Politics in the USA = historically, and still, older white men. When it's something that affects the sexes with such assymmetry, in that women assume all physical risk for a pregnancy or an abortion, whereas the decision making about rights is primarily in the hands of the politicians, i.e. men, for the most part... then there's gonna be a lot of framing like that.

I think.

yeah... I mean I get that it becomes a woman's issue very quickly once you look at who's actually getting pregnant and undergoing related procedures but in the top level sense it doesn't have to start with just "woman's body" when it can start with "is abortion ok?"

I'm thinking when I was younger, in the states and forming my political opinions I internalized a lot of democratic party orthodoxy just cause all the issues got jumbled together. There's no reason a stance on e.g. gun control or abortion or death penalty etc has to all be linked like that... I even used to think like, Reagan's Star Wars program was a stupid plan, but it's like... what? I wasn't even born. I just internalized some Dem grudge from that era... I dunno

Well lumping all that crap together seems to be quite an american thing. There's little room for nuance or complex ideologies, it seems, in US politics.

Here's why it is a woman's issue fundamentally, though any feminist, male or female should care -- only women can get pregnant. The right to choose whether or not to have an abortion is fundamental to a woman's bodily integrity. Any government intrusion or limitation on this right is a direct intrusion on bodily autonomy.

I was never very comfortable with abortion, though I am a lifelong supporter. But my support for abortion on demand crystalized when I heard Gloria Steinem speak here in Seattle, and explain why this, the right to choose abortion, is absolutely ground zero for women's rights. When women surrender their right to make their own choices about their bodies, they lose everything.

That's exactly what I mean though. Gloria Steinem's argument was based on how abortion is practiced within her white feminist worldview. In a place where abortion is often used for female infanticide or forced by men it starts being more complex than that

Well lumping all that crap together seems to be quite an american thing. There's little room for nuance or complex ideologies, it seems, in US politics.

I've noticed this - it seems that Americans have to be either a Democrat or a Republican and, whichever you choose, you have to support every single policy position that party takes. It doesn't seem possible for someone to, say, be pro-choice but also be opposed to gun control. It's always puzzled me, but perhaps it's a feature of what seems to me to be a strict two-party landscape. Contrast this with Australia, where there are a number of significant parties that sit in various places on the left-right continuum (and the major parties are often indistinguishable these days anyway) and you have an environment where people have more choice about where they hang their hat, politically. This lets people choose their own position on individual issues.

We USAians have never been good at nuance or shades of gray.

My position is that Roe is a crucial piece of legislation for women's rights. In the years before Roe, my mother worked in the ER at Marion County General Hospital (think the Indianapolis equivalent of Chicago's Cook County Hospital.) She saw more drama and pathos there in any given week than most of us see in a lifetime.

Most of you probably don't remember a time before Roe v Wade. I do.

The only time I ever saw my mom cry over her work was when they lost a 14 year old girl bleeding from a botched illegal abortion. There were euphemisms that were used back then to camouflage the act, but primarily, my mother's epithet was "Butchers!" I'd know it was a bad night when she'd come home and sit, quietly, and drink a beer with a far-off look or tear in her eye.

As apolitical as my mother was, I remember her saving the newspaper that had the announcement of LBJ's death on it. I asked her if she was going to put it with all the JFK assassination papers that she and Grandmother had saved, and she told me "No, this is far more important than that jackass dying" and pointed to the below the fold story about the Supremes ruling on Roe v Wade.

Americans have to be either a Democrat or a Republican

Not only is the US burdened with that binary (beyond just politics, too), this society is also very much oriented toward a rah-rah go-team-go mentality. Facts are not only irrelevant, but ignored when anyone tries to introduce them.

Yesterday's Susan Komen situation is a prime example. One single-sided, highly spun news story, and BOOM!, it's an automatic "Fuck the Republicans" everywhere with no regard for any reasons underlying the decision.

Not willing to get fighty here in MetaChat but I do want to say a few things. First, Steinem's point is not defeated by the fact that some people force women to have abortions. The whole idea is -- it is women who get pregnant, and it should be women who decide whether they will or will not have an abortion. It is not any more OK to force women to have abortions than to force them to give birth.

Speaking as a woman, I think human rights like these are universal to all women. (And any man who can pull off getting pregnant.)

Also, I think that the Susan G. Komen story stinks, and not because of some horrid anti-R bias. There is no good reason to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, THE source of breast cancer screening to many indigent women. The reasons given by SGK do not hold any water at all. Speaking as someone who has been reading a lot more about this than a few news stories, that is.

As per Komen -- someone here, on the basis of a question I asked, emailed me privately about Komen withdrawing funding of a promising potential vaccine for breast cancer. If breast cancer goes away, Komen is out of business, and, more and more, a lot of people feel like SGK is more into SGK than it is to actually eradicating breast cancer.

And, for a lot of reasons totally unconnected, Fuck the Republicans (just 'cause it feels good to say it).

I read a book several years ago about the Roe v Wade decision which said that fundamentalist Christians were originally pro choice, as they did not want to align themselves with Catholics.

My opinion of Reagan's Star Wars program was that if it were put in place, someone would eventually figure out a way to penetrate it.

I also think that feminism CAN exist within a collective society

I should not omit that this process works the other way, too. Fox News is as good at spinning as CNN, and when they drop one of their own bombshells, it's all "Fuck the Democrats."

true pjern. This is the thing about banning things, it can stop something but it also means people who practice it anyway are on the hook as violaters. I kinda like the Clinton era phraseology "safe legal and rare"

you're right brujita star wars is still a boondoggle, what was I thinking? lol. I think like other things it's not just about yes/no but about budgetary priorities

bearwife I didn't mean to incite fightyness it's just something I've been pondering for a while now... I mean in the end I don't take the anti-male stuff this gets hinged on that seriously--what is this person ranting on the Internet going to do to me?--but the other part of this is about not exporting ideologies but letting them bubble up within indegenuos frameworks and it's something I've been getting more aware about. The feminist agenda in one cultural context is different from that in another. You can see it in the flareup from a few months ago about how some black feminists decline to find the term slutwalk empowering etc.

I'm just thinking Planned Parenthood, Roe vs Wade, the anti-abortion movement etc is intimately connected with 20th Century US political history and the US-based ideas or theories that underlay these arguments is very much an outgrowth of how the situation developed rather than abstract approaches

Well yeah, 20th century US abortion politics is rooted in 20th century US abortion politics.

You have a very good point about gender selection. I think it hasn't come up for a couple reasons. First is that the political discussion hasn't really got that far yet, because the anti-abortion forces are so fixated and determined to roll back things back, that's where all the oxygen goes.

Second, I guess that most people in the US don't think it's likely to amount to a social problem. That is, I don't think anybody really thinks that enough people will want to select by gender that it will become a social scale problem. There is some abstract worry about different kinds of "designer baby" results but it is not limited to gender, and the technology isn't there yet for the stuff people are worrying about.

It's an interesting point, but the US political discussion hasn't got there yet, and it might not have to.

The technology now exists to separate x and y sperm.

Not only is the US burdened with that binary (beyond just politics, too), this society is also very much oriented toward a rah-rah go-team-go mentality.
Yeah, I think the 'rah rah' attitude is what makes so many people dislike Americans as a matter of principle. For people from a country like Australia (I've only lived there and in NZ, so don't have experience of elsewhere) that is incredibly laid-back about everything, especially politics and where the party that you vote for is considered a personal, private matter, the intense and in-your-face nature of everything we see about American politics is absolute anathema to our lifestyle. Not that we aren't passionate about things, including politics, it's just not made so shockingly public all the time. The idea of an election campaign (US) that pretty much spans 12 months and that includes so much fanfare and self-promotion is an example of the vast cultural differences between the US and, from my observations, most of the world, despite the fact that we all have so much in common otherwise. Here, election campaigns are (mercifully) much shorter - once parliament has been dissolved and an election called, the next parliament must sit within 140 days, but the period is usually much shorter than that. This is, perhaps, the only benefit of not having fixed terms - the government of the day can call an election at any time up to three years from when parliament first sits, so they tend to be called and conducted quite quickly to take advantage of favourable conditions for the incumbent party.

The technology now exists to separate x and y sperm.

I guess I wasn't clear enough; I was specifically NOT talking about sex determination.

Well, I for one don't have binary politics and I know lots of people who are, for instance, pro choice and anti-gun control (hi, New Hampshire!). The reason it looks binary is that our system is essentially winner take all, and most people make compromises when they vote. And because the consequences of the compromises become legislation, you get pretty passionate about which way it goes. I don't think it's fair to characterize all Americans as binary.

As far as abortion, I'm with bearwife and I think most others in that women should be the ones to control their own reproductive choices in any system. That a society pressures women to abort female fetuses is just another example of a patriarchy that doesn't value women - either the woman making the choice, or the female fetus being aborted. It's not like someone's coming out the big winner there. I understand that female children in some cultures are a financial liability, but that's not a reproductive problem.

Most of you probably don't remember a time before Roe v Wade. I do.

Thankfully, I don't. I've certainly read lots of accounts, but one thing that really brought it home to me was having a conversation where I used to work with a group of women, some of whom were in their 80s, about this. They all knew girls who "went to visit an aunt" when they were young, but one of them, a really wonderful lady named Bettye, told us about coming back to her college dorm one night, opening the door and finding her roommate passed out on her bed, which had soaked with blood. She survived. But oh my God, unimaginable. Never, just never, again. And illegal abortion - in even uglier ways than that isn't something that just happens in American culture. A few years ago the New Yorker did a disturbing piece on the Dominican Republic, where all abortion is illegal. Women resort to other measures. I can't find the piece now but Guttmacher has some general research on Latin America and clandestine abortion.

I don't think anybody really thinks that enough people will want to select by gender that it will become a social scale problem.

I don't think so either. We have lots of people who don't even want to know the gender of their baby, let alone control it. It's the kind of thing to deal with if it becomes a problem, but really isn't one yet. Plus, mostly likely it would initially be confined to the rich, just like in vitro fertilization was, and that would allow plenty of time to give some thought to management.

The feminist agenda in one cultural context is different from that in another.

Mmmm, well yes, but inasmuch as there is a 'feminist agenda' it comes down to ensuring that women have the ability to exert as much control over their lives and opportunities and choices as men do. In some cultural contexts that's going to come out looking different from others, but if the bottom line is that women have the freedom to discuss the ways they'd like things to be, and the ability to control the conditions of their lives to the extent possible for any human being, whatever the outcome is, it's feminist. So it's not as though the concerns of American feminists are the exact same concerns of feminists in all cultures, certainly not. But what all feminists basically share is the ideal that women everywhere should be able to be full human beings with freedom who make their own decisions and influence conditions in ways that benefit them, just as others do.

Finally, I don't think in the US that abortion is framed as a 'women vs. men issue.' Plenty of men are pro-choice and plenty of women are against legal abortion. There are personal levels to the 'where are men involved?' question and political levels, which means men are involved in real-life practice on the issue anyway. But ultimately, I just don't hold with anyone making law about reproductive choice beyond regulations for accreditation and safety of all procedures having to do with reproduction. That's not just men who shouldn't make the laws, but anyone.

yeah to be clear I wasn't saying Americans vote binary as a forced monolithic thing, I was just saying that for some reason that binary modality was making organic sense to me and as I turn conservative-ish on some issues some bits are flipping in my mind. I think in a way the political culture has also changed to reduce those old binaries; Barack Obama isn't really at war with the NRA and nobody's chanting ERA at conventions, big welfare programs are mostly over, and the death penalty is slowly getting phased out worldwide on both sides of the spectrum..

If you remember that America's conservative party is more conservative than any other Western nation's, and the so-called liberal party is relatively closely aligned with many other nation's conservative parties, it'll make it easier to understand.

I wasn't saying Americans vote binary as a forced monolithic thing

You wouldn't be far afield if you had said that as the framers of the Constitution themselves recognized that the government they were proposing would often result in polarized politics. The supporters of the system saw this as a feature that, in conjunction with checks and balances, would serve to limit the power of the federal government over the rights of the States.

(citation: Political Science course, Penn State, Spring 1978. Textbook: unknown, sold to score an ounce of Columbian Gold)

Firas, this is a very interesting post to me as I grew up in India and then moved to the US for graduate school when I was 21 (I've been here 4.5 years now). I think I imbibed very different ideas about abortion from liberal Indian society than I currently do from liberal American society and the contrasts are indeed interesting. In India, as you talk about, there is much more emphasis on abortion being used as a means of sex selection, and it is in fact illegal to first determine the sex of the foetus and then perform an abortion (though this happens a lot any more). Growing up, this was a universally condemned thing, including by all the Indian feminists (such as my mother). It was often called female foeticide, which is a rather alarming word.

As I grew up both in India and after coming to the US, and reading more about reproductive choice, I ultimately decided that I don't feel that a woman making a choice on the basis of sex should be enough to deprive her of control over her own reproduction. If I didn't feel bad about the unborn babies of indeterminate gender aborted by American women, why should I feel particularly bad about the unborn babies of female gender aborted by Indian women?

And in a situation where girls had to be brought up in one family, only to be given away to another family, along with a sizable dowry, it's often a perfectly rational choice to make. Preventing sex selective abortion cures the symptom but not the cause, which would require substantial social reengineering of Indian society (hopefully happening, if slowly). Of course women being forced to have an abortion is an entirely different (and horrible) issue.

There was also a lot of muttering about women using abortion as a "contraceptive" method, rather than condoms or other forms of birth control. This was often deeply sexist, as it ignored the role of men in this issue, who often refused to use condoms as contraception, which was usually the only reliable contraception available to these women.

In general though, contraception was easily available and often pushed on women -- in fact the feminist concern in India is more about ensuring that poor women are not coerced into abortions or sterilization -- perhaps analogous to poor black women in the United States.

If I didn't feel bad about the unborn babies of indeterminate gender aborted by American women, why should I feel particularly bad about the unborn babies of female gender aborted by Indian women?

because context changes meaning. "I don't want this kid" is different from "I don't want this baby girl." Saying we have to change dowry culture etc to stop that ignores how social movements attack the pipeline rather than wait until the top end is fixed. They didn't wait for white america to smarten up before passing the civil rights bill, or wait for sex discrimination to stop before passing bills that prevent explicit sex preferences in accommodation and job ads. I mean, killing the baby after she's born is also "perfectly rational." Sex selective abortion is a scourge here as you know and we can't just chill and wait 50 years...

Women have a lot of agency in women-on-woman harassment in India (everything from the fetus to the post-marriage murders) and in the end woman enforcing structural patriarchy aren't agents of feminist independence

and again, you don't have to ban abortion to take care of this issue, just gender screening..

I don't think the foetus feels any pain when it's aborted, so I don't see why it's such a pressing issue that needs to be solved immediately. Why should the laws force unwanted baby girls into the world to endure a wretched life? Believe me, my mother has talked to lots of these women -- she worked as a high-ranking official in the area of healthcare in a state where lots of these sex-selective abortions and infanticides happen.

They are under incredible pressures financially and socially -- it's far more effective to talk to their husbands, talk to villagers, provide alternative avenues of employment besides getting married to women, discouraging dowries. Infanticide and foeticide went down very steadily during her tenure. I don't disagree that the context changes meaning -- I would argue that the context of these women's lives also changes the meaning of sex-selective abortion. Ultimately, I feel that as a feminist, it should be without question that a woman should have the reproductive choice to abort an early term foetus for whatever reason.

That's why I'm ultimately conflicted about the law -- I understand its reason for existence in the Indian context, but I think it's a bandaid solution where much deeper solutions are needed, and it just drives the activity underground into more unregulated areas.

I guess I'm not as much of a pro-choice absolutist then... if the woman would have had the kid anyway, but changes the decision on the gender related coin flip, because of pressure brought by as you say husbands, villagers, prospective grooms and so forth, I don't think that revelation of the baby's sex should have been allowed. In the end it's wealthier women who're doing it this way and poorer women who're just quietly snuffing out the baby girls, ... when the latter is appalling but the former is not then the fetus vs baby ideological position has gone too far for me

Yes, to me, killing babies is appalling and aborting a tiny group of unfeeling cells is not. I feel that this is a pretty understandable position and is not just an idealogical posture. I think of the sex-selective abortion and infanticide as a symptom of an extremely anti-female, sexist society, where little opportunity exists for women and their lives are of little value -- this is the true tragedy. Why don't we work to change that?

And I think we should stop talking about the woman doing this or the woman doing that -- often it's the family (particularly the husband) taking the decision, and then the woman is the convenient scapegoat.

I just think it's a false dichotomy. In the end intervention at any part of the process causes dilemmas cause we see anti-dowry laws as well being abused to imprison the whole family of the man (moms & sisters included) pretty easily so the country will just have to work through these issues.. I mean, we won't be making this decision between us in this thread cause it's based on consensus activism and governance, I'm just observing new cracks in the ideological glass that I used to have and you're pointing out you've gone the other way

often it's the family (particularly the husband) taking the decision, and then the woman is the convenient scapegoat.

that's been my exact point from the start though.

I've been informed that in Islam the dowry is supposed to be the woman's own,which the husband and his family in theory is not supposed to touch. Is this the case with India's other religions?

As more Indian women enter the workforce, they will prove just as able to help provide for their families as men have in the past.

How are these women thought of in India?

in practice the muslim dowry thing ends up working the same way

If I end up marrying an Indian I won't necessarily be like "omg no dowry" cause wedding ostentation is part of the social ceremony but it'll just be like, you can bring what you want to bring to the table, or not bring anything, and it's not like I'm going to be harassing you or your fam to have brought more

I don't mean to add analogies that aren't appropriate, but I'm reminded of similar arguments in the US about poor women using abortion as birth control, where the women who a lot of times would want the kids if they could afford to raise them are blamed for their decisions, rather than blaming a society in which poor families don't have enough of a safety net to make adding additional children possible.

If Indian society's bias against women is strong enough that sex-selecting abortion occurs, then it seems the answer to that is *not* further bias against women (i.e., denying women autonomy over their bodies) but instead working toward *more* autonomy and respect for women in general, right?

"Let's keep those poor oppressed people from making decisions because they'll just keep oppressing themselves" is the paternalistic way those sorts of oppressions remain in place. "Let's level the playing field so that everyone has access to the same information and resources, and then realize that people might still make stupid choices because that's just how things work" seems, to me, to be the way to acknowledge and encourage everyone's individual humanity.

and again, you don't have to ban abortion to take care of this issue, just gender screening..

But, as you say, that is exactly the risk factor that gives rise to the worse problem of infanticide; if you think infanticide is appalling, and to a certain degree it occurs at a predictable frequency, then presumably early abortion is the far better choice.

Incidentally, in the US before Roe v. Wade and especially before the adoption mechanisms of the middle twentieth century were developed, infanticide was much, much more common. Smothering, drowning, and leaving children exposed outdoors were usual methods.

I agree with peacheater and occhiblu and their knowledge of these issues when they say that it is not women's behavior, but broader social conditions that need to change in order to reduce the incidence of abortion. Punitive approaches that penalize and restrict reproductive freedom are too little, too late to remedy the deeper problems lying at the heart of the issue - lack of information and access to family planning, lack of endorsement of personal agency, lack of educational opportunity and earning power, the sense that women are not valuable or worthy in and of themselves, and the fear that the societal structure will make a child a crippling liability.

It happens often that women who abort are thinking about their financial situations, even in the Western world. It's absolutely not unreasonable even for people who are not poor. Unplanned parenthood has a dramatic impact on earning power and security, for both mother and child. I wouldn't say that it's ever a misplaced concern to wonder "if I did carry this child to term, what would life be like for him or her, me, and the rest of the family?"

No, because not every potential sex-selective abortion ends up in infanticide. I'm sorry I find this idea astonishingly callous. This idea that sex screening is okay *doesn't work* here. One can't come to these conclusions theoretically. We have to work with the reality on the ground and what the approaches communities are already taking. I'm comfortable with sex revelations being illegal here and doctors being penalized for it.

This idea that sex screening is okay *doesn't work* here.

I agree, but I still think the answer is: Make the society equitable for both sexes so that people will have no reason for aborting female fetuses, rather than forcing individual people/families to take on additional economic burdens and have children they don't want or can't afford.

Rather than banning sex revelation, why not offer monetary incentives for bringing female babies to term? Or some other sort of society-wide field-leveling process?

I agree with your definition of the problem, but I don't see that your solution actually solves the problem in any sort of equitable or real way.

Mainly because I don't think abortion is exactly a "Woo yay!" prospect for anyone, but instead a rational response to a difficult situation; making the given situation *more* difficult doesn't help anybody very much.

I mean, really, if you said to someone, "I want to have a kid, but I don't have enough money for one if it's a girl," would the more helpful response be "Have one anyway!" or "Here's some money and/or resources that will make it easier for you!"? Which one would make you more likely to gamble on having a girl?

There's a lot of different programs that financially benefit villages for having a girl. We aren't the GOP out here lol. Direct cash transfers and investments is a big way development occurs here. There are political/legal interventions and stop-gaps every part of the way--don't kill the child. don't prevent her from going to school. don't marry her off before adulthood. don't engage in dowry harassment. etc etc. There are massive quora reservations for women in politics, village councils, etc. It's not like people are asleep at the wheel here. Frankly the people who do engage in screening-based sex selection are often middle and upper class and not helpless village women. I do think like in the States contraception is a big part of how this will be solved but also like Angela Davis once pointed out about black women's concerns in the States (and this is a good parallel by peacheater) that we have to also make sure that this doesn't go overboard into nonconsensual sterilization etc.

I was helping on writing an article here for a woman who was with a Non-Governmental Organization who was saying that she told a woman with a lot of kids about how she can avail herself of sterilization type methods and the woman said fertility is god's gift. Then she was told that there's like a $50 or so incentive and the woman was interested. It's just a tough balance all round interspersed with these types of human ironies.

It's just a tough balance all round interspersed with these types of human ironies.

Totally agreed. Which is why I think the best thing you can do is level the playing field as much as possible, give everyone as many resources as possible, and then let them make their own decisions, even if they're bad decisions. I think trying to "save" any individual from his or her choices sets up a fucked-up power dynamic that reinforces oppression rather than fights it.

Aborting girls is not the worst case scenario.

A few things:

1. Firas is right when he says that it is often middle-class and above people who can perform sex-selective abortions at all. The poor women who are most likely to commit female infanticide often don't have access to sex selection before an abortion. This to me, seems an argument for more sex-selective abortions not less.

2. What precisely are we being callous about? I really don't understand. Being born at all is a hugely unlikely event. Should we feel sad about all the possible combinations of sperm and egg that will never be born at all? A fertilized egg is a just a biological tissue, the kind that dies every day in your body. It can't yet feel pain or be conscious of being alive. The only argument against sex-selective abortions that I feel hold water are societal ones -- one could argue that a huge extra number of boys over girls could lead to instabilities in society that could have unexpected deleterious effects. Thus I can understand the Indian government's rule from that point of view.

Also, you really don't need to take a dowry if you don't want to :) My family hasn't exchanged dowries for two generations, and all it took was the boy saying he didn't want one. People are very glad to have such a son-in-law.

Btw sex revelations are not illegal here -- what is illegal is doing an abortion after a sex revelation.

Also, you really don't need to take a dowry if you don't want to :) My family hasn't exchanged dowries for two generations, and all it took was the boy saying he didn't want one. People are very glad to have such a son-in-law.

We'll have to see! My now-émigré cousin suggests I hop back over there and marry a white girl. I told her I'm too sophisticated for the whole 'find a white girl' thing but I'm not sure she understood, lol. I'm sure I'll end up involved in some lurid machination or other when it comes down to it going by the tight corners and hijinx I end up in anyway

PS. just saw on twitter Komen reverses PP decision

No, because not every potential sex-selective abortion ends up in infanticide. I'm sorry I find this idea astonishingly callous.

I'm not sure where the callousness comes in either? So you are saying you prefer infanticides to abortion?