He makes all kinds of qualifications to the kind of men that should be able to exercise this power right up front (reasonable expectation that they are the father, desire and ability to care for the child when it is born) which (as an acquaintance pointed out) is pretty much reason to stop reading right there.
Why?, one might ask.
Well, because the law is a blunt instrument and morality is as delicate as a butterflies wings. Bludgeoning with law is not the answer to any problem as nuanced as abortion. As soon as you start making those kinds of qualifications, the ability of the law to deal with the reality of any situation completely breaks down. "A reasonable expectation that that he is the father"? Really? Wasn't there a study done that says something like 25% of children in this country are being raised by men who think they are the fathers and aren't? Maybe it was only 20%. But it was a pretty high number. What if a man thinks he's the father absolutely during the first trimester and then finds out he's not? Is he still going to take responsibility for the child on delivery? Is he still as into the idea of caring for this thing that he hasn't actually been a part of creating?
(I've never fully understood paternal societies for precisely this reason: it's really difficult to be absolutely sure who the father of a child is. It is far, far easier to know for sure who the mother is.)
The law deals in absolutes. The law does not have the capacity to encompass the nuance that any moral question carries. The law does not have the delicacy to distinguish between a man for whom reasonable expectation is enough, and knowing absolutely is necessary. But both of these men could make a claim in Ablow's world.
And let's just get right down to it: people are shitty. Men are shitty, women are shitty. We all do terrible things to each other, with the express purpose of inflicting pain. When someone hurts us, we want to hurt them back. Sometimes, we just want to hurt someone for no particular reason. Pregnancy and children have been the means to control women by amoral men for, quite literally, centuries upon centuries. We have, as a society, been moving away from that circumstance for more than fifty years. You're really advocating once again codifying male dominion over women in law? Are you going to ask that women be required to vote as their husbands or fathers wish them to, next? Maybe they shouldn't leave their homes unless properly chaperoned by a male relative, just so they stay safe.
But I'm getting a little hyperbolic there. Forgive me. Hysterics won't help anyone. (And yes, "hysteria" is an incredibly mysogynistic notion. I'm one of those crazy bitches.)
People are shitty, and we hurt each other a lot. That's not ideal, but is fact. And there is no area of human life where we have the ability to hurt each other intimately and personally than in sexuality. And while I am incredibly glad that we no longer keep young women under lock and key or stone them for becoming pregnant without first getting married or punish sexual experimentation to the degree we used to, I must admit that I have become concerned that the penduluum's swung a bit too far the other way. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it. And black-out drinking and a different fuck every night is not something that anyone should be doing. You really should know someone before you sleep with them. At least know them well enough to know whether basic ideas match up and should something unexpected occur you'll be able to work it out between the two of you. And probably you'll both end up hurting some, but it's going to hurt when your life is thrown into chaos, and that's not necessarily anyone's fault. That's just the circumstance of being alive. What you have to do is not hurt each other any more than that.
Ablow notes (and I have no idea where he's getting this from) that "no one" asks fathers how they feel leading up to and following an abortion.
Uh, what? I'm pretty sure that's not the case. As I've written about previously, I have had two unexpected pregnancies, and currently have one child. And I'm pretty sure I (and a whole lot of other people) asked both those men how they were feeling. In at least one case (the case of the abortion), I'm pretty sure more people asked him what he wanted than asked me what I wanted, and subsequently asked him how he was doing than asked me how I was doing. For the record, I went against his wishes in that case. And it was still the best decision I've ever made, despite the psychological turmoil it caused me and continues to cause me.
Which brings me to the doozy in Ablow's commentary on this matter.
I understand that adopting social policy that gives fathers the right to veto abortions would lead to presently unknown psychological consequences for women forced to carry babies to term. But I don’t know that those consequences are greater than those suffered by men forced to end the lives of their unborn children.
First of all, we absolutely do know the psychological and also social consequences for women forced to carry babies they don't want. It's called: read some history or take a trip to India or the Middle East, you fucking moron. Willful ignorance is possibly the worst trait anyone can ever display.
Second of all, let me let you in on a little secret. Life causes psychological pain. No, really. There is pretty much nothing that you can do to avoid being hurt in your life. There is pretty much nothing you can do that will ensure that you never struggle within yourself, that your sense of right never gets put up against your sense of duty, that what is practically possible will always fall in line with your ideal world. The world is an imperfect, messy place and we are all imperfect messy people, and living causes psychological pain and suffering. I know you're a psychiatrist and your job is to eliminate this pain and suffering for people, but you realize that if such suffering could be alleviated through the use of law and society, you wouldn't have a job, right?
The world is not perfect. You will hurt, regardless of your gender.
And perhaps this is unendurably female-centric of me, but I firmly believe that given the fact that life will hurt you one way or another, on this particular issue, the final decision should always rest with that person that will have to actually grow a child in her body and carry it around for 40 weeks. When the technology exists to implant a fetus in a man, with a womb and all so he can carry it around himself, then he'll have standing to veto an abortion. But the fact of the matter is that pregnancy is fucking traumatic even for women that are happy about it and want their children. You get fat, and slow, and dumb. And I mean that: you get dumber during pregnancy. Blood redirects from your brain to your uterus and without the blood flow and the oxygen it provides, you do not think as well. It's a hard thing to live with, having your body change without your will or consent, having your very thoughts change without your will or consent. Forcing a woman to endure that against her will is far more psychologically damaging than most of the other things that hurt us in our lives.
The law is not the forum for regulating moral questions. Morality is a thing of self-regulation, and the limits you place on yourself are always the ones that are going to hold strongest. You act in the ways that will win you the approbation of the people that you look up to the most. I'm very sorry, Dr. Ablow, that more people don't look up to you so you have to write this tripe to satisfy your power-hungry ego, but that doesn't mean the law ought to follow your example. The law shouldn't follow my example, either. The law should be written such that people can follow the examples that they wish to, and if you want more people to think and feel like you do that's your prerogative, but you have to earn their approbation. You don't get to use the law to beat them into submission to your ideas.
No comments:
Post a Comment