Ieyeayeai

    Between Christmas and New Years last year I viewed an unsettling Pro-Life commercial on KPHO, the CBS television affiliate in Arizona. Since then I've been trying to track down the commercial's source. This evening I was successful. The source of the commercial is VirtueMedia, about whom you can read at their website. The specific commercial I saw can be viewed on the web by clicking on the prominent "View Video" button at the bottom of the aforelinked page. You'll notice that the site has several commercials addressing abortion from a variety of Pro-Life perspectives including:

• racial genocide (black genocide is addressed but my guess is this could apply to several groups);
• the psychological and physical harm to the woman who chooses abortion;
• the link between breast cancer and abortion;
• a variety of companion issues such as abstinence before marriage, informed consent laws and alternatives to abortion.

    This evening I viewed another commercial on the same channel (both commercials aired during local 5 pm - 7 pm newscasts) by yet another dot-org concern, the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, featuring the reactions of women who had undergone abortions and suffered psychological, physical and social consequences that the spot assured viewers were extremely common and lasted for years. Again, I was shaken to the core. As I rampaged through the web looking for the organization who sponsored this particular spot in the hopes of viewing it again so I could make a more informed judgment, I was led to VirtueMedia, who created it. The spot I viewed this evening can be accessed here. It is the first of the 30 second spots listed on the page. The two 30 second spots are dissimilar only in that the one I saw features a woman who admits that she attempted suicide after her abortion. Discovering this ad led to me finding that VirtueMedia is responsible for the first ad I'd seen.
    Some weeks ago I was communicating through email with a new acquaintance about the possibility of four more years of Bush and made some statements that were emotionally charged and, as such, could have been considered, in our current era of heightened governmental paranoia, inflammatory. Almost before I typed and sent the words my acquaintance, a professed liberal, shot back a response asking me if I was crazy, didn't I understand the political atmosphere underwhich we are now living, especially considering the Patriot Act, did I not realize that free speech was much more dangerous now than it has been in a long time and, if I valued the state of my life, would I please refrain from any making similar comments.
    It is true, I feel fear creeping into my judgment, engineering subtle changes to my sense of freedom and the exercise of my individual rights. I backed down, shivering.
    When I saw the commercial "Vanished", almost to the very end I took it to be anti-war commercial, specific to our current conflict with Iraq, and that it mentioned the 70s because of all the people lost in the grip of war in Vietnam, thus alluding to their "missing" descendants. When I heard the word "abortion", I shivered again, in shock and outrage. It's begun in earnest, I realized. If I and my peers allow fear to get the best of us, before Bush is finished our country will be in lockdown rivaling The McCarthy Era. This, I decided, is the time to speak, on any issue that comes my way and moves me to speak.
    My interest in the insidiousness of the Pro-Life movement through these commercials which are full of trigger words, emotionally charged ideas, misinformation and the unfortunate possibility that Roe v. Wade will be repealed or rendered so contentious through other laws that it will be sapped of its strength at some point before 2008, lies in the fact that I had an abortion.
    My story is simple and, I'm convinced from private conversations with other women, not uncommon. It has been, though, all but ignored, even in the heyday of Pro-Choice (which we've passed), which is why the Pro-Life contingent in our nation is now in a unique position to see their anti-abortion platform become law. I had my abortion in 1986 at the age of 34. I was three and a half weeks pregnant which qualified me for a menstrual extraction, a less physically risky and traumatic abortive procedure. I conceived during a lovemaking session through which I thought my lover and I were well protected from pregnancy. The father of my child was a man with whom I was solely involved in a relationship intimate on several levels until his death in 1993.
    I have always known that I do not want children or marriage in my life, nor, since I was interested in neither of those, pregnancy. Neither did the father of my child. We had not intended pregnancy. We had taken all the precautions that were reasonably available to us. Despite this, we conceived. I knew exactly a week after conception that I was pregnant. I discussed it with my lover and we agreed, without confusion or difficulty, that we did not want to bring a child into the world and raise that child between us. He accepted, without argument or remorse, that I was not interested in undergoing pregnancy, which carries its own risks and is a life-altering experience in several dimensions, even and especially if a woman gives up the baby for adoption.
    Probably because of my age, within days of conceiving I began experiencing many physical and emotional symptoms of being pregnant, all of which continued for a few weeks beyond the pregnancy's termination: Extreme fatigue; mild cramping; breast swelling and tenderness; a feeling of unusual heaviness throughout the lower half of my body; emotional distance; weight gain; meticulous focus on my abdomen and what was going on in there. I was acutely aware and circumspect about being pregnant and the possibility of reproducing another human. While I never wavered in my decision, I spent many hours contemplating the soul of the child; the outrageous, nonmoral abundance of nature in that most of its attempts at reproduction never come to term (in humans, the number of conceptions that do not birth humans is two out of three; most of these are naturally aborted and often the mother is never aware that she was pregnant); my possible abilities as a parent (which I believe are impeccable); the changes having a child would provoke in my life without judging any of them to be 'positive' or 'negative'; the in toto risks of the abortion versus those of carrying the pregnancy to term and/or parenting the child; and, not incidentally, the social atmosphere in which this possible child would be raised: That of a "developed", "industrial", "highly civilized" country uniquely unsupportive of not only its children but all its citizens needing care and its caregivers.
    After the procedure I was immensely relieved and grateful that safe abortions were legal and easy to obtain. I've looked back but absolutely without second thoughts and have had no deleterious physical, emotional or social consequences as a result of my decision. I know that, for me, for my lover and for the "vanished" human I murdered, abortion was the best choice. I also know that no one else's vote or imagined consequences as a result of our abortion count.
    I am in the process of considering several of the points raised in the variety of VirtueMedia's Pro-Life commercial spots. My neophyte thoughts about these are as follows:

• Black Genocide: The problem with citing genocide as a reason for any troublesome, ultimately lethal act, anymore, is that as our world fast becomes smaller in human terms, we are already losing distinctions between races and cultures through sexual intermingling. We are fast (in terms of generations) approaching a time when it will be unusual not to possess a "mixed race" ancestry. The only solution for this type of "genocide" would be to reinstate the socially treacherous policy of Separation of the Races. Do we really want to do this, again? Even if some of us do, as a species we've passed the point of viability for this option.
• Abortion Breast Cancer Link: For reasoned, complete information, access this link at the Planned Parenthood site.
• Vanishing Relatives, Friends and Lovers: Please spare me. If we are going to cry over spilt milk, wouldn't it be more appropriate and ultimately more productive (hopefully, someday, anyway) to mourn those vanished as a result of the wars we continue to find so necessary and fascinating?
• That Life Should Not Imply Death: Well, there isn't much we can do about this one, although we continue to try. In this system it is, so far, our fate to be caught between existence and nonextistence in the name of Nature Renewing Itself. Each of us, at some point in our lives, works, usually unconsciously, toward continuation then destruction, immortality then mortality. We all know that part of the difficulty of living, regardless of what type of unit of existence we are, is that sometimes we are driven to creation and sometimes to destruction. Societally, it makes sense to create rules, laws and philosophies that attempt to and sometimes succeed in ordering these gravitational drives. We have yet, though, to find ourselves any place else in relation to these drives than we were when we started.

    Certainly, I applaud the efforts of all who are engaged in healing those women who have suffered deleterious consequences of abortion. I applaud, as well, those who thoughtfully contribute to the ongoing debate regarding what constitutes compassion and life-affirming values. I cannot, though, stand by and allow the shameless rhetoric of Pro-Life forces such as VirtueMedia and its commercials to go unchallenged. Far more tragedy has been visited upon the world through forcing women, in a variety of ways, to bear children they do not want, for whatever reason, than allowing them the privacy and trust to choose whether and when to reproduce. The sex drive is far too powerful and all-encompassing to allow us to believe that, in this world wherein there does not yet exist an affordable-and-available-to-everyone, completely safe, completely effective and completely reasonable method of contraception, the answer for those women who do not wish to reproduce, for whatever reason, is to suck it up and take it like Nature intended. In fact, Nature intends, and sees to it, throughout her domain, that most of her reproductive possibilities will not be realized. Thus, if anything can be said about this debate that rings even slightly true, it is that intentional, induced human abortion is Natural and will continue, even as one era supports it and another denies it.
    We have historical proof that a society's refusal to ensure safe abortions that are as consequence free as possible for those who choose to abort is akin to spitting into the wind. Do we really wish to continue the drudgery, misery and wasted energy involved in constantly cleaning ourselves when all we have to do is spit in the opposite direction?

ADDENDUM I (1/4/2005 - 1627):
    It seems the above personal essay was linked to by the web masters of a blog named After Abortion, which pleases me. Active opponents (which excludes me, I'm not active) tend to scour the others' territory, which means I should get a fair number of hits from the Pro-Choice side as a result of the Pro-Life side's advertisement on my behalf. Anyway, they brought some clumsy writing to my attention, which I addressed in a comment I left to their post as follows:

I am the author of the above mentioned essay. Thank you, by the way, for discussing it in your journal! Yes, the sentence you quoted in your second to last paragraph was tricky to interpret. Since my essay was a personal statement, I should clear up what I meant. The accurate interpretation is that how others might feel about our choice to abort, including others' projections of "imagined consequences" onto us did not count when my lover and I made our decision. I appreciate that you addressed this. The sentence bothered me at the time I wrote it but I had trouble figuring out a more precise way to express myself. Thank you for provoking me to readdress this and allowing me the opportunity to clarify myself. As you can see, it is a difficult thought to express.

    After publishing it, I realized I inadvertently assured continued misinterpretation and, as well, realized an easier way to clear up the misinterpretation: I needed to reverse the order of the words "imagined consequences" and add a few more words. Thus, I hope the following expresses more clearly what I intend to express:

The accurate interpretation is that how others might feel about our choice to abort, including others' projections onto us of consequences they might imagine for us, did not count when my lover and I made our decision.

    I certainly know better, having had an abortion, than to suggest or believe that anyone's post-abortion experience is a figment of the post-abortant's imagination.
    At any rate, I am happy to discover that there are apparently a number of avenues available to address and help those who've suffered negative consequences from their abortions. It doesn't matter to me whether they are Pro-Choice or Pro-Life avenues; all that matters is that women of experience are reaching out to women engulfed within their experiences. I trust that, regardless of politics, it is becoming easier for the woman who needs help to find precisely the women who can help her. This is gratifying.

ADDENDUM II (1/5/2005 - 1108):
    Ahhh...no rest for the wicked, I guess (disgustingly inappropriate use of humor, particularly in the context of the above essay and appended comments, noted and owned). My "new acquaintance" (who has become a friend), discussed in the third paragraph of the above essay, "quibbles" with my oblique description of our correspondence referred to in that paragraph and wishes it to be more pointed, thus, more accurate. I bow to his critique:

    It reads to me like your friend asked you to tone down your free speech, and that you finally decided not to be silenced by fear. It wasn't like that, in my view.
    I would have written:
    Some weeks ago I was communicating through email with a new acquaintance about the possibility of four more years of Bush, and I made some statements that were emotionally charged. My acquaintance shot back a response saying that what I had said placed me at risk, and was probably illegal to even talk about. He asked me if I was crazy, didn't I understand the political atmosphere under which we are now living, in the context of pervasive electronic eavesdropping, and if I valued the state of my life, would I please refrain from any making similar comments.

    Thank you, dear friend. Actually.

ADDENDUM III (1/16/2005 - 1655):
    For a calm, reasoned consideration of the morality of abortion search out "abortion morality" in your favorite search engine. The list of articles and comments arguing both sides go one for pages and pages. One of the reasons I found this search of the discussion interesting is that as someone who has had an abortion and has not regretted it, I also haven't questioned that it is murder and referred to myself in my meditation above as a murderer. Although I'd never considered the definition of murder, I simply accepted that as an aborter, from a strict point of view, I committed and had no trouble living with this. Several of the articles in the above mentioned search, though, present a distinction of which I'd not thought between physical dependence and social dependence and argue the case that any socially appropriate legal definition of murder must exclude terminating the life of a physically dependent life form versus a socially dependent life form.
    I will probably be more careful, now, regarding referring to myself as a murderer because I aborted a fetus; not because I'm bothered either way, but because I'm not interested in bothering some other woman who is struggling with this possible definition of herself.
    We are, of course, on the border of in vitro gestation, at which time our definitions of murder will come up for grabs. Our gods should get a kick out of that!

Labels: abortion, eye, politics