I was trying to ignore Katha Pollitt’s new book called Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights. But I’ve just been asked to do Tommy Schnurmacher’s show in Montreal on Monday at 10:30 am so I can do so no longer. Sigh.
Just watched this interview with her. It doesn’t strike me that she is saying anything terribly new. We’ve had people come out and indicate that abortion is positive and a “right” in Canada for many years. It rings hollow, given that abortion doesn’t tend to be heralded by women themselves as a positive right. No book, no filmed abortion, no attempt to make it really easy peasy is going to change that.
The best opposition to her idea, however, stems from how she is entirely and completely in favour of abortion as birth control. Not too long ago, even Planned Parenthood campaigned against that. Birth control was to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Abortion, however, everyone knew, was taking a new life and that was going too far.
It remains plenty controversial to say that abortion is birth control–mostly to the women who have had abortions. So her light and airy tone doesn’t jibe there, either. I could go on but I’ll save it for Monday.
If you have tremendous thoughts that would help me in this interview, please pass them on.
by 
The movement to claim abortion as a social good isn’t terribly new. Wasn’t it close to 20 years ago that they were trying to claim that abortion had decreased our prison population? (ie. people that would have grown up to become criminals instead were aborted.)
Here’s the money quote for me: “But when you have women having random—expected to have random children with random people, just because a stray sperm gets in their womb, this is not good for anybody.”
Who would disagree? It’s not good for anybody when women are getting pregnant with random people. But we live in a society where it is acceptable in many circles to have sex with random people. And there’s the disconnect that makes abortion almost a necessity in this society–a child gets killed because a man and a woman, who had no intention of having a kid together, slept together.
I don’t know how easy it is to have this discussion without coming off as being overtly prudish. Maybe we should just wear the prude label with pride, I don’t know. But the fact remains that adults take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, That is what it means to grow up. And s3x, healthy s3x anyway, should, at the very least, take place between consenting adults. There are very few adolescents who are mature enough to have a responsible sex life.
I’m not sure it has to be anymore prudish than discussing healthy eating? Hey, you can have a BigMac three times a day, 365 days a year, just don’t expect to escape heart disease. Ergo, you can have sex with random folks, just don’t expect to escape the ramifications of that, which might include a pregnancy if you are a fertile woman, and then you are going to need to figure out what to do with that. Abortion as birth control–acceptable? I don’t think so. but that’s how we are using it, because we want to eat Big Macs and not get heart disease. Something like that…
I listened in today. You did a good job! One thing I noticed was how you kept trying to steer the conversation back to the idea that abortion takes the life of a human being, and the host and Kasha both kept sidestepping around that fact. It’s kind of like they were saying, “well, sure, abortion takes a life, but what are you gonna do? A woman who gets an abortion is in a really tough situation ”
I sometimes think we should have the conversation in our society, “just when is taking a life justified?” But after days like today, I’m scared to have that conversation, because I’m afraid I won’t like the answer.
You are so right, Melissa. That’s the question. And I think we both wouldn’t like the answer… there would be plenty who would say it’s ok in a bunch of circumstances!! thanks for listening… and for the feedback. To her credit, I round Katha to be easy to do a discussion with. Because so many times, pro-choice folks are trying to shout you down and she didn’t do that.