This brilliant post sums up neatly something I have been trying to put into words for a very long time on the abortion issue and the issue of prenatal testing:
Many months ago, a friend of mine posted an entry asserting that anyone
who would make a "I'm pro-choice, but..." statement or otherwise has
any reservations about their reproductive rights stance should not
truly consider themselves "pro-choice". I didn't say anything at the
time; I was even less courageous about my advocacy than I am now, and
everyone else commenting was falling over themselves in agreement. I
didn't have the time, energy, or confidence to speak up then. I guess I
still don't entirely have the confidence since I'm saying this here and
now rather than at the time or somewhere they're likely to read it.
Better late than never, I suppose.
I am pro-choice, but I believe that the right to choose NOT to terminate a pregnancy is as important as the right to abort.
I
am pro-choice, but I believe that that choice can never truly be made
freely when whole categories of people are devalued and dehumanized.
I am pro-choice, but supporting the right to abort does not necessitate believing that every choice to abort is morally right.
I am pro-choice, but I don't believe that some types of people are more worthy of being born than others.
I am pro-choice, but I won't assume that a disabled person is being exploited if I see them protesting with a pro-life crowd.
I
am pro-choice, but I don't believe that fetuses are interchangeable, or
that choosing to let a child with a disability be born is somehow
depriving a hypothetical non-disabled child of existence.
I am
pro-choice, but choosing to abort because "people like that are just
burdens on society", "have no quality of life" or "shouldn't exist" is
misguided and misinformed, if not flat-out evil.
I am pro-choice,
but I don't think non-disabled doctors or parents are in the best
position to evaluate a prospective disabled person's quality of life.
I am pro-choice, but I don't think we SHOULD screen for every possible gene just because we can.
I am pro-choice, but I don't think we're doing the species any service by arbitrarily eliminating parts of it.
I am pro-choice, but it's abhorrent to shame a woman for choosing not to abort.
I
am pro-choice, but the right to choose whether or not to have a child
isn't necessarily synonymous with the right to choose what kind of
child to have.
I am pro-choice, but I die a little inside every time
someone on my side argues the non-personhood of a fetus using
Utilitarian philosophy.
I am pro-choice, but I consider the current Downs Syndrome abortion rates as tantamount to genocide.
I am pro-choice, but I see signs that the slippery slope is getting slipperier and slipperier.
I am pro-choice, but I disagree with the very idea of a "wrongful birth".
I am pro-choice, but anti-eugenics.
I
am pro-choice, but if I ever again witness someone saying that it's
wrong or evil or child abuse to allow a disabled child to be born, I
will not keep silent.
I am pro-choice, and I long for the day when all lives will be seen as having equal dignity and value.
I too have noticed this. In feminist circles (which is to say nondisabled white women, most of the time) the buzzphrase is "Abortion On Demand and Without Apology!" The reason for this is because many pro-choice women worry that questioning women about their reasoning for abortions does two things:
one, leads to a slippery slope that eventually leads to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which none of us want given that we're pro-choice;
and two, implies that a deeply personal decision is people's business to critique, examine, and judge. They rightly point out that people can easily come to an opinion about what they would do in a situation without really having any idea what it's like to be in that situation. They rightly point out that many women who were staunchly anti-abortion find themselves having one, and likewise that many women who always thought of fetuses as parasites keep and adore "happy little accidents." It's a decision that many people don't make until they get there. So "without apology" means that only the people who make the decisions are the ones who can be sure whether their decisions are justified or not, and it's only them who have to answer to themselves, their God/s, the Universe, etc.
But the problem with "without apology" is that it means all reasoning that leads to abortion is in principle justifiable... and that creates a problem for many pro-choice people with disabilities, like me. We know that people are misinformed about disability. We know that people presuppose that lives with disability are better off not lived. Some of us have even had it said in front of us that we're better off dead. All of which makes it difficult indeed for us to accept that no justification need be given for heading to the clinic because of what the amnio said -- even if most other reasons don't bother us at all.
It's even worse hearing things like this article, which suggests that women in the UK are frequently aborting fetuses that have extremely minor impairments:
More than 100 babies with minor disabilities, such as a cleft palate
or club foot, were aborted in one area of England in a three-year
period, statistics reveal.
The
data records that 54 babies with club feet, 37 with cleft palates or
lips, and 26 with extra or webbed fingers or toes were aborted in
south-west England between 2002 and 2005.
The
figures, provided by the South West Congenital Anomaly Register, have
heightened concerns over the number of babies aborted due to minor
defects which could be corrected with simple surgery.
Club feet, one of the most common birth defects in Britain, affects around 700 children every year.
It
results in the feet pointing downwards and inwards, but it can be
corrected without surgery using splints, plaster casts and boots.
Despite
improvements in treatment, the data suggests there remains a perception
among some parents and doctors that club foot is a serious birth
defect.
The Abortion Act allows termination at any
stage of pregnancy if two doctors agree there is a "substantial risk"
of the child being "serious handicapped".
But the
scope of the term is left to the doctors' discretion, and some fear the
definition of "handicap" is widening as scanning technology develops.
In 2003, a cleric instigated a legal challenge
against the refusal of police to prosecute doctors who carried out a
late abortion on a woman because she did not want a baby with a cleft
palate.
The abortion was carried out when the woman, from Herefordshire, was more than 24 weeks pregnant.
Reverend
Joanna Jepson, curate of St Michael's Church in Chester, had corrective
surgery on a congenital jaw defect and believes that a cleft palate is
not a serious handicap.
The fact that so many fetuses with club feet were aborted especially chills me, as my relatively mild CP affected only my gait and, very mildly, my vision. If feet pointing the wrong way is a reason not to keep a fetus... well, I can only be glad that my disability is not the sort of thing that can be prenatally tested for -- and that my mother, who knew there could be problems (I was premature) fought to save my life, rather than vowed to move on.
And that's the thing that I think a lot of nondisabled feminists simply don't get. That is how personal this is. They have the luxury of forgetting that the US had a eugenics movement and assuming that such evils are only for Nazis. They have the luxury of turning green and turning the page of their history book when they read that the ancient Spartans left "deformed" babies on a hill to die. We don't have that luxury. We have only the cold feeling of knowing that existing in the wrong place at the wrong time would have been a death sentence. Is it any wonder that, even if we disagree with pro-lifers (I will not use the phrase "anti-choice" -- life is full of choices, and the choice to abort or not is only one of them) that fetuses are persons, we feel the shadow of that "wrong place, wrong time" dread?
I've presented papers on prenatal testing and disability before. All I can think of when I read this, and think of the incensed, able-bodied, white women professors who stood up and argued with me about challenging any women's reasons for aborting at all, wondering if one could be truly pro-choice and agree with me, is this:
There's a scene in that wildly popular new Batman movie that goes, well, like this:
Alfred Pennyworth:
Endure, Master Wayne. Take it. They'll hate you for it. But that's the
point of Batman, he can be the outcast. He can make the choice that no
one else can make, the right choice.
Bruce Wayne:
Well today I found out what Batman can't do. He can't endure this. Today you finally get to say "I told you so."
Alfred Pennyworth:
Today, sir, I don't want to.
[pauses for several moments]
Alfred Pennyworth:
But I did bloody tell you.
"I'm pro-choice, but"... I did bloody tell you.
