[This series on abortion rights begin with Kicking At The Darkness. Hence, this is actually part VI, with Kicking At The Darkness serving as prologue.]
Perchance some readers who have pored through this series might conclude I lack sensitivity toward the plights and struggles of women, and the struggles facing babies born into families incapable of properly raising children. Let me make a few assurances:
Let it be said that I know what it is like living in a home where one is not wanted. I know what it is like to see mental illness ravage a family. I have seen a child who should have been surrendered to adoption agents instead be beaten and battered physically and emotionally. I have lied to the social worker who came to investigate such neglect. I have known what it is like to struggle through unplanned pregnancy; and to see the child's mother storm off toward the abortionist. I have fought to keep a child from the abortionist's hands; I have known what it is like to be a single-parent.
I have known the friend who, with his wife, counts the birthdays of their first child which they aborted for a reason neither of them can ascertain, three happy children later. I have known the friend who turns snide and cruel at dinner parties, angry at the pro-lifers in attendance, defensive of her abortions, though no one has mentioned abortion at all during conversations; nor does anyone sit in judgement upon her. I have known the sorrow of a woman and man desperately seeking pregnancy, who seethed with anger when contemplating the millions of women who treat pregnancy like so much bad make-up, like a bad hair day with cramps. And I have known the anger of a co-worker who once told me, right outside my office door, how she had separated from and divorced her unfaithful husband, with whom she had had three lovely children (all nearly fully grown), and yet, upon discovering she was pregnant with their fourth child just days after she threw him out, chose to abort that baby. "There was no way I was going to bring that bastard's kid into the world," she said.
And I have seen the parents and siblings of unimaginably handicapped children gathered round them at birthdays and graduations, smiling and crying and beaming at some small connection or achievement, cameras clicking away at light impossible to see.
And I have asked, "Which is better: To live and suffer, and at least have the possibility to say 'yea' or 'nay' to life's difficulty, or never to exist at all?"
Recently I read a news report about a man who murdered his wife because she wanted to cuddle after intercourse. He just wanted to watch a sports event on TV. Cuddling was too difficult. No doubt she'd be alive right now if she had been more male in her sexuality, you know, sex without all that other stuff, all the frills and tassels and details women generally desire. Screw, and then kill her. It's been done millions and millions of times, it's just that many men murder their lovers' hearts. They leave the body for someone else. Boys, being boys, no doubt.
This news story shines a dim light in the darkness of our sex-without-consequences culture. Women should be more masculine in their sexual propensities, and everyone will get along just fine.
The other day I visited a blog where the young woman writing was asking for advice how she could REALLY please her boyfriend sexually. She wrote that they had "done the PiV thing, the anal thing, the oral thing ..." but she really wanted to blow his mind. "Any suggestions?"
Just think about what she has written. She has made reference to the PiV thing, the penis-in-vagina THING. Could there be a more reductionistic statement about sex? Could she have possibly drafted a blog that dripped with more indifference and joylessness? Could she have sucked the life out of sex any more proficiently, or thrust upon us a more ennui-laden view of her world?
Any suggestions, she asks? Yes, I've got a few. How about turning your boyfriend on, not with premarital sex, but premarital love? How about turning him on with the wild fantasy that you'd like him to impregnate you; that you'd like to try using your body for what it is so clearly designed to do, and that you'd like him to do the same, in the sacrament of holy matrimony? Or would that be just too boring, too much of the baby-in-utero thing; too much like real living and not the abyss from which you beg advice from internet strangers, the hundreds who tell you how to misuse your soul and body even more? And I further suggest that you consider two things: Your husband is most likely out there, somewhere, perhaps clicking through the internet. What sort of person will he find when he finds you, at your oh-so-progressive website? Think that'll be good for your relationship, your sexual past made public? And what of your future children? Surely this sort of website is the kind of thing you will hide away from them, no? Or is it a shining moment of your utterly self-defined womanhood?
You see, the climate is rife with efforts to divorce women from what their bodies and emotional needs actually are. In other words, there is an existential estrangement not only between men and women, there is one between a woman and her womb. For most women have been duped into believing their wombs are mere playthings, mere jungle-gyms for cute men. In other words, they've been seduced into being something other than female.
And no other seducers are more dangerously anti-feminine than the pro-choice batterers of the sacred female. Essentially the pro-choice model is entirely one of redefining a woman's body. For the message is this: Go ahead, be indifferent, casual, even reckless with your womb. Divorce it from who you are, deep, in your soul. If you want to entertain men, if you want to experience PLEASURE, go ahead. And if the outcome is not quite what you think, we can help you, we can send in other men with tools and poisons and anti-biotics, and we will dispense with the problem in a manner professional, casual and yet sensitive to your needs. So what if this may lead to women being perceived as objects more thoroughly, more fully, than ever before. We can help with the problem. Trust us.
THE COLOR OF WATER
If you have not read James McBride's The Color Of Water, I urge you to do so. It is a brilliant biography/memoir of dirt poor black children (you'll see what I mean) raised by their very-white mother in Brooklyn's projects. It is a stunning piece of storytelling, and it is a stunning view at what life can be when life is affirmed and chosen, with all its risks, rather than the death and abandonment associated with the choice of abortion.
Let us concede: There are harrowing issues facing people every minute of every day. There are children treated brutally every morning, or at bedtime, or even during evening prayers. But, such living is to be preferred over non-existence, is it not? Surely we should leave the choice of a life's value to those who are living that life? Surely each of us is entitled to life itself, and to make our own decision whether death or life is the more glorious option? For that, I believe, is the point of so many poignant and powerful stories, like The Color of Water: Life is a choice one makes for the benefit of others, so that they may make their own choices.
What is the most important thing a person can do? Is it to cure cancer? build a cathedral? create a new energy source? Or is it to create a child, and to actively and consciously choose to raise that child? For what is the cure of cancer, if there are no people procreating to enjoy such treatment, or to applaud such accomplishment? What is the beauty of a cathedral, if it is not to awe and inspire the living and their progeny? Why create alternative fuels, if no child benefits from its efficiency and cleanliness?
No doubt all these things are important, as are the many things people do. No doubt there are those who cannot procreate, for all sorts of reasons, reasons mostly deemed tragic, unnatural, or abnormal (such as deformity, injury, illness, or birth defect). And there is no doubt that Nature has given us a message in the very behaviors of most of the highest verterbrates: procreation is a powerful, joyous, beauteous and inspiring act and responsibility. It is fraught with purpose, depth, meaning, redemption. There is no alienation in nature (except that caused by predation or competition due to scarcity) observed in mammalian parents: they do not wonder about purpose, or "relationship" or meaning, precisely because they embrace life exactly as it is, male and female, and do not treat life or sex as sport or recreation or some other casual dalliance or hobby. Sex itself is purposive, and, if we could just get on with treating our bodies and souls as they are defined by nature, we would find that men and women could bridge the alienation inherent in wrong living.
Do not believe what you see and hear in the machine of media and information: we are not gods and goddesses who can live life in blithe indifference, a human safety net spread beneath our recklessness. We are fallen gods and goddesses, in need of a solution. And that solution is simple: We need to start being real men, real women. Our children are calling out to us from near and far, pleading with us to change.
And a change needs to take place. Be radical. Look at your genitals and understand: They are not toys. There is a purpose beyond superficial stimulation. Let the birds and the bees show you what it is, for they know better than the high and mighty among our own very confused species.
Contratimes
To finish this series, read here.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment