My miscarriage — on CNN, ABC and AOL

She has admitted before that she likes sex and it is obviously the unprotected kind. No mention of STD testing or the like either in the past or prior to getting into this relationship.

Rita – you sound like wonderful company.

I am raciing against a wireless link that is unstable. Take deep breaths as you read me. I will watch for your response and post. You sound, again, like wonderful company. And, yes, Sanger was deeply problematic…

Here is something I recently wrote elsewhere

“I think I mentioned that – as a feminist social worker, as a very regretful one-time clinic worker, as a woman who has known many, many women who have terminated pregnanices and as a women who been spared the crisis of an unwanted pregnancy, I do not know ANY woman (or man) for that matter, who can be justly called “pro-abortion”. I know many “pro-life” people who – as you said – are more accurately described as “anti-abortion” simply because they do not have formulated stands on (or do not attend to) all the many other “Life” issues. I, too, struggle with the language of “choice” in this area and believe that language was adopted at a time when the women’s movement was addressing “choice” in more global terms: marriage or not, career or not, children or not, men as sexual partners or not, same-race partner or not, bra or not (you get my meaning)…and the reality that women were asserting that they could chose among all the greys in between those black-or-white constructions. I do believe that all of those struggles and the underlying societal tensions have been attached to the narratives surrounding this now-Constitutional debate so that, when Americans speak of the abortion controversy, we are rarely speaking strictly of the “life” issue. For this reason, I think it is essential that we try hard to be as honest and transparent and explicit as possible in choosing our words and “labels”. (More on your next post).

We humans are so often inconsistent, and the beauty of language and community is that we can help each other struggle with WHY we are inconsistent in specific beliefs and actions, thus creating the space and opportunity for transformation. Whenever I encounter people willing to wrestle with stuff – even when they hold positions wildly contradicting my own – I recall this statement by Astrid Schlaps, a favorite professor and a psychoanalytically trained social worker: “Invite the construction of a new story without punishing people for the story they have already told”. That is that I hope for when I talk with people about this deeply complex and painful issue”. Jean

AND

“Such great discussions. As I said in response to Frank's post about inconsistency, I do believe that US discussions about abortion are most often loaded with any number of additional and profoundly important issues. It is very difficult to discover the patience required for parsing these various issues so that, when the topic is "apples", the argument is in fact applicable to apples and not persimmons.

I often wonder if contemporary participants in the debate acknowledge that, in the 21st century, the legal right to obtain an abortion has been a Constitutional reality for the entire lifetime of a near totality of US women currently of child-bearing age. I wonder this because it seems very hard, I think, for most of us to stay clear in these discussions that abortion is at once a moral issue and, in the US, a Constitutional issue, which translates in the minds of most as a civil rights issue. It is too late, I think, to expect that the two frameworks – moral ("life") and Constitutional ("rights") – €“ will not be constantly and subtly and powerfully intertwined to the point of being inseparable in most contemporary discussions, whether or not we are aware or are able to acknowledge that.

Any U.S. woman who reached sexual maturity after 1973 – which means most women under age 50 or so in this country – €“came of age knowing that she had the Constitutional right to decide whether she would carry a pregnancy to term. The facts are that U.S. women do have an existing Constitutional and, thus, civil right to terminate early pregnancies. We do have an existing Constitutional right to independently and privately determine the resolution of an early pregnancy. We do have the right to determine what will and will not occur within the internal cavities of our bodies. And we have that right regardless of our morality, regardless of how we respond to that right if we find ourselves pregnant when we do not want to be pregnant. We retain that right even if we find that right and/or its exercise morally repugnant.

An easy summation of the Constitutional reality in which American women have come to maturity in the decades since 1973 is the Roe v Wade street language: "we have the right to control our bodies". We do. We just plain do.

That shortcut, when viewed in the "Life" framework, is admittedly pretty troubling but it is, I think, wholly unremarkable as a statement of fact in the only Constitutional framework most of us have experienced firsthand and, thus, the only one to which we are accountable.

When we talk about outlawing abortion in the US, we are talking about the complete retraction of an existing (specifically and clearly defined) Constitutional right. When I boil it all down, all I can say as an American citizen born in 1963 (and, thus, aware of this, my Constitutional right, by the time I started high school in 1977) is this: "you have got to be kidding me".

We are talking rights here, Frank, and we are talking specifically about women's rights under the current Constitution. In my mind, that means it is exceptionally difficult to talk about abortion in the US without acknowledging that a Constitutional right is our context whenever the morality of abortion is discussed.

And that brings me to this. You wrote: "Let me go as far as to say that I think the Catholic Church will go a long ways to ending abortion when women have the equality in society they were intended for by their Creator. The desire for abortion rights, from my perspective, often comes out of a deep pain that women have for not feeling like they are in control over their own lives. In my view, abortion rights are an improper response to this pain. But I think that when women have the standing in society they were meant for, the discussion about abortion will enter a much better phase than it is right now–it won’t be driven as much by the pain of inequality".

I have to say that my initial hit is that you are right.

I would ask you to consider changing a few of your words, but I think you are on to something very important.

I do not think you are speaking here of individual and specific decisions to terminate a pregnancy and, thus, that you did not suggest women are acting out or using faulty logic when they seek to abort a pregnancy. I think you are talking about why women are so vigilant and determined in their protection of this Constitutional right. And I agree.
Women have not attained full equality in this world. Women are not treated as equals in many of the religious communities that are most adamant and vociferous (and often just plain ugly and hateful) on this issue. And I do believe that contributes much of the messiness of discussions about abortion.

I know I have lost patience at times – in discussion with conservative men who are as ardently anti-feminist as they are anti-abortion – and have wanted to say, "Oh, for Pete's sake, before you harangue me about how women are denying the equal rights of unborn babies, why don't we start with some talk about equality in your interactions with women?" ?" (I don't say it. I have. It is generally not productive. I have a mental list of men in my southern conservative Catholic community with whom I simply will not discuss abortion because I know that the unacknowledged subtext is feminism and the fact that they dislike that I conduct myself as their equal in every way. THAT is why they bring up the topic to me. When we can acknowledge that and talk about it, then I will believe we are on our way to being able to actually talk about abortion when we talk about abortion. I have hopes we will get there).

And I think that was your point about women's ordination and abortion, Frank.

Again, women have not attained full equality in this world. Women are not treated as equals in many of the religious communities that are most adamant and vociferous (and often just plain ugly and hateful) on this issue.

If power were shared equally and conscientiously, the conditions which contribute (and have always contributed) to women's decisions to end pregnancies would be significantly impacted and altered. Women would not choose, if they as a class truly had the structural power to do otherwise, the various insufficiencies that make many unplanned pregnancies so difficult to carry to term. Given a full and sufficient response to what is required to create political, moral and structural equality for women-as-mothers-of-and-for-the-human-race, abortion as a "safety net" would not be so much on our collective minds.

Women – and feminist men – might then find it less frightening to engage in brutally honest (and, thus, emotionally and morally and spiritually painful) discussions about what is really occurring when a pregnancy is terminated. And that honesty, born when women have the equality in society they were intended for by their Creator (as you said, Frank), could have the power to transform the discussion from a legitimate debate about rights to a life-giving discussion about how to protect and nurture all God's creations.

Again, that is what I thought you were getting at, Frank, and I agree with you.

I believe many women reflexively support abortion because, as a legal right, it is one of the few structural "safety nets" women can count on in this class- and gender-biased country. Many other structural resources, protections and safety nets are subject to the willingness – the benevolence – of specific players and authorities to facilitate and ensure effective utilization of those resources and protections which are designed to ensure women retain full agency and equal opportunity in their lives. A scared pregnant woman considering the "safety net" that is Roe v Wade requires no such benevolence from the system or individual powers.

I do believe that some of the reasons women give for aborting pregnancies – €“ many of the ones you listed – are simply statements of the much larger reality you and I are articulating, Frank. Our personal stories are told in the language and terms of our known narratives, right? And I think many of us manage pain and confusion through language shortcuts, and I think a lot of those reasons you listed are shortcuts through highly complex and landscapes and elusive existential awarenesses. "I can't take time out of college to have this baby" is a much more manageable bite than "I feel like I had to fight so many fears and people and barriers to get to the place where I could go to school. I feel like school is saving my life. I am terrified at the thought of leaving school even for a short time. What if I can't return? I am terrified I cannot do it a second time. I am terrified no one will let me or help me do it a second time. And where does that leave me? Back there, in that place, in that life I worked my way out of, that place I had to get out of. And this time I will be there with a baby who is totally dependent on me? When I can barely make it by myself?"

So, when a woman says to me, "I have to have an abortion because I am student", I wonder if she is telling me all those other things about her life and her fears. It is all too likely, in this society, that she **is** telling me those things. And it is all too likely that many women who support Roe v. Wade have been, are, will be or know a woman who opts for abortion "because she is a student" but, much more completely, because her life is some version of the one described above.

That said, I have long believed (before and during and very often in the 20 years since my experience as a clinic worker) that "pro-choice" activists often use semantics to obstruct the moral question you are driving at, Frank. In many discussions of abortion with activists, it is still anathema to say what any high school biology student would recognize if able to observe a first trimester fetus "in utero" and then observe (even) a first trimester abortion: abortion impacts biological life. Abortion terminates biological life. Abortion ends biological life. Abortion kills biological life. The genetics of that biological life are human. Thus, abortion kills human life. There is, in my mind, no intellectually honest way to deny those facts. Genetically human cells are living and dividing and specializing in the woman's uterus, according to a natural pattern and process, a life process which is permanently and irrevocably stopped by an abortion procedure. Facts are facts, right?

But stating those facts most often has the effect of drawing a chalk line down the center of a room, after which people rush to either side, self-selecting according to ideological position on legal abortion. A statement of those facts tends to result in the speaker being both pulled AND pushed on to the "anti-abortion" side. Often even before the speaker has finished the statement or in any way disclosed a moral or political position.

I have been frustrated by that dynamic for a very long time. I understand the dynamic and even the logic (moral and otherwise) but I think it is unfortunate. That dynamic – €“ that inability to hear a statement of fact without immediately structuring relationships and ensuing dialogue around assumed ideology – €“ makes it difficult, I think, to have the discussion you seek, Frank.

And, when the less powerful have little reason to trust the most powerful and when so much is at stake —– in this case, one of the few rock solid structural guarantees of equality (in terms of self-determination) women have in their daily lives in this country, even at this late date — self-protection does tend to trump all else, some truths included, in the individual and collective human mind.

I find that "ideological lockstep" short-sighted and ultimately destructive of moral progress, which always depends on unwavering commitment to the truth, even when it raises questions that frighten or challenge us morally and politically. As an emotional response to deep and intolerable inequality, it is entirely expected and not likely to be eradicated soon.

And, though I am frustrated terribly by the intellectual dishonesty and the ideologically-filtered responses, I understand the impulse. And I think that loops back to your smart hypothesis that the Catholic Church (and society) will begin to make headway in its moral desire to end abortion when the Catholic Church (and society) makes headways in its moral response to women's healthy, mature, moral desire "for the equality in society they were intended for by their Creator" (your beautiful words). It seems that you understand the impulse, too.

****A favorite book of mine is "Blaming the Victim" by Jack Ryan (1975). The essential message, for me, was captured in a single paragraph, which I used to be able to quote but will now need to paraphrase: "There is no culture of people on earth that willingly chooses death over life".

I believe that. And I am reminded of that now. (My Catholicism helps me so much: Jesus, the God-man, teaches us how to acknowledge and be compassionate with our human need even as we deepen our spiritual courage and divine wisdom. We each are always "both/and". Talk about having a fellow-traveller!) Jean

Sorry about the loss of your baby. I was fortunate to have a close friend who listened to me during and after my miscarriage. I was depressed for several months and finding women to talk to that felt the same way helped me immensely. If the powers that be make you feel uncomfortable telling the facts of why you need some time off of work then your company probably needs to look at their management. There should be absolutely no feelings of shame surrounding a miscarriage. However, I believe common sense dictates that there are times, places and people to talk with regarding your personal feelings.

Rachel – Alcoholics repeatedly say they don’t have a drinking problem. Do you always believe things others repeatedly say?

People are going to continue to do alot of things — molest children, murder, rape, kill themselves — maybe we should legalize all of it and give people “safe” environments for such dangerous operations.