Taking Women Seriously—A Key Insight for Reproductive Justice
Mary E. Hunt, RCRC Board Meeting
February 28, 2007
The new emphasis by the opponents of choice on regrets women have about having abortions suggests to me that we take women more seriously. The Sunday New York Times Magazine article entitled “Is There a Post Abortion Syndrome?” by Emily Bazelon (January 21, 2007) brought widespread attention to this newly emphasized strategy of those who oppose choice. They seize on the emotions of women who have had abortions and instrumentalize women’s supposed guilt to marshal support for anti-choice legislation. Regardless of what one thinks of the article, its placement in the Sunday Times guarantees a huge readership and a certain cache. It brings this issue a lot more attention than it deserves. At the same time, just because something is in the New York Times does not make it true or useful so I warn that we need not get too excited about it either.
The day after the article was published, I observed the Roe v. Wade anniversary anti-choice march in Washington, DC. I saw some women marching with “I regret my abortion” signs, though it was not by any means an overwhelming number. Still, it was jarring to see such signs—a mark of an effective strategy, I am sorry to admit. It is akin to the ex-gay movement with those who have inside knowledge trading sides. But I take women seriously and these women, like others who acknowledge their abortions with positive feelings, have the right to interpret their life experiences as they will.
At the march, I was more struck by the fact that tens of thousands of people trek to Washington every winter to engage in this ritual. To the naked eye, I would say the majority of them look like me—white, middle class, Catholics whose church and church-related schools provide the infrastructure for them to enjoy a few days off, a school-related trip to DC, a visit to museums. Young women in my partner’s family have done this regardless of how weak or strong their or their parents’ commitments are to ending abortion. They are not true believers but convenient bodies. So before we get too worked up about the abortion regret approach I think it is fair to say that it is but one of a number of strategies at work. It adds to, but does not replace, other strategies. It is perhaps less significant in the overall scheme of anti-choice activity than such a prominent place in the New York Times would suggest. Nonetheless, the media rules in so much of this arena that we cannot ignore it.
I will approach the phenomenon in three moves:
1. Explore why this strategy by those who oppose abortion and why now;
2. Offer a critical feminist religious analysis on the move to make regrets an important piece of anti-choice organizing;
3. Suggest pastoral and theo-political strategies for handling it.
In each instance, my guiding principle will be taking women seriously in the accomplishment of reproductive justice lest we get sidetracked from our mission in the thicket of anti-choice efforts. Reacting to them is never, in my view, the best strategy.
1. Explore why this strategy by those who oppose abortion and why now
A look at the literature suggests that this focus on women’s regrets has been with us for some years. For example, Healing Hearts Ministries was founded in 1988 in the State of Washington by an evangelical Christian woman who regretted her abortion of fifteen years earlier and turned to Jesus to save her from her sins. She specializes in women who have had abortions but has branched out in her new book, The Hem of His Garment, to offer “a healing touch from the Lord” to anyone who needs it. A variety of Rachel-named groups exist around the country providing counseling and alternatives to abortion. Many Catholic dioceses have some iteration of the same approach. There is nothing new here. Moreover, women regret lots of things—including having children, making plans for their adoption, not having children, not having a second child. Regrets are part of life. Pathologizing regrets is not.
Perhaps the most well known group running the regret strategy is Silent No More, a project of Anglicans for Life and the Roman Catholic Priests for Life which has been around since at least 2003. Its goals are: 1) to make the public aware that abortion is harmful emotionally, physically, and spiritually; 2) to reach out to women who are hurting from an abortion and let them know help is available; and 3) to invite women to speak about abortion’s negative consequences. It is the prototype of the movement that “addresses abortion by personal testimony that touches hearts,” demonstrating that such an approach can be very effective since virtually everyone has a story to tell. In fact, they acknowledge that one of their reasons for being is so that NOW and NARAL not be the only voices. So in a sense we can say that our colleagues’ efforts to take women seriously occasioned this campaign.
In October 2006, Ms. Magazine published its “We Had Abortions” list of names representing over 5000 women who publicly affirm the choices they made. This followed their 1972 list of 53 women who, pre-Roe, risked legal sanctions by affirming their choices. Of course the Silent No More people geared up with an ad of their own, hoping at last writing for over 1700 women to affirm their regret publicly. So it goes, with the ad agencies smiling all the way to the bank.
I think it is hard to say that one side should do such ads and not expect the other to respond in kind. Both, it seems to me, are responding to a similar reality, namely that abortion has been vilified as the worst social evil so one stakes a moral claim one way or another. But where are the ads that say “I shot an Iraqi and I’m proud” or “I killed an Iraqi and I regret it,” or “I made $14 million tax free last year and I’m proud” or “I regret that I kept children from having health insurance because I made so much low-taxed money.” In short, while I appreciate the spirit of such ads, and the courage of women on both sides who sign them, I think finally they are more similar than different. They are ways to take women seriously as moral agents.
Why has the anti-choice movement put a new emphasis on this strategy now? It is not surprising that opponents of abortion have taken this route, emboldened by Supreme Court justices thought to be sympathetic to their side. Despite the preponderance of scientific evidence from the Everett Koop study during the Reagan years to recent articles in a variety of juried journals, it is clear that many women’s feelings about abortion are complex and longstanding. But they do not necessarily issue in clinical depression any more than women who have not had abortions. What is less clear is what those feelings are, how they connect with a whole life well lived—and even murkier is what they mean.
I think the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice’s own “Pastoral Counseling for Reproductive Loss” is the kind of resource (unfortunately not mentioned in the Times piece) that is very helpful for dealing with the variety of feelings at issue here. No matter how you slice the research pie, there is simply no convincing evidence to prove that large percentages of women are damaged emotionally by making a difficult choice. That said, since many of us who work on these issues are pastors as well as activists, we have to be concerned with EACH woman. So paying attention to feelings and outcomes after abortions, indeed after choosing a child, is part of our work. But this does not mean that we instrumentalize individual cases to form a strategy geared to provoke more guilt in more women.
Why the New York Times Magazine decided to take the bait and handle it as they did is less clear. I would guess that on the eve of the Roe v. Wade anniversary they hoped for a large readership. Their job is to sell newspapers, not to help women. Also, the culture wars sell and their current waning in favor of a political/tactical war in Iraq means that sales are down. What is telling is that three weeks running we have been treated to relatively innocuous Letters to the Editor aimed at keeping this story on our radar. My guess is that the volume of correspondence from the anti-choice people flipped even the New York Times into overdrive. The article simply isn’t that momentous to warrant three weeks worth of responses.
Usually a question in the title means an answer in the piece. But this time the question—“Is there a Post-Abortion Syndrome?”—is rather rhetorical, not answered straight on. There is no clinical diagnosis as such; there are women who claim that having an abortion is upsetting unto depressing for them. The journalistic focus on one woman, Rhonda Arias, and odd notions of babies waiting in heaven discredits the movement but does not fully satisfy anyone. Casting the narrative on women in prison further muddies the waters. Having worked in a women’s prison during my Clinical Pastoral Education, I can say that boredom alone compels women inside in directions they wouldn’t dream of outside. They are a population vulnerable to whatever comes in the gate since they cannot control for bias or offer alternatives to what is presented. They are depressed just being there.
Put it together and no researcher worth her salt will generalize from such results. As a result, this is not a particularly distinguished piece of journalism. Still, the gestalt created even among pro-choice people is that there might be such a thing as Post-Abortion Syndrome or Post-Abortion Stress Syndrome as it is sometimes called, and we await more studies. Given this, I do not see the New York Times piece in itself as so important. But I do pay attention to what the discussion means at a time when opponents of choice will stop at nothing to erode it. In fact, the title does not convey the author’s point which seems to be that persuading other women not to make the same “mistake” one has made is simply an end run around choice. Everyone ought to be able to regret equally.
I did not find this piece a clarion call for choice, but it does raise some of the larger, harder issues that some tend to steer clear of, especially the moral status of the fetus, the fact that abortion does put an end to a potential human being, and that we have such awesome power in our control, all issues that Frances Kissling raises in her controversial article entitled “Should abortion be prevented?” She answers, and I agree with her, that we should support “efforts to reduce the need for abortion” as well as efforts to ensure that “public policy focus on lowering abortion rates without restricting women’s freedom”(p.14). Such combined wisdom is not contradictory but complementary.
2. Offer a critical feminist religious analysis on the move to make regrets an important piece of anti-choice organizing
Reading the endless blogs and other testimonies by women who regret their abortions, it is undeniable that some women are seriously troubled by their choices, just as some women are troubled by the fact of never having had children. The difference is that we do not make laws to force others to have children to avoid the supposed mistake women without children have made, while those who regret their abortions do so publicly to support legal efforts to prevent others from making their supposed mistake. Still, it is important to be clear that the science does not support the notion that many women have been unalterably harmed psychologically, physically, and/or spiritually by abortion. But facts rarely trouble those who are desperate for new tactics when the old ones are not working. Thus, the dueling studies will go on with both sides reading them to advantage. So, too, will the testimonies continue with women doing what we all do, telling our stories and hoping to be taken seriously. But I think more is at stake here, for which I offer four specific feminist theologically-related reflections:
a. “Regrets are for dinner parties” is an adage meant to convey that regrets do not amount to much. To apply it in this case is a mistake we make if we claim to take women seriously. As religious people we claim a certain reverence for human beings, and as feminists we claim a preferential option for women. Honoring women’s feelings about their abortions does not mean liking them, agreeing with them, wanting to share them or make them into law. But it does mean that we run roughshod over women’s feelings at our peril since part of being a moral agent is the risk of having to deal with the consequences of one’s actions.
Happily, in the case of abortion, most of the consequences are positive—relief; satisfaction at having resolved a difficult situation; pride at having put self, children, partner, family, job into a reasonable constellation with the choice to have a child. But regrets are real and sometimes trump the positive. I do not see how we can say we take women seriously and then select what we wish to emphasize. Rather, I think we can say that regret may be part of the package. But that does not make it determinative nor does it mean that it is the basis on which laws ought to be made. Groups like Exhale exist to help women cope with these feelings without attaching ideological labels to them.
b. I have detected what I think of as creeping paternalism in this regret-based movement. It is a cousin of the fathers’ rights movement which is part of the right’s efforts to force marriage on poor women and to shore up the nuclear family even while endangering women who may find such arrangements fraught with violence. There is now more than a nod toward men who regret the abortions their women friends have had. Noted country star Kenny Rogers sings about his woes. The frank fact is that no man has ever had an abortion to regret.
Taking women seriously implies that men’s post-abortion woes are not on a par. Sorry. It does not mean that men do not regret the abortions they have made necessary. But we await the ad from men who assume public responsibility for millions of abortions each year. Sadly, we will wait longer for the behavior changes and the economic and social support women need from men to make real choices. Meanwhile, I suggest we bracket this aspect of the work for now, and call it what it is, namely, part of an anti-choice tactic, not necessarily a signal of new-found feminism among most men.
c. The function of guilt and sin in regrets is pivotal. The stories are full of references to “asking God’s forgiveness,” “finally following the Lord,” “seeing the light,” etc. Religious people are experts on the topic. Our various religious traditions traffic in guilt. Of course a little guilt can go a long ways as we who make claims about social justice can attest: share the earth’s goods with the earth’s people or be a schmuck; cease your racist/sexist/heterosexist behavior or burn in hell for all eternity! But I think there is a fundamental difference between taking women seriously as moral agents and instilling guilt.
Most women understand moral ambiguity. Having second or third thoughts about something as important as terminating a pregnancy is something to be cultivated, not feared. But it does not mean that the thoughts have to be negative in order to be moral. When viewing art, it takes the same critical capacity to like or to dislike a painting. So it takes the same moral discernment to say “I made a mistake” as to say “I made the best decision of my life.” The role of religion is not to instill guilt but to invite goodness.
d. A major source of the guilt is not so much women’s human activity as it is the religiously-constructed image of a punishing and wrathful God. This is a topic for individual faith traditions to take up. But it is naïve to think that we are going to move away from regrets and feelings of guilt if the theological constructs of the Divine that women come up against are Father, Lord, Ruler King, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. Without basic changes in our theological understandings it is impossible to expect that women, especially women who are religious, will be able to resist the power of patriarchal formulations. For example, feminist claims that the divine is a living matrix in which we are enveloped, a Friend, a companion on the journey, the source of Mercy, are all useful alternatives. We have our work cut out for us as we take women seriously. As theological partners with women in struggle, part of the job is to deconstruct the sources of guilt while at the same time reconstructing the ground of their questions. This can be done in sermons as well as in counseling and writing.
3. Suggest pastoral and theo-political strategies for handling the big picture here, the matter of women’s regrets being instrumentalized by the religious right and anti-choice strategists
I see five possible approaches. We can:
I have already suggested that ignoring women’s feelings is not an option either pastorally or strategically. I have also alluded to the fact that replicating the approach with dueling lists of women’s names does not take us very far. That brings me to ask what we can learn from this new emphasis on regrets, how we can build on it, and how we can neutralize it.
We can learn that women’s feelings are not trivial in the ethical equation, nor are they finally the only factor in play. In any case, they are not the basis of law. We can observe how easily, and with religion’s help the sinister manner in which women’s emotions can be instrumentalized for political gain. It is a tactic I hope we all reject even if it were to benefit our views.
We can build on the momentum around feelings by reaffirming our pastoral commitment to individual women without denying social scientific data. It is not that women do not have regrets. We all have regrets of one sort or another. But regrets are not license to prevent other people from making choices with which we disagree. Moreover, we can encourage women to speak freely and publicly about their experiences with the expectation that we and other helping professionals are around to aid them as they sort out the complexity of their feelings. Complexity does not mean confusion unless one is alone. So, one more time, we see the need to build communities of support and solidarity especially with women who are marginalized because of age, race, economics, education, and the like.
Finally, I think we can neutralize any gains this strategy may make by largely ignoring it in the public arena, pointing out the mistaken reading of sound studies, and unmasking the explicitly political ends at stake. But at the same time we must go about the work of providing pastoral resources for women making reproductive choices since being listened to, no matter what they hear from the listener, is what attracts women to these groups in the first place. Perhaps it is time to tweak “All Options Clergy Counseling” and “Pastoral Counseling for Reproductive Loss” materials to reflect an awareness of this anti-choice phenomenon as a warning but also a challenge to do as well listening and providing choices.
I have laid out the current parameters of an evolving strategy being run by those who oppose reproductive justice. I hope that our efforts to think critically about it will result in more women being taken seriously as moral agents and more women experiencing reproductive justice.
http://www.healinghearts.org accessed March 7, 2007.
http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org accessed March 7, 2007.
“Pastoral Counseling for Reproductive Loss, ” Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choices, Washington, DC, 2005.
Frances Kissling, “Should abortion be prevented?” Conscience, Vol. XXVII, No. 4, Winter 2006-2007, pp. 13-16.
http://www.4exhale.org/ accessed March 7, 2007.