“Pure Hate”

Must read opinion piece in today’s Washington Post — “Facing The Reality Of Choice” by Marie Myung-Ok Lee.

The author–40, married, one child–suffered from “blighted ovum,” a type of miscarriage that develops when a fertilized egg implants in the uturus but does not develop. “Instead,” the author writes, “there was no one home inside my womb, only an empty gestational sac and hormones, somehow tricked, careening inside me.”

Instead of waiting weeks to be admitted to a hospital, Mrs. Lee decided to go to a Planned Parenthood clinic to have the contents of her uturus removed.

But, while politically pro-choice, I didn’t think that my situation had anything to do with the whole abortion debate, and so I put it out of my mind, so much so that when my husband and I drove to Planned Parenthood the morning of the procedure and found our car immediately surrounded by gesturing people, we both thought, “How nice of the Planned Parenthood people to make sure we knew where to park.”

As I exited the car like some kind of odd celebrity, I wasn’t prepared for the older woman who shoved her face an inch from mine and screamed that I was murdering my baby. I wasn’t prepared for the looks of pure hate, no, the looks that could kill. I seem to vaguely recall being warned not to make eye contact, but I did, and I saw what I thought was someone who would gladly murder me to keep me from entering the clinic.

“What baby?” I blurted. Then a real Planned Parenthood escort took my arm, told me not to talk to them and led me inside. The two minutes had felt like a siege.

The article is somewhat marred by the obligatory “balance”–

Both sides of the debate are so heavily sunk into their bunkers. On one side, it seems monstrous that a handful of people, mostly men, decide on a procedure that involves, criminalizes and punishes women, and I know there are conservative, Republican, so-called pro-life women who feel they sit on the morally superior side but then end up having an abortion for the same reasons we pro-choice women are driven to it. But pro-choice people must also acknowledge somewhere in their hearts that this procedure is not the moral equivalent of merely surgically removing tissue.

I believe most pro-choice people, especially those who are parents, do acknowledge somewhere in their hearts that this procedure is not the moral equivalent of merely surgically removing tissue. But short of going around in sackcloth and ashes, exactly how are we supposed to communicate to the world that, yes, it’s not just surgically removing tissue. We understand. But if we say it’s a personal choice, then it’s a personal choice, and unlike the haters outside the clinics we don’t go about butting into other people’s personal choices.

That said, I think it would be wonderful if we could be open and honest about our choices. Mrs. Lee mentions that in Japan there are shrines for aborted and miscarried children, and mothers can go there to openly express their grief without being judged or condemned. That could never happen here. If the Fetus People were to catch wind of a shrine like that, by the next day they’d have it surrounded so they could harrass anyone who showed up to mourn.

9 thoughts on ““Pure Hate”

  1. That ‘balance’ paragraph is bizarre; it’s not like I show up at churches on Sunday to scream “YOU BELIEVE IN AN IMAGINARY SKY FAIRY!!” at the top of my lungs to worshippers. Plus, I’d have to wake up too early.

  2. someRaven, there’s no place in the WORLD where women are not judged and condemned. The answer is for women to take power on their own. Screw the church and the old men who are afraid of us. Screw the frigid old women who are jealous of our fecundity (and I mean that in all the senses of the word–we are the creators, not the destroyers).

    The more power women have over their own lives, the more screeching will emit from the old patriarchy, because they are afraid that society will crumble without the old rules in place. Screw ’em all.

    Jeebus I’m cranky today. Sorry about that. It just makes me so mad…

  3. “Mrs. Lee mentions that in Japan there are shrines for aborted and miscarried children, and mothers can go there to openly express their grief without being judged or condemned.”

    I’m afraid Mrs. Lee has fallen into the twin sandtraps of poor research and orientalism on this one.

    First off, the conflation of aborted and miscarried children may seem strange to western readers, but the Japanese term mabiki (literally “the thinning of young rice plants”) refers to birth control, abortion, and infanticide. In other words, in historically non-Christian Japan, the categories at play are very different.

    The shrines Mrs. Lee mentions certainly exist. However, so does the belief that if a woman aborts a foetus, that the ghost (mizuko, meaning ‘water baby’ or ‘unseeing child’) will come back and haunt her and cause miscarriages for future pregnancies.

    And how does one appease mizuko? Why, by holding mizuko kuyo, or Buddhist rites. These are incredibly expensive, and must be held once a year, *every* year, on the anniversary of the abortion. (How’s that for a healthy situation?) And the male-run Buddhist temples make big fat bundles of yen for performing the ceremonies. (And given the spectacularly high rates of abortion in Japan, that makes for a lot of rich monks.)

    So, patriarchy is patriarchy is patriarchy. Japanese women have it differently than American women…but I’m afraid “without being judged or condemned” is a bit off the mark; “in fully expensive emotional and financial exploitation” might be more accurate.

  4. Shaula–you are probably right, but I just want to note that this practice is not actually Buddhist, even though some Buddhist sects in Japan no doubt go along with it.

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