian fish could say of his wife, daughter, sister or mother, “well if they treated her that way it’s probably her fault somehow, since nothing bad every happens to properly-covered-up, chaste, submissive Good Girls.” Not that these coldest of cold fish aren’t out there – I know they are.

    Since a lot of these dolts won’t listen to women (since Bitchez Aint Sh*t), put it in terms they can understand and relate to. We really have to change some minds if we want to preserve what’s left of reproductive rights – there are just too many of these bozos, but with the right message delivered in the right way, there’s hope.

  15. “but culling out males to avoid autism? Yikes. I have a son with autism. I’m not sure I like the idea of screening them out by gender.”

    And? It’s kind of like the “If you think abortion is wrong, don’t have one” line. If you ever find yourself in that woman’s position, you can make the choice with which you’re least uncomfortable, which will presumably be different than the choice with which she and her husband were least uncomfortable, which will presumably be different than the choice another random woman would be least uncomfortable with. That’s kind of what pro-choice is–letting people make their own decisions based on their own circumstances and values.

  16. Point(s) taken. I do support them and their right to make a decision. I have made my own choices as well and helped other women through their own. I am frustrated in the system that does too little to alleviate the burden on the overwhelmed families dealing with autism. As the numbers of children born with autism skyrocket (1 in 94 boys now), it does seem that this will more and more be a factor in family planning.

  18. Kat, FWIW I agree with you. The rampant and unapologetic disableism among liberal feminist on this issue is sad. The author didn’t even need to mention the potential of autism.

    There was nothing wrong with what they did, and their selective reduction doesn’t need to be backed up with this sort of ableist asides.

  19. I have a brother with full-blown autism and a daughter with an autism-spectrum disorder. I don’t particularly appreciate Rachel using fake concern for the disabled as an excuse to whine about “liberal feminist”.

    Kat, this wasn’t ‘culling for autism’. They had to have two fetuses aborted, and the risk of autism was one of the factors they used in making that very hard decision.

  20. Mythago, “Rachel using fake concern for the disabled as an excuse to whine about “liberal feminist”.

    So how do you know my concern is fake? Who the hell are you mythago to question my concern for disability rights? You can make your argument, as to why it is wrong for disabled to people to have rights, but you have no business saying I’m a fake.

    Moreover, my point is that the disability issue didn’t even need to be mentioned.

  21. PS- when I say liberal feminism–I mean as opposed to radical feminism, marxist feminism, etc. Not liberal as in left of center.

  22. “Moreover, my point is that the disability issue didn’t even need to be mentioned.”

    Gawd. Could you wank a little more? The concerns of disabilities communities aren’t irrelevant. Honestly, there’s a lot of unnecessary friction…because you really think the “pro-life” crowd cares about health care, access issues, or anything else that matters to the disabilities community? So if the only thing you have to give up to gain allies is the casual prejudice against the disabled…you say: fuck you?

    And kudos for going for the “i have a friend/family member” line. I’m clapping. Very slowly.

    Choices like this are difficult, personal, and sovereign. But what i should hope goes in to our discussion is how social pressure works on certain women to recommend abortion when there is a chance of the child being born disabled. I’d like to live in a world where disablism doesn’t exist so it doesn’t affect women in their decisions about reproduction, where all children are valued, supported and loved when they are born. And that’s part of my pro-choice commitment.

  23. dammit. i need to read better, or maybe in context.

    /goes to sit in a corner

    I’m still mad about disregard of disabilities concerns…it isn’t derailing a discussion if it’s already there. it’d be nice if we could just have a discussion about choice, but the problem is that these other problems are being expressed here.

    that’s all.

  24. You can make your argument, as to why it is wrong for disabled to people to have rights, but you have no business saying I’m a fake.

    Sorry, I missed the point where ANYONE on this thread said that disabled people shouldn’t have rights.

    All I’ve seen so far is people acknowledging that sometimes expectant parents decide that they will not be able to support a disabled child, whether that’s emotionally or financially or both, so they decide to terminate the pregnancy. You can say that it’s morally wrong to do that, but you’re not the one who has to pay their health insurance bills in our completely fucked-up insurance system or figure out who’s going to care for their profoundly mentally disabled child after they die.

  25. A question for anyone who is making the argument that having an abortion because of a disability in the fetus is the same as saying disabled people should have no rights:

    Suppose you wanted to and were actively trying to get pregnant. One day you get a visit from the prenatal fairy who tells you, “If you and your partner have sex tonight, you will get pregnant. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the fetus will have a disability. If you wait a month, you’ll conceive and the child who will be born, if you chose that pregnancy, will be essentially the same child as would have been born from the pregnancy you could have tonight, except that he or she will not have the disability.” Would you have sex that night? Would it depend on what the disability is? (i.e. no if it is anencephaly, Tay-Sachs, or trisomy 13, yes if autism or Down syndrome or something minor). If you said that you would wait, do you consider that disrespecting disabled people? Is it also disrespecting people born with neural tube defects to take prenatal vitamins in an attempt to avoid them? Is it disrespectful of people with Down syndrome to not implant a blastulocyst conceieved by IVF if it has trisomy 21? Is vaccinating your child against polio disrespectful of people with polio paralysis?

    My point is that, IMHO, abortion because of possible disability is no different from avoiding possible disability by prepregnancy maneuvers or chosing to implant the healthiest embryo available. Or attempting to avoid post-birth problems that might lead to a disability. One can love a disabled child, respect him or her as she/he is, and yet wish that the disability did not exist.

  26. You can make your argument, as to why it is wrong for disabled to people to have rights

    Thanks for confirming that you’re a fake.

    On behalf of myself and my disabled loved ones, kindly go fuck yourself with a Volkswagen. Skip the Crisco.

  28. One more time, and I’m out of the discussion. My only objection is to the line about chosing to selectively reduce the male fetuses because of studies indicating the possibility autism is higher.

    I don’t think feminists need to or should make these kinds of arguments. There are a million reasons to be pro-choice, and appealing to ableism/fear of disability is one of the weakest ones.

    I silently read these abortion threads all the time, and this almost always comes up. Each time it does, I think how is a person with a disability (in this case autism) supposed to feel welcomed in the pro-choice movement when you have people saying they shouldn’t exist.

    And finally, for the record, I was pissed when I left comment #21. I’ll rescind it for the sake of having a real discussion. I generally like mythago, and I can see how my initial comments could have been misconstrued as trollish. That was not my intent at all.

  29. My only objection is to the line about chosing to selectively reduce the male fetuses because of studies indicating the possibility autism is higher.

    The story says that it was one of several reasons, including the position of the embryos. It’s wasn’t the sole deciding factor, but one aspect of a decision that took several factors into consideration.

    I silently read these abortion threads all the time, and this almost always comes up. Each time it does, I think how is a person with a disability (in this case autism) supposed to feel welcomed in the pro-choice movement when you have people saying they shouldn’t exist.

    Again, no one is saying that disabled people shouldn’t exist. But you’re right that this is one area where disabled rights and women’s rights clash: does a woman have a right to abort a disabled fetus if she’s doing it out of prejudice against disabled people? Honestly, I’m not sure that it’s a clash that can ever be solved. Either women have a right to make their own reproductive decisions or they don’t, and the state gets to say, “Nope, sorry, you can’t abort that fetus just because it has Down’s Syndrome.” Which is the same as the state being allowed to say, “Nope, sorry, you can’t abort that fetus just because you can’t afford to have it.”

    I always try to keep this argument going when it comes up because I think it’s an important argument to keep having. It’s always valuable to examine the seams between two conflicting sets of rights.

    Rachel, you were coming across as trollish because you assumed we were a bunch of abelist bigots who have never dealt with the disabled at all and think that disabled people should have no rights. That’s why mythago got pissed at you. I really don’t need to get into my own family history but, while I am not myself disabled, I have several family members who are, so it’s not like this is all academic to me.

  30. “Either women have a right to make their own reproductive decisions or they don’t, and the state gets to say, “Nope, sorry, you can’t abort that fetus just because it has Down’s Syndrome.” Which is the same as the state being allowed to say, “Nope, sorry, you can’t abort that fetus just because you can’t afford to have it.””

    And just a short hop away from the state being allowed to say “Nope, sorry, a profoundly disabled child would be a drain on already-taxed state resources if it were to be born. You’re not having that baby.” How many of the anti-choicers are already making “missing workers/soldiers” arguments that try to put the state’s interests ahead of women’s interests? That’s not just going to be a one-way street.

  31. Rachel is not arguing that people shouldn’t be able to make whatever choices they want to make with regard to disabled fetuses.

    She’s arguing that it’s not necessary or helpful for pro-choice rhetoric to include anti-disablist sentiment. What’s wrong with the parents in the scenerio above saying, “We chose to selectively reduce 2 of the fetuses because that is what was best for us.” and leave it at that. WHY are we giving in to the anti-choice rhetoric in order to then feel it necessary to provide REASONS for the choice? The reasons don’t matter – the choice is theirs and THAT is what we are fighting for, isn’t it?

    For those of you arguing that using this as reasoning, “we don’t want our kids to have autism” isn’t ablist – go fuck YOURSELVES (to use Mythago’s wonderful terminology). It is. And it’s certainly not creating services or a culture that accepts people with disabilities as normal functioning members of society (in whatever capacity they function) who happen to be different.

    Everytime I hear a feminist argue that we need abortion rights so that women can get rid of abnormal fetuses I cringe a little and think to myself – I guess they don’t want me around.

    We need abortion rights. We need them because women deserve the right to make autonomous decisions about their bodies. Period. End of Story.

  32. Oh, and for the record, does anyone find the “my kids, my nephews (whatever) have fill in the blank disease and so I am not ablist” reminiscent of, “I CAN’T be a racist – I have a black friend.” Or, “I can’t be sexist, I’m married to a woman.”

    Sounds awfully familiar to me. Just because you may know people who are disabled doesn’t mean you might not be aware of your ablebodied privilege or offensive language and rhetoric.

    Just like my knowing and being friends with black people doesn’t necessarily mean I can’t do or say something that is racist – even if I don’t MEAN to be.

  33. I keep having more to say on this subject.

    If a white parent makes the argument to her adult white daughter that she shouldn’t marry a black man because “what about the children?” is she racist?

    What if it’s, “I don’t have a problem with black people, but the rest of society does and so your poor children will have to face that – you don’t want to do that to them, do you?”

    Is that racist?

    If it is, then the same rhetoric, “Don’t have a Down’s baby because although *I* have no problem with people who are Down’s, her life will be hard because of society, and you wouldn’t want to do that to your child.” is also ablist.

    Own it. Admit it. You can’t change it unless you do.

    I’m not saying you’re all evil heartless wenches who think that disabled people don’t deserve to live. But I am saying that that the rhetoric you are using is ablist and contributes to an ablist culture. At least admit that and then you can tell me whether you think I’m crazy because I don’t think feminists should have to resort to ablist rhetoric in their fight for choice.

  34. We need abortion rights. We need them because women deserve the right to make autonomous decisions about their bodies. Period. End of Story.

    Obviously. But that argument isn’t working very well, is it?

    The point is that it’s important for women (and men) to be honest about their experiences with abortion. People terminate pregnancies for many reasons. The fact that some women choose to terminate pregnancies because of disability IS important, and SHOULD be talked about — not because it’s a good pro-choice argument, but because it also demonstrates how difficult it is for families to make truly free choices in a country that simply does not support people with disabilities.

    If we had a better health care system and better institutional safety nets for people with disabilities, I’ll bet that some women would make different choices. That’s a moral failing on behalf of our society, not upon individual women who are unwilling or unable to shoulder that burden all by themselves. We DO live in an ableist society, and people with disabilities DO face discrimination, lack of access to medical care and education, lack of resources, and on and on. We need to deal with the institutional issues instead of telling women and men that being honest about their choices is bad for people with disabilities.

    Compare it to gender-based pregnancy terminations. Would I be put off by someone who published a story of a woman in India or China, where gender-based terminations are more common, saying that they terminated a pregnancy because the fetuses were girls and girls are undervalued and expensive to raise in their societies? Sure. But my answer wouldn’t be, “The story could have just left that part out.” Of course it couldn’t have left that part out! That’s a crucial piece of the broader picture of oppression that does influence the choices we make. We need to be talking about these things.

    The “don’t talk about terminating pregnancies because of disabilities” argument strikes me as again reinforcing the idea that there are “right” and “wrong” reasons to have an abortion, and if you have one for the wrong reason, you should keep your mouth shut and be ashamed. That’s crap.

  35. If we had a better health care system and better institutional safety nets for people with disabilities, I’ll bet that some women would make different choices. That’s a moral failing on behalf of our society, not upon individual women who are unwilling or unable to shoulder that burden all by themselves. We DO live in an ableist society, and people with disabilities DO face discrimination, lack of access to medical care and education, lack of resources, and on and on. We need to deal with the institutional issues

    Yes, Absolutely. Relying on an argument of, “disabled people are too much of a drain, let’s abort the potential for disability – that’s GREAT!” is not helping to get to institutional support or reduce the ablist culture.

    We need abortion rights. We need them because women deserve the right to make autonomous decisions about their bodies. Period. End of Story.

    Obviously. But that argument isn’t working very well, is it?

    So instead of owning the agenda, rhetoric and language you’ll choose to use whatever means necessary to win the argument? You wouldn’t advocate that logic with anything else – why do it here? Gays and Lesibians should have access to the same rights and privileges of marraige as heterosexual people do. SIMPLY because it is a civil rights issue. When the religious right starts arguing the bull shit about the “immorality” of gay and lesbian partnerships no one cowtows to that rhetoric to respond. We just say bull shit and move forward with civil rights rhetoric.

    Why do we give in to the anti choice rhetoric? We have been doing it for decades – it’s time for the pro choice movement to be firm about their rhetoric and set the stage for the argument/debate.

    Same is true for democrats needing to suck it up and quit cowtowing to the conservative agenda. Isn’t that what we complained about with Clinton? Isn’t that what we complain about now with the Dems? All I’m saying is we need to do the same with the pro-choice rhetoric.

    I’m pro- choice. I don’t want to restrict choice, I don’t want people to not be able to tell their stories – I want the general ideology and rhetoric of the debate to be about women’s choices not about potential harms of the fetus.

  36. Ok Jill. Since we live in a sexist, patriarchal society that is harmful to girls and women I’m going to abort any female fetuses from now on. After all, girls cost so much money, what with the weddings to pay for and all those damn clothes, etc. Not to mention I have to worry about my teenage daughter getting knocked up or being raped or molested. She likely won’t get treated respectfully by educators, employers or physicians. She won’t have access to full rights about her body. If she’s poor, she’ll get stuck raising children with little to no resources and have very little sympathy or help from the general population. So, the answer is just not to have any more female babies.

    And when I say, “I don’t want a girl baby.” I’m not being SEXIST. No no, I’m fighting the patriarchy by refusing to bring another girl into the world for the system to abuse. I’ll start having girl babies again when the proper rights, respect and services are restored.”

    Sound good to you? Because your argument about why we HAVE to use the “we don’t want disabled babies” rhetoric in discussing abortion is the same damn thing.

    No one would hear about those cases in India and China about sex selection and think for one minute it wasn’t sexist. Why is it that when I (or Rachel) say that if you discuss termination on the grounds of potential fetal abnormalities is ablist we are suddenly being troll like and “unfair”?

  37. The “don’t talk about terminating pregnancies because of disabilities” argument strikes me as again reinforcing the idea that there are “right” and “wrong” reasons to have an abortion, and if you have one for the wrong reason, you should keep your mouth shut and be ashamed. That’s crap.

    No Jill, What is crap is trying to make abortions seem “not bad” by saying that the benefit of getting rid of defective fetuses is better than the bad that comes from abortion.

    That is buying into anti-choice rhetoric. Coming up with an “excuse” to have an abortion. No one should need an excuse. Abortion is not bad. Allowing the anti-choice rhetoric to frame the debate and coming up with “reasons” people need abortions (because they can’t afford a baby , because it’s dangerous to a woman’s health, because the fetus is defective, whatever) is crap. The reasons don’t matter and shouldn’t be part of the rhetoric. What matters is a woman’s ability to choose what is right for herself, her family, etc.

    Keep the rhetoric at:
    “A woman’s right to choose to control her own body is paramount. No one should need to provide a “reason” for abortion (particularly in the first trimester) because there’s nothing WRONG with it.”

    Stop letting anti choice people run the terms of the debate.

    Notice how throughout all my arguments I use the term pro and anti choice? Not “pro abortion and anti abortion” not pro life and anti life – because what I as a feminist am arguing is that I am pro choice – I am for a woman having autonomy over her own body. Those who aregue against us are not “pro life” – they are AGAINST a woman’s right to control what happens to her body. Fight to keep the terms on that level – you just might find that we;d make more headway that way. Language is powerful.

  38. Kate, take a deep breath, and go back and read what I actually wrote.

    You seem to be under the impression that someone, somewhere is saying that we should abort pregnancies which will result in a disabled fetus. I’m not sure what “anti-choice rhetoric” we’re supposedly embracing here. Can you give me an example? Because all the anti-choicers I read are quick to say that women who terminate because of disability are selfish bitches.

    And no one is saying that we HAVE to use the disability issue to fight for abortion rights. Seriously, if you’re going to throw out accusations like that, you need to back them up. What I’m saying is that the REALITY is that people DO use the disability issue in determining whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. I’m saying that we can’t ignore that when looking at abortion rights. I am not saying that we should use it as a tool to advocate for abortion rights, rather that we need to recognize its existence.

    I also never said you were a troll, and I didn’t say that certain decisions to terminate weren’t abilist. Again, respond to something someone actually said, not strawmen.

    I didn’t see the author of this piece as coming up with an excuse, I saw him explaining why they chose the two fetuses they did. He didn’t need an excuse. I’m not saying that anyone needs an excuse or a reason. I’m saying, though, that people do have reasons, and that ignoring those reasons is really bad for women. “Choice” is not made in a vacuum. Choice is meaningless if the spectrum of choice is limited. So no, it’s not good enough to just say “It’s a woman’s right to choose and that’s that.” No, women should not have to explain themselves or provide excuses. But we do need to look at the reasons women have abortions in order to make “choice” more realistic. The fact is that there are women all over the world who terminate pregnancies that, under different circumstances, they would want. I think we should give women the widest variety of choices possible by making motherhood an option, too. Too many women choose abortion because they can’t afford a child, because they’re so social safety net, because single motherhood is stigmatized, because they can’t go to school and have a family, because there are few resources for disabled children in this country. If we obscure those reasons, we miss valuable opportunities to make things better for women.

    So, one more time, no one is saying we SHOULD terminate pregnancies if the child will be disabled. No one is saying that women need to justify their choices. We’re just saying that being honest about your reasoning is ok, and that women shouldn’t be shamed for deciding that they cannot handle raising a disabled child.

  39. Jill,
    Go back and read this thread again through the eyes of a person with a disability. Listen to Rachel and kat touch on the ablist assumptions about the “logical and reasonable” solution to abort the male fetuses because they *might* have autism. Read where Mythago and others jumped down Rachel’s throat for daring to call a decision to abort a fetus based on it’s *potential* for autism ablist. No where – at ALL did Rachel say these people don’t have the *right* to make whatever decisions they made. In fact I believe what she said was:

    There was nothing wrong with what they did, and their selective reduction doesn’t need to be backed up with this sort of ableist asides.

    Yes, I realize that the original piece stated that it was only *part* of the decision, but even so, it is an ablist decision. Deciding to abort the female fetuses because they might have to deal with the problems of the patriarchy would be sexist – no? If a bi-racial couple had to decide to selectively reduce and science could somehow figure out that 2 of the babies would be lighter skinned than the other two and they chose to terminate the “dark skinned” fetuses that would be racist, wouldn’t it? So what is so wrong with calling the decision to abort based on the *potential* for autism ablist?

    I’m also don’t have a problem with what the people in the original article did. I don’t know how I would have made my decision if I were in their shoes, but I also think that allowing the *potential* for autism as a primary factor in their decision (and if it wasn’t a primary factor why mention it) is ablist. I don’t see the problem with calling a spade a spade. When Rachel did that Mythago got nasty.

    I’m not sure how often I have to say this, but the primary thing I disagree with here is using a “defective” fetus as an argument for abortion. Quit coming up with “reasons” we need abortion – THAT rhetoric isn’t doing any good because it ultimately backs up the anti-choice agenda – which is that there is something wrong with pregnancy termination.

    If someone is trying to convince the world that apples are evil and people shouldn’t eat them, I don’t want to argue that I need apples because they are good for me or because they provide necessary fiber, vitamins and minerals. Or that if there wasn’t anything else to eat, I should at LEAST be able to have an apple. Or, if someone forced me to grow an apple tree against my will shouldn’t I be allowed to then eat an apple?

    No, I’m not going to argue any of that nonsense because at the heart of it, there’s nothing WRONG with eating an apple and I’m not going to allow the anti-apple people to sway people into thinking there is something wrong with eating apples. I’m not going to give them the satisfaction of coming up with excuses for apple eating because that only feeds into the idea that there’s something inherently WRONG with eating apples.

    Instead, I’m going to say, “I’m going to eat an apple because I want to and there’s nothing wrong with it. And because you have no right to restirct what I can and can not eat. You don’t restrict those candy bar eaters from eating candy bars. It’s not your business to decide what I get to eat – and in fact it is WRONG for you to try to impose your anti-apple eating on me.”

    In your initial response to me you implied that it is necessary for us to talk about people aborting potentially defective fetuses in order to shed light on the ablist society in which we live. But you and I both know that isn’t the reason that people use abortion of a defective fetus as a pro-choice argument. Because if that was the logic we’d be arguing the nonsense I wrote earlier about not having any more girl babies or babies of color.

    Ultimately, I may not LIKE the reasons various people choose for having an abortion, however it is my belief that it’s not my business to like it or not. My argument is that the discussion should be about a woman’s right to choose. There is need to add reasons.

    Whether anyone here wants to admit it or not, deciding not to have a baby because of it’s potential defects is ablist. I’m not saying I don’t understand why they would make that decision, I do. But it is still one that is based on an ablist culture.

    And like it or not, when I hear someone saying, “I am going to abort this otherwise very much wanted fetus if it has Charcot Marie Tooth Disorder (the disease I have, a form of muscular dystrophy)” what I hear is, “you’d be better off not existing.”

    There’s only so much you can put up with people effectively saying, “You’d be better off not existing.”

  40. Leaving out information about people’s reasons causes people to jump to conclusions about such reasons. For example, if the father had said, “We decided to abort the two boys,” what would people think about that? People who want to judge their decision would do so on the basis that it was simply a sex-selective abortion. What if they’d said, “We decided to abort the two boys, because of their uterine position,” people would conclude that it was a solely medical decision, but the story would be insincere and therefore lose its credibility.

    I don’t agree with the notion that they should have left out their reasoning, because their reasoning is what’s most compelling about the story, at least to fence-sitters. Married people aborted wanted children for medical reasons — that’s not the typical story of an abortion in our society’s abortion narrative, and the deviations are therefore important. Had they only included their most noble reasons, the story would be a whitewashed bit of propaganda.

    Completely separate from that idea, I don’t understand why it’s specifically morally wrong for a woman to say, “I can’t care for a special needs child” and abort. How is that any different than saying, “I can’t care for a child conceived through rape” or “I can’t care for a child that will impede my ability to continue college” or “I can’t care for a child that will make it harder to feed the children I already have”? None of these reasons “excuse” abortion any more than any other, which is okay, because abortion doesn’t need to be excused.

  41. I’m sorry, does anyone here actually think that if we here more stories of, “I chose not to have a baby because I don’t have the resources to care for a special needs child.” that we would suddenly have a more compelling argument for advocating an increase in social services for people with disabilities?

    How has that worked out for poor folks? Because I hear an awful lot of, “I chose to have an abortion because I don’t have the resources to care for a child.” And what is the response?
    “Don’t be a slut who has unprotected sex. Give the baby up for adoption, etc etc etc.” It hasn’t exactly worked at providing a lot of people who think that means we need a better safety net to help poor folks. In fact, I’d argue it’s done the opposite – there’s that whole conservative backlash about how poor folks get themselves into those messes and have no sense of “personal responsibility.”

    If you really believe that more people saying that they abort fetuses because of “defects” will help gain more services and a less ablist culture for disabled people to live in then I have some ocean front property in Arizona to sell you.

    One can love a disabled child, respect him or her as she/he is, and yet wish that the disability did not exist.

    Dianne said this upthread. Along with a bunch of scenerios with rhetorical questions that go something like this, “Of COURSE if you could choose to have a “healthy” baby or a “defective” baby you’d choose the healthy one. Who wouldn’t? Perfectly logical choice.

    Tell that to Deaf families who hope to have Deaf children. And IMHO, no, you can not truly love and respect your child/friend/self for all that he or she is while simultaneously wishing he or she does not have the “defect.” That “defect,” “abnormality,” whatever you want to call it part of who he or she is. It’s not ALL of who he or she is, just like my gender is not all of who I am. but you can not truly respect me as I am and simultaneously wish I was a man. You can not truly respect who I am – all that I am and wish I wasn’t “diseased.”

    By wishing away that part of myself you are being ablist. plain and simple. I would argue actually that by wishing to have the “perfectly healthy” baby you are in some way or another being ablist.

    I’m not saying that it isn’t NORMAL to feel that way. Or that there aren’t some very good reasons to feel that way. What I am saying is that suggesting that being disabled is somehow so inferior as to wish it into nonexistance is a slap in the face to those of us who are here and living our lives.

    If more people accepted impairments as a legitmate variation of normal and we lived in a less disabling environment, then everyone would benefit.

    Just like accepting people of various races as perfectly normal and legitmate variations of human and striving toward a less racist society would benefit everyone.

    Just because being black in the US is difficult, faced with frustrations, racism, discrimination etc, does not make it ok to hope to not have any more black people.

    Curious, would anyone here make the argument that it’s completely moral and reasonable to abort a potentially dark skinned child since we live in such a racist society? Would that be part of your choice rhetoric? If not, then why is it ok to use the exact same arguments for disabled fetuses?

    I am not interested in restricting choice. I am interested in fighting for better services, a better social welfare system for all, less racism, sexism and discrimination. But saying women need abortions because they are poor, people of color, disabled, or whatever is NOT going to achieve those goals.

  42. There’s a problem with these analogies between fetal anomolies and race or gender that people are proposing: both genders and all races are normal human variants. Fetal anomolies are abnormalities that cause problems to the person who has them. Apart from occasional exceptions (ie, I’ve been told that there is a deaf sub-culture that resists, for example, cochlear implants and other attempts to draw its members into hearing society), wouldn’t everyone rather be healthy and have healthy children? If selectively aborting a wanted fetus because it has a defect is “ablist” then isn’t screening for recessive genes also ablist? And taking prenatal vitamins? And vaccinating against polio and rubella? Not to mention choosing a healthy appearing partner?

    For what it’s worth, I’d trade the “specialness” of mild asperger’s syndrome for a childhood that didn’t include harassment that led me to contemplate suicide at age 8 any day. Perhaps that’s self-hating, but there it is. And if there were a prenatal test for autism that had led my parents to abort the fetus that would become me…well, I wouldn’t be here to annoy you with these arguments, but I expect that the world would otherwise go on in an orderly manner.

  43. Kate, no one’s making the arguments you’re criticizing, and it’s really tiresome to read you putting words into other posters’ mouths. It’s not worth engaging you if you don’t actually the posts and instead go ranting off trying to knock down strawmen.

  44. But varying levels of mental and physical ability ARE part of normal human variation.

    Having a disability is a minority status in the US that is not in and of itself necessarily inferior to any other status. Impairments can be troublesome. But, if we lived in a culture that was less discriminatory toward people with impairments then they would be less problematic.

    I’m sorry. I’m not willing to believe that the genetic “abnormality” that has created my body that does things differently is inferior to one that doesn’t have that variation. I am learning – particularly as a parent actually that I have some advantages because of it. I fought hard to develop that mentality despite an ablist culture, but I got there.

    I’m NOT denying the very real problems that many impairments cause for many people – chronic pain, etc. However, with a radically different attitude toward people with impairments the disabling factors of impairments could be VERY different.

    For what it’s worth, I’d trade the “specialness” of mild asperger’s syndrome for a childhood that didn’t include harassment that led me to contemplate suicide at age 8 any day

    the harassment you experienced isn’t because of Aspergers. It’s because we live in a culture that refuses to deal with the differences Aspergers creates. If children were kinder and in general the world more prepared to handle variations you wouldn’t have been harassed – perhaps you would have been celebrated and then who knows what? There’s nothing inherently wrong with you because of Aspergers – there’s something inherently different, but not WRONG.

    Have you ever read I know why the caged bird sings? Maya Angelou speaks poetically about what it felt like to hate herself as a girl because she was black – how she felt inferior and how she experienced many unpleasantries because of that. I think we can all come away from that book saying something along the lines of, “It isn’t her skin color that needs to change. It’s society.”

    What would the world be like without Stephen Hawkings? It isn’t his impairment that needs to change – it is society.

    On the contrary, I think the gender and race paralells are particularly apt because so many people think that disability is just nature’s fuck up. I take great offense to that line of thinking. It’s PRECISELY that line of thinking that suggests the world would be better off without any disabled people. I don’t agree.

    Disabled is a minority status (in the sense of oppressed group) just like women, people of color, gays and lesbians, etc. It’s not until we recognize that that we’ll actually make any dent at all in the ablist culture.

    Really, the only difference between the status of disabled and the status of gender or race is that disability is the minority group anyone can enter at any point in life (and in all likelihood WILL if you live long enough).

    I have had my daughter vaccinnated and I do what I can to preserve her health as best I can. but I’m willing to admit that the motivations for those behaviors are at least in part motivated by ablism. Let’s just call a spade a spade.

  45. And IMHO, no, you can not truly love and respect your child/friend/self for all that he or she is while simultaneously wishing he or she does not have the “defect.” That “defect,” “abnormality,” whatever you want to call it part of who he or she is.

    My nephew has asthma. I wish he didn’t and if there were a way to make it go away I would. I guess I don’t really love him for who he is because I’d rather he could participate in sports and didn’t have to gasp for breath regularly.

    Several relatives have depression. I wish they didn’t have to waste substantial parts of their of their lives feeling too unhappy to so much as move. In fact, I’ve suggested therapeutic approaches (meds and/or counseling) so some of them. I thought it was a loving act to try to help them feel better, but I guess I secretly hated them.

    All this “but disabilities are so special and so much a part of people” crap is nothing more than sentimentalizing, sugar coating a problem. Sorry, but not being able to do what 99% of humanity can SUCKS! Yes, yes, I know the example of the deaf community and all, but even so, a large number of deaf people don’t enjoy being deaf and would be thrilled to have a way to hear again. Some don’t and that’s their choice. No one’s suggesting forcing cochlear implants on them. But, please. This romantization of mental and physical problems is not advocacy for the disabled.

  46. Kate, no one’s making the arguments you’re criticizing, and it’s really tiresome to read you putting words into other posters’ mouths. It’s not worth engaging you if you don’t actually the posts and instead go ranting off trying to knock down strawmen.

    ::Patting Kate on the head and nicely telling her to shut up::

    I guess I’m going to have to spell it all out.

    I’m sorry – there was uproar about calling the decision to terminate because of the potential of autism ablist. You have to actually, you know have reading comprehension skills and actually believe it can be there to see it, but it’s there. And if it were about just about any other minority status I wouldn’t be the only one who does see it.

    Here:

    And? It’s kind of like the “If you think abortion is wrong, don’t have one” line.

    This person is responding to someone with a disabled child who was taken aback at the decision to abort because of the potential for autism. Clearly, she felt like that was saying people with autism shouldn’t exist. This poster was clearly telling the woman who insinuated that there might be something ablist with this reasoning to shut up – it wasn’t her decision to make (which is true by the way, but still doesn’t exactly address the ablist concerns).

    I have a brother with full-blown autism and a daughter with an autism-spectrum disorder. I don’t particularly appreciate Rachel using fake concern for the disabled as an excuse to whine about “liberal feminist”.

    Kat, this wasn’t ‘culling for autism’. They had to have two fetuses aborted, and the risk of autism was one of the factors they used in making that very hard decision.

    In other words, “how dare someone suggest that a decision to abort based on a potential disability is ablist? I have disabled family members, no one can dare tell me what is ablist and not. Rachel just hates us and should shut up.”

    All I’ve seen so far is people acknowledging that sometimes expectant parents decide that they will not be able to support a disabled child, whether that’s emotionally or financially or both, so they decide to terminate the pregnancy. You can say that it’s morally wrong to do that, but you’re not the one who has to pay their health insurance bills in our completely fucked-up insurance system or figure out who’s going to care for their profoundly mentally disabled child after they die.

    Translation: “People have every right to make decisions not to have disabled fetuses because they are a drain. It’s a totally legitimate to make that decision because of how awful our current social service system is, that isn’t ABLIST. People need to stop saying it is ablist.” (FWIW, I have said all along that I think this is a legitmate concern for people, and people can terminate pregnancies for whatever reason they wish, but that doesn’t mean it’s not ablist at it’s core. And using disability as a legitimate reason for termination advances the idea that it’s best to just not bring disabled people into this world.)

    Rachel, you were coming across as trollish because you assumed we were a bunch of abelist bigots who have never dealt with the disabled at all and think that disabled people should have no rights.

    Translation: “Rachel, because you dared to call the decision to terminate even if only partial motivated by the fear of autism ablist we thought that was troll like.” People were definitely getting upset because someone mentioned that a decision to terminate a pregnancy based on the risk for disability is ablist – even though that decision might be understandable. Notice how no where in here does anyone actually ADMIT that the decision to terminate based on a *risk* of autism is ablist. Jill eventually did downthread, but not until I started arguing.

    The fact that some women choose to terminate pregnancies because of disability IS important, and SHOULD be talked about — not because it’s a good pro-choice argument, but because it also demonstrates how difficult it is for families to make truly free choices in a country that simply does not support people with disabilities.

    If we had a better health care system and better institutional safety nets for people with disabilities, I’ll bet that some women would make different choices. That’s a moral failing on behalf of our society, not upon individual women who are unwilling or unable to shoulder that burden all by themselves. We DO live in an ableist society, and people with disabilities DO face discrimination, lack of access to medical care and education, lack of resources, and on and on. We need to deal with the institutional issues instead of telling women and men that being honest about their choices is bad for people with disabilities.

    So in other words, it’s necessary to discuss the fact that people terminate pregnancies due to disability in order to advocate for better social services for people with disabilities. I’m pretty sure that comment #42 addresses that argument.

    Compare it to gender-based pregnancy terminations. Would I be put off by someone who published a story of a woman in India or China, where gender-based terminations are more common, saying that they terminated a pregnancy because the fetuses were girls and girls are undervalued and expensive to raise in their societies? Sure. But my answer wouldn’t be, “The story could have just left that part out.” Of course it couldn’t have left that part out! That’s a crucial piece of the broader picture of oppression that does influence the choices we make. We need to be talking about these things.

    I’m pretty sure I addressed this (albeit fasciously) in comment #37. If it’s true that we need to compare this to gender based selection then let’s REALLY do a comparison to what she is suggesting. After all, there is systemic discrimination against women and girls and social support systems suck. So then let’s use the argument that we terminate female fetuses in order to draw attention to the patriarchal nature of society and the lack of support systems.

    Completely separate from that idea, I don’t understand why it’s specifically morally wrong for a woman to say, “I can’t care for a special needs child” and abort. How is that any different than saying, “I can’t care for a child conceived through rape” or “I can’t care for a child that will impede my ability to continue college” or “I can’t care for a child that will make it harder to feed the children I already have”? None of these reasons “excuse” abortion any more than any other, which is okay, because abortion doesn’t need to be excused.

    Here you are making an argument that there’s no difference between deciding to terminate due to disabled status than any other reason to terminate. I addressed this in comment #42. There IS a difference between saying I would terminate due to disability and saying I would terminate due to the fact that I just simply don’t want any other children. The difference is about the rhetoric. If you would contend (and I assume most people here would) that to make a similar argument about how it would be racist to state that you would terminate because you’d be worried that the baby would be black than it is ablist to state that it using fetal abnormality as a reason to terminate.

    Ultimately, I don’t disagree with you on the rest of your statement, that the reasons are not important because there’s nothing wrong with termination of pregnancy – hell that’s been my argument all along. I don’t intend to restrict anyone’s choice to pregnancy termination because I find their reasoning objectionable (and I might in some cases find it objectionable), but that doesn’t mean that I won’t say that certain reasoning IS objectionable. And I *particularly* think it’s important to say that because I’d prefer we not use objectionable arguments to advocate for choice – I don’t think it’s productive in the ultimate goal – which I think we all basically agree on.

    My last post is in direct response to Dianne and her vocalization of the fact that disability IS different from race or gender has been present throughout this entire thread. She’s just the first to vocalize it.

    I’m done – this is just frustrating me. I had this same argument the last time I came to this site. It hasn’t gotten any less ablist since the last time I was here.

  47. Kate, I wouldn’t be throwing stones about reading comprehension skills.

    Like this:

    So then let’s use the argument that we terminate female fetuses in order to draw attention to the patriarchal nature of society and the lack of support systems.

    Is not even close to what I said. I did not say that we terminate disabled fetuses in order to draw attention to ablist society and lack of support systems. Jesus. I said that some women DO terminate disabled fetuses because of lack of social support systems, just as some women DO terminate female fetuses for the same reasons. That’s all. Just an observation.

    From there, I’m simply saying that those women should be allowed to tell their stores without judgment, and without being told to shut up — which is essentially what you’re telling them when you say that the disability issue shouldn’t be mentioned. And I’m saying that if we have an issue with women terminating because of lack of social services, then we should address the social service issue instead of shaming the women. I am NOT saying that we should use abortion as a bargaining tool. I am saying that if we care about women, we should try and secure greater social services because it will make women’s lives better. I am NOT saying, again, that abortion should be the argument used in order to secure those social services.

    So, one last time: No one here is using disability as a way to advocate for choice.

    I’m sorry this is frustrating you, and I’m sorry you think we’re unacceptably ablist. I think you’re wrong about that, but we’ll just have to disagree. The fact is that you came into this conversation with guns blazing, proceeded to willfully misinterpret what everyone was saying, knocked down strawmen, attributed arguments to us that we never made, and now you’re angry that we responded strongly.

  48. 1. The LA Times article said the two parents were pro-choice but they weren’t necessarily feminists. I haven’t seen a lot of ableist pro-choice rhetoric.

    2. The concern seems to be about breezy ableist asides in discussions about abortion that do not examine ableism in society as a whole.

  49. I myself haven’t seen much feminist discussion that makes these breezy ableist asides.

  50. I guess I don’t love my son, who has Asberger’s.

    Because I *really* wish he wasn’t facing a future that will be so much more painful for him than for the bulk of people in this country.

    And it probably *is* to a major degree my own fault – I was 45 when he was born.

    Thanks for telling me I don’t really love him.

    I suppose you should trundle over to Flea’s blog and tell her she really down’t love *her* son either, because she actually uses *medication* to allow him to function in the same world as all the other little boys around him.

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