| — | Caitlin Moran, How to be a Woman (via mountainsoutofmolehills) |
‘Women still die in childbirth. Not as many as used to
– but notably more than die while receiving other “gifts”, such as scented candles’There’s something disturbing about the idea of someone pressing something unwanted – wholly unwanted – in your hands, saying, “It’s a gift! It’s a gift!”
And you demur, politely at first, saying, “How lovely, but no. I do not want this gun/modern sculpture too large for my house/sack of oysters – to which I am allergic – thank you. It is lovely that you thought of me, but no.”
But the insistence increases. “It’s a GIFT,” they insist, forcing it into your palm. “A PRESENT. YOU MUST HAVE THIS GIFT.”
And now your hands are bleeding, and you’re truly alarmed, and you try to back away. But you find that the law has changed overnight, and you are legally obliged to take this gift – even as you stand there with your hands torn, saying, “But surely a gift is something wanted? Something suitable? A stranger’s hand putting something into my pocket is the same as a stranger’s hand taking something out of my pocket. Really, there should be no hand there at all.”
And the gun goes off, and the sculpture is wedged in the doorway, immovable, and the oysters leak, slowly, onto the floor. Things that would have been wanted elsewhere cause chaos here. They do not fit, and they cause grief. And the stranger walks away. Having pressed his gift upon you, his work is done.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s comment that, if his daughter were raped and became pregnant, he would not want her to have an abortion – but think of the baby as a “gift” from God – has been one of the defining quotes of the year.
As contraception and abortion become, yet again, controversial – the UK facing the second proposal, in as many years, for pro-life organisations to counsel women wanting an abortion; in the US, Santorum and others speaking out against contraception, even for married couples – the idea of babies as a “gift” becomes a pivotal one.
“Gift” is a key concept. If all babies are a “gift”, then a pregnant woman seeking abortion becomes unforgivably “ungrateful”. Similarly, contraception is bad, because it is the rejection of yet more “gifts”.
Let us think of all the inferences of “gifts”. If I give you a gift, it is usually a surprise. It is probably something you would not have got for yourself. And after I have given it to you, I would not see it again. I leave you with the gift. Gift-giving leaves the person who receives the gift essentially powerless – not a problem if it’s a brightly coloured wristwatch, a great deal more so if it’s a human being you bear responsibility over for the rest of your life.
Babies being “given” to women as gifts makes the women sound powerless. Just something that a present was put into, like a cupboard or a shelf – rather than a reasoning adult who decided they were ready to be a mother.
Calling a baby a “gift” also sounds – let us be honest – like the phrasing of someone who has not spent much time bringing up children. It seems unfair to use visceral language to describe parenthood – but as anti-choice, anti-contraception campaigners are quite happy to use visceral language themselves (“slut”, “prostitute”), I have to presume they would be all right with it.
From the shop floor of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood, here’s what that gift can entail: tearing, bleeding, weeping, exhaustion, hallucination, despair, rage, anaemia, stitches, incontinence, unemployment, depression, infection, loneliness. Death. Women still die in childbirth. Not as many as used to – but notably more than die while receiving any other “gifts”, such as scented candles, or minibreaks. Additionally, “gift” sounds hopelessly inadequate to describe your children, whom you inhale like oxygen, swoon over like lovers and would die for in a heartbeat. I have never done this over a foot spa, book token or vase.
The worry of the anti-abortion and anti-contraception campaigners is that women rejecting these “gifts” are rejecting the gifts of Nature, or God. But Nature, of course, turns to contraception and abortion all the time: the diseases that make you barren; the sperm counts that fall to zero. Blocked tubes, blown wombs and the thousand sorrows of the infertile. The one-in-three first pregnancies that end in miscarriage – miscarriage which is just like abortion, a potential life ended, except miscarriages are unwanted, and often dangerous, while abortions are safe, and wanted.
Nature also, clearly, believes in non-procreative sex: for 27 days a month, sex is non-procreative. Sex after the menopause is non-procreative. Statistically, most sex is non-procreative. Clearly, sex isn’t just for procreation: it’s also for the creation of happiness, or excitement, or contentment.
Those things really are gifts, and are always wanted. Those things do not scare me, when pressed upon me.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/magazine/article3348848.ece
(Bolding mine)
| — | Caitlin Moran, How To Be A Woman - Chapter 15: Abortion (via mixtapes) |
| — |
Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman, Chapter 15: Abortion, pg. 275 (2010, Ebury Press) What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry: |
| — | Caitlin Moran, How To Be a Woman (via treesoup) |
| — | Caitlin Moran, “How to be a Woman”. (via montereycunt) |
| — | Caitlin Moran - How to be a woman. (via lifeandoldstories) |
| — |
Caitlin Moran How To Be a Woman(via Emma Banton) |
What I am vexed with is the idea that, by having an abortion, a woman is somehow being unfemale and, indeed, unmortherly. That the absolute essence of womanhood and maternity is to sustain life, at all costs, whatever the situation.
My belief in the ultimate sociological, emotional and practical necessity for abortion became even stronger after I had my two children. It is only after you have had a nine-month pregnancy, laboured to get the child out, fed it, cared for it, sat with it till 3am, risen with it at 6am, swooned with love for it and been reduced to furious tears by it that you really understand just how important it is for a child to be wanted. How motherhood is a game you must enter with as much energy, willingness and happiness as possible.
And the most important thing of all, of course, is to be wanted, desired and cared for by a reasonably sane, stable mother. I can honestly say that my abortion was one of the least difficult decisions of my life. I’m not being flippant when I say it took me longer to decide what worktops to have in the kitchen than whether I was prepared to spend the rest of my life being responsible for a further human being, because I knew that to do it again - to commit my life to another person - might very possibly stretch my abilities, and conception of who I am, and who I want to be, and what I want and need to do - to breaking point. The idea that I might not - in an earlier era, or a different country - have a choice in the matter, seems both emotionally and physically barbaric.
| — |
How To Be a Woman, Caitlin Moran This is quite simply one of the single most honest, touching and convincing pro-choice arguments I have ever read. (via petitefeministe) |
I cannot understand anti-abortion arguments that centre on the sanctity of life. As a species, we’ve fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don’t believe in the sanctity of life. The shrugging acceptance of war, famine, epidemic, pain and life-long, grinding poverty shows us that, whatever we tell ourselves, we’ve made only the most feeble of efforts to really treat human life as sacred.
I don’t understand, then, why, in the midst of all this, pregnant women - women trying to make rational decisions about their futures and, usually, that of their families, too - should be subject to more pressure about preserving life than, say, Vladimir Putin, the World Bank, or the Catholic Church.
| — | How To Be a Woman, Caitlin Moran (via petitefeministe) |
