The Woman Alone
I have lately tried (unsuccessfully) to write a little something about abortion to my Member of Parliament. As some may know, there has been some to-do in Canada recently about whether or not to include abortion in our commitment to maternal health in the developing world. The Conservative government did not initially include abortion or contraception in its plan. It seems contraception is now in, but a motion to include abortion, brought forward by my MP, was defeated in the House of Commons. One of the things that bothers me about Bob Rae, my MP, is that he is constantly throwing labels at anyone who disagrees with him on social issues. Anyone who does not support paying for abortions in the developing world is a Tea Partier.
I tried to craft a letter to him that demonstrated that my disagreement with him about abortion had nothing to do with me being a right-wing fanatic and everything to do with my concern for women and children. I kept coming back to the fact that an abortion accepting and promoting society leaves women entirely alone at one of the most difficult times in their lives. Unsatisfied with my attempts so far, the letter has gone unmailed.
In any case, today I was reading some Hauerwas for a Mennonite-Roman Catholic discussion group on war and abortion. Hauerwas quotes a sermon about abortion by the Reverend Terry Hamilton-Poore of the Presbyterian tradition. Hamilton-Poore’s second point was that:
“The usual framing of the abortion issue, by both pro-choice and pro-life groups is unbiblical because it assumes that the woman is ultimately responsible both for herself and for any child she might carry. Why is it that women have abortions? Women I know, and those I know about, have had abortions for two basic reasons: the fear that they could not handle the financial and physical demands of the child, and the fear that having the child would destroy relationships that are important to them.
An example of the first fear, the inability to handle the child financially or physically, is the divorced mother of two children, the younger of whom has Down syndrome. This woman recently discovered that she was pregnant. She believed that abortion was wrong. However, the father of the child would not commit himself to help raise this child, and she was afraid she could not handle raising another child on her own.
An example of the second fear, the fear of destroying relationships, is the woman who became pregnant and was told by her husband that he would leave her if she did not have an abortion. She did not want to lose her husband, so she had the abortion. Later, her husband left her anyway. [At this point I immediately wrote in the margins, "Of course he did!!]
In both of these cases, and in others I have known, the woman has had an abortion not because she was exercising her free choice but because she felt she had no choice. In each case the responsibility for caring for the child, had she had the child, would have rested squarely and solely on the woman.” [emphasis added]
This, to me, seems to be where all the pro-choice rhetoric falls apart. Women don’t want abortions. Its legal availability does not grant them freedom, but a great burden. They must choose between the life or death of another human being. Our culture will not support the choice for life but it won’t take any responsibility for the choice for death. The availability of legal abortion, and the culture that insists on it, leaves women utterly alone.
Brett Salkeld is a doctoral student in theology at Regis College in Toronto. He is a father of two (so far) and husband of one.
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This, to me, seems to be where all the pro-choice rhetoric falls apart. Women don’t want abortions. Its legal availability does not grant them freedom, but a great burden.
This does not explain why a million-plus women in the United States get abortions each year. About half of the women who get abortions each year have had one before, so an awful lot of women have two or more abortions (that they don’t want?) in a lifetime. According to Wikipedia, in Chile, where all abortions are illegal, “In the period 2000-2004 abortion was the third cause of maternal mortality in the country at 12%. Thirty-five percent of all pregnancies end in abortion; this is 4.5 abortions for every 100 women aged 15 to 49. While there are no accurate statistics, it is believed that between 2000 and 2002 there were between 132,000 and 160,000 abortions in the country.” So it seems that very strict bans on abortion do not relieve women from the alleged burden of making a choice. Looking at Nicaragua and El Salvador would also be enlightening.
Here’s another bit of information. Among other things, note the last sentence, which I have put in boldface:
Well said.
I think that “reprductive freedom” must be the creation of Ingsoc.
Women don’t want abortions. Its legal availability does not grant them freedom, but a great burden.
Unfortunately, I think this is utterly wrong. Hamilton-Poore even has to use the example of women that either have children or are married which is not at all representative of the US or I would imagine Canada. (In places like Russia, this is representative.)
Our culture will not support the choice for life but it won’t take any responsibility for the choice for death. The availability of legal abortion, and the culture that insists on it, leaves women utterly alone.
The support for pregnant women today is really unprecedented. For example, the second any woman under 23 (I’m pretty certain that’s the cuttoff) has a child (or gets married), she is no longer considered a ward of her parents for consideration under the pell grant program. She can go to college, short of being independently wealthy, completely on the government’s dime. This is not true of girls that come from middle class families. There are programs to provide for the nutrition and medical needs of the child and the mother while she is pregnant. There is aggressive enforcement of child support orders. I will readily grant that we aren’t at European levels of support, but we aren’t in the 1930s US where it was not unheard of for children to die of privation.
As for culture, the feminist movement has been an embrace of the woman’s autonomy and independence. The child is seen correctly in such a framework to be a burden to the woman’s independence. And while I don’t buy the key to happiness being sexual fulfillment, I think one has trouble maintaining our society doesn’t believe it. There is a very real individualism that has been embraced by our society. Many women have no difficulty conceding abortion causes the death of a child. Where women nearly universally disagree is that they should be bound by the community to the support and care of the young. I’m afraid that the tendency has been to condescend to women and tell them that they choices they have made are not their own; I don’t think that shows respect for them, and ultimately I don’t think it is an effective strategy for overcomes the scourge of abortion.
Some messages I read stick in my mind, and thanks to Google, I can sometimes find them again. Here’s one:
This topic is obviously convoluted beyond apprehension. At the same time government decisions can be assesed fairly easily based on immediate results. Of course Canada would promote abortion. An abortion carries a cost of several hundred dollars. Place that dollar amount against the future total care of the being minus statistical averages for pay in. It is certainly in the governmets interest to abort the being.
As far as care is concerned there is no nation that provides as much welfare as the States. In an attempt to eleviate my family from debt I put us on a budget of $60 a week for food (for a three person family). We are all healthy and doing just fine a year and a half later. At the same time I know a woman with 2 children that has a card that is recharged weekly for $150 to buy food.
In other words, a woman who does not abort a fetus in the US is afforded 250% the grocery line item that I support my family on. Looking at this scenario it seems that care for the newborn has been reached. The only real way to limit abortion is to outright ban the procedure. To state that either Canada or America must take better care of children in unideal situations is a falsehood. A child born in difficult circimstances receives the same care and a larger food budget than my own son who has two succesful, working parents.
Circumstances such as these demonstrate that entitlements do not do anything to help the children conceived in unideal circumstances. If we wish to stop abortions then we must do just that, make them illegal. The fact that a nation does not see a decrease in abortions despite the legality is moot. Unless enforcement is behind a law the law is useless.
I do not deny that women are under other great burdens that make them consider abortion. My point is that legal abortion replaces one great burden with another. Is this the best we can offer?
Also, I think the change in the culture I hope for has more to do with fathers taking responsibility than more social programs. Not that I have a problem with social programs, but they don’t replace dads and women know it.
MZ’s assessment is dead on accurate.
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Sean Michael writes : “In an attempt to eleviate my family from debt I put us on a budget of $60 a week for food (for a three person family). We are all healthy and doing just fine a year and a half later.”
$2.86 per person per day? Interesting. MY expenses for my family of 8 which includes a nursing baby averages out at around $7.00 per person per day. Which approximately the same as the woman complained about who spends $150 per week for a family of three.
Here is a quote from Hauerwas’ analysis of the homily he quotes. I recommend reading his whole article (“Abortion Theologically Understood”), but this gives a sense of what supporting women actually requires beyond just social programs.
And, if you doubt that male promiscuity is often a sophisticated form of rape, I suggest you have not spent much time with a promiscuous male. Those who have figured out how to consistently convince women to sleep with them are slimy manipulative selfish bastards. Find one yourself and ask him how he does it. You will be appalled. And our culture has convinced many women that they can expect no better.
The general tendency of a woman who has an abortion is not one that was impregnanted from a one-night stand.
As much as promiscuity is a phenomenon, I think the evidence is showing that it doesn’t attach itself to gender. Women tend to enter sexual relationships voluntarily and with eyes wide open. I believe Hauerwas is engaging in reckless demagoguery. When I get a chance, I’ll read his article more thoroughly.
I am not being facetious or sarcastic here when I say I would be interested to know Sean Michael’s menu plans. I live alone, and although I make no effort to stretch my food dollars, I think I spend about $60 a week (or more) on food. I work in a building with a big cafeteria, and my usual lunch is a big salad prepared from the salad bar and a diet soda. That alone is about $35 a week.
I remember my mother used to get a women’s magazine that had frugal, monthly menus which, if I remember correctly, were designed to stretch your dollars by getting the maximum number of meals out of what you bought (e.g., buy a ham, have sliced ham, make ham salad with leftovers, cook the ham bone with potatoes and green beans). I don’t know if anything similar exists today.
One more quote from the piece:
To me this is key. Right now, my wife and I are not yet trying to have our third child. Part of that is money (as I am a student), but if we were to get pregnant, being able to buy food and diapers would actually be one of the easiest problems for us to fix. The bigger issue is that we are in a situation with little community and family support and raising three kids right now in our context would run us both into the ground. Desperate women may be able to get diapers and food. But can they get community?
If you want to understand the rescue movement, then you should go to the source. The quote you give shows an appalling lack of understanding of the movement. The movement has from its inception been oriented towards care of the mothers.
John Cavanaugh O’Keefe along with a couple of others founded the concept. When I first met John back in 84 he had already been arrested over 100 times.
http://www.facebook.com/people/John-Cavanaugh-OKeefe/1405849648
I just looked up the name and came across the Facebook page, but it looks like it might be one of his children. If that isn’t him, go here :
http://www.eugenics-watch.com/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2024899/An-Exploration-of-Eugenics-by-John-CavanaughOKeefe
http://www.emmerich1.com/EUGENICS.htm
love the girls,
Can you explain your comments a little further? I’m not clear on what you’re saying. Is it me or Hauerwas who has an appalling lack of understanding? In which way? I’m afraid I don’t see any denial of the fact that the movement is oriented towards the care of mothers.
M.Z.,
My (limited) experience of promiscuous women is that they are (quite miserably) trying to keep up with the boys as a strange form of self-defense. They seem to be much more damaged by it than the promiscuous men I know.
Also, the promiscuous men I had in mind when I wrote my comment following Hauerwas were not simply one-night stand types.
Brett,
It sounds like you hang out with a pretty wild crowd. ;-)
Got to, ahem, research purposes.
Brett,
As one of your colleagues in that Mennonite-Catholic discussion group, I found the experience very helpful towards developing a personal appreciation for a consistent ethic of life.
While the original given topic for our conversations over a 3 month period was “A consistent opposition to Violence” — focussing our reflections on the two specific matters of War & Abortion, I discovered in the course of these conversations, the serious inconsistencies within our church traditions to be more obvious than our consistency in opposing violence.
Furthermore, I developed a preference to shift the language and even the basic paradigm, to something more positive, (e.g. Commitment to Nonviolence, or Gandhi’s concept of “Satyagraha”, or better yet, how about emphasizing the Gospel & Jesus’ teaching of Love for neighbour, even love for the enemy – & building an ethic of Compassion rather than opposition to violence (Catholic just war doctrine is just so blatantly outmoded & typical of the ancient Constantinian model of church/state collaboration, Church & Empire dependency etc. etc.)
How I yearn for someone today like Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Missionary Doctor & Nobel laureate who developed a whole ethic which he called “Reverence for Life”. His approach & understanding was far in advance of the ecological and cosmological sensitivity which is now emerging slowly from many sources, both secular & religious.
Thomas Berry taught us that “The Universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects”.
What we are searching for is a consistent ethic of life, a “Seamless Garment” approach to the entire created order. Life is sacred. The biosphere is threatened as never before, and humans must act in harmony with all of creation or our fate will be to lose paradise a second time, through our own selfishness and blindness.
Since my menu is being questioned I have no problem sharing. I do concede that my son goes to school and therefore has five lunches paid for within his tuition. But I will explain the rest. I don’t take it personal that anyone questions by budgeting. It took me some time to make it work myself. But once I decided I crave freedom from debt and doctors more than eating out I made it happen. We tend to buy in bulk to save some money but the break down per week is this:
I purchase about 7lbs of meat for a week. I try to mix it up with a combo of beef, chicken and pork (I know it’s bad but I hate fish). The distribution depends on sales but I never pay more than $2.50/lb. I normally buy rump roast/roast meat, boneless chix breasts in bulk, and boneless chops. Best deals are found mid week.
Total meat purchase = $18
I also purchase several pounds of carbs. Note that every 12 oz of pasta and rice will yield 16 oz of final food product due to absorption. There is never a reason to pay more than a $1 / lb for pasta, rice, or potatoes.
Total carb cost = $6
I also try to purchase 3 to 4 lbs of frozen vegetables which run about $1.50 / lb.
Total vegetable cost = $6
These purchases give us all of our dinners for the week plus enough for leftovers, which we eat for lunch the next day. I eat more than my wife so I tend to buy a box of saltines for about $1.50. That box has four sleeves and I eat about one a week as a snack to hold me over at work.
Of course, we sometimes need to buy olive oil, salt and pepper, etc. but our total lunch and dinner cost is about $35/week.
For breakfast my son inhales waffles. I wait until Kroger has a 10 for 10 sale and load up on these. Each box yields 8 waffles and my son will eat all 8 in a week. Sometimes he’ll mix in an egg. We also feed him a serving of fruit and juice for breakfast. The pound of fruit and gallon of juice costs about $7/week.
Total breakfast for son = $8/week
The parent’s breakfast is much easier. During the week I don’t eat breakfast (unless you count the Diet brand X coke) and my wife may have a bagel or toast with brand x coffee. On the weekend I’ll make eggs and potatoes.
Bagels ($2) + bread ($1) + coffee ($2) + diet soda ($2) + eggs ($2) + milk ($4) = $13
As anyone can see I’m under the $60 I stated and was able to purchase enough food to easily feed a family of three. I admit we are a little crazy about our diet and budgeting but it is more than possible. If anyone is interested we use a modified form of the “Zone Diet”, a form of the “paleo diet”. It is designed to optimize athletic performance and health. I call it modified because we eat more carbs than recommended due to our budget goals. However, our caloric intake based on food grouping is actually very much in line with the FDA’s guidelines.
Sean Michael,
Thanks for going to the trouble to spell it all out. I find your approach quite fascinating. There seems to be a fair amount of information on the web if you just google “feeding a family.” (Having the ability to store, and especially freeze, a lot of stuff is an obvious advantage.)