A little over a week ago I rode my bike through my neighborhood and across the pedestrian bridge that spans the Downtown Expressway, parked in Byrd Park, walked my way through another local neighborhood and joined fifteen thousand people – black people, white people, Asian people, old people, young people, disabled people, female people, male people, all walking toward the Carillion. It was as though my tribe had come walking out of the woods and suddenly found our selves standing all together in a clearing.
We were waiting for a visit from our President, Barack Obama. When he showed up I began to cry.
I cried because I am tired of listening to gray-haired white guys tell my sisters and me what we can and cannot do in the interior recesses of our bodies.
I cried because I have been working for women’s reproductive autonomy for the better part of the last twenty years. I cried because I am watching that autonomy – which was fragile to begin with – be systematically stripped away.
I cried because it is so important to me that Obama wins. And this is why:
Since Republican majorities in Virginia and other states launched this year’s legislative assault on women, uppity women and men have come up with all sorts of creative ways to protest the absurdity of what’s taking place. In Virginia it began with a silent protest on the State Capitol grounds in February, followed on March 3 by a protest in which SWAT teams were called out to defend the state against peaceful (albeit noisy) protesters sitting on the Capitol steps, who were subsequently arrested for refusing to leave. A few days later, dozens of mothers of young children showed up on the Capitol steps for a “Picnic Protest”, in which they taught their children about the importance of civil disobedience. They were not arrested.
Visual memes flooded the internet when our governor, Bob McDonnell, signed legislation requiring women to undergo a medically unnecessary ultrasound prior obtaining an abortion. Forever manacled with the moniker “Governor Ultrasound,” McDonnell is also permanently linked in my mind with a commemorative vaginal ultrasound probe printed with the words “I can see Washington from here.” We now have the Cootchwatch, (Keeping the Cooch out of your Cooch), which tracks the anti-abortion bullying of Virginia’s Attorney General.
There have been musical videos, celebrity commentaries, comedic dissections, as well as artistic responses to the legislative effort to limit women’s reproductive autonomy, such as the disturbing painting by Richmond artist Susan Singer titled: “Get Out of My Vagina.” Many women have adopted small gestures such as the one I’ve taken up, inspired by A is For, of wearing a scarlet letter A for reproductive autonomy. Women are acting up. They just won’t stay in their places. The incredible variety of women’s efforts to be seen, heard, recognized, and empowered, is nothing short of astonishing. And inspiring. We will be seen, we will be heard, we will not sit down, we will not stand by, as injustice is bullied into law “for our own good.”
But what lies beneath the humor and the activism is, in fact, not funny at all. Clusters of cells, whose very existence depends on women’s bodies, are being valued as equal to or with rights above those of living, breathing, talking, conscious women. There has been a move towards state-mandated control of women’s bodily autonomy that’s unprecedented, at least in the last forty years, and that would be unthinkable in any other arena of health or civics.
As someone who works in the arena of women’s reproductive health, I am particularly appalled that the concept of informed consent and informed refusal in medical care is being abrogated for women who are pregnant. That the Republican Party Platform and Mitt Romney’s website both publicly endorse limiting women’s choices with regard to abortion, and support a constitutional amendment that would accord full citizenship rights to fetuses. This essentially allows the law to treat pregnant women as a separate class of citizen, with fewer rights than those who are not pregnant.
Those pregnant women you’re messing with are my peeps. This gets me riled. I have to stand up.
Often when we hear the term reproductive autonomy, we jump to contraception and abortion. And that’s an enormously important part of the reproductive equation. But few of the anti-abortion folks I’ve encountered, even those who staunchly support a woman’s right to birth as she chooses, seem to realize that if you take away autonomy on the conception side of reproduction, you’ve opened the door to limiting women’s rights at the birthing side, and at every point in between. Already, in some states, pregnant women have been arrested for refusing medical procedures while pregnant. In Indiana, in 2012, a woman awaits a trial for infanticide after having spent a year and a half in jail, because she attempted suicide while pregnant. We do not jail other citizens for attempting suicide. We help them.
If we legislatively mandate medical procedures, we as individual citizens lose the right to informed consent and refusal. You cannot consent to that which you cannot refuse.
Poet Denise Levertov, in her eloquent poem “Annunciation” describes the experience of Mary, mother of Jesus:
We know the scene: variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.
But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.
The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.
God waited.
She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.
It takes unbelievable courage to allow another being to take root in your body. While pregnancies happen every day, for the woman who conceives it is an extraordinary experience. When pregnancy is embraced, is in some way chosen by the mother – even if her consent to the pregnancy happens after conception – she and the life taking form inside her become a mutually interdependent pair. The love fest can begin.
But if the mother bears this child without consent, because she has no choice, the dynamic between mother and child is quite different. Now, on some level, they are opponents, what is good for one is not good for the other. There is a breakdown of trust, desire, love.
Levertov continues Mary’s conception story:
Bravest of all humans,
consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
and the iridescent wings.
Consent,
courage unparalleled,
opened her utterly.
Without consent, without autonomy, we lose a very deep connection to one another that is borne of mutual respect, of trust, of love. Without consent, we lose our power.
So on this election day, I want to applaud my sisters and brothers who are standing up for women’s rights, for the right of women to consent – or refuse – to bear another life within their bodies. Do not deny my pregnant sister the rights any other citizen can claim. Do not subjugate her rights to a being who would not be able to survive without living in and depending on, her body. Honor her courage. Respect her right to consent or to refuse. Because if we start limiting the rights of one member of society, it’s not so different from to putting yellow stars on Jews and restricting how they interact with the world. This is a very dangerous path. It does not have a pretty ending in our personal or our political lives.
Whatever way the election falls today, there will be more work to do to ensure that all of our citizens are treated fairly, with respect, and equality under the law. Here’s hoping we continue to move along, however clumsily, toward more justice and freedom.
And please, VOTE!!!
Further Reading on the Implications of Limiting Women’s Reproductive Autonomy:
Court Ordered Cesarean Sections: Why Courts Should Not Be Allowed to Use a Balancing Test
Fetal personhood and criminalizing abortion: a prosecutor’s perspective.
Could you be forced to have a C-section?
Courage & Insanity: Our right to vote & Human Rights in Childbirth