Give me liberty, or give me death
Women have struggled for autonomy for as long as anyone can remember. Men, also, have always sought to gain, but also maintain, levels of liberty, freedom, autonomy and a general busting out from under any form of tyranny.
The give me liberty or give me death idea was seen as lofty, manly, even, and not something women should aspire to acquire.
We stumbled upon the idea of contraception as a social reform movement quite recently in historic terms. The idea of women being free to be whatever a girl wants to be when she grows up is quite revolutionary.
One reason that the term “pro-life” came to mean “I am for human life and you are against it” was a naturalistic fallacy that had forever made women feel that as the sex that bore children, they had a prescribed role, a calling, an obligation, even.
When contraception could have become widely accessible and free, it was immediately co-opted to become one more element to control. To control women’s medication, menstrual cycles, for-profit healthcare, and most of all, it seemed imperative to make sure only married women had permission to even get this stuff.
It is now well established, for example, that when midwives helped with childbirth, white, male physicians were not profiting. Thus, abortion only became illegal when people realized that women might have new-fangled ideas about women’s roles, and men could control laws and censorship to make sure only men dealt with gynecology.
Thus for little more than a century, now, the idea that abortion meant “killing your baby” took hold in the public consciousness. The idea that only a horrible person would have an abortion, or even use birth control, was carved into the monument to womanhood that to this day, we struggle to overcome.
Getting down to terms
To be “pro-life” for proponents seems to mean “I am against murdering human beings.” This is a ridiculously simplified notion about human biology, theology, and psychology, but within emotional morality, it carries tremendous weight.
“Pro-life”, appealing to our greatest weakness, (and strength) human emotion, is going to always provoke intense debate.
Being pro-choice is almost as simplistic. A woman should have as much right “to choose” her life. But the “forced birthers” will always, rightfully, observe, that only a “woman” can birth children, so she has to be the vessel.
To anyone who sees abortion as murder, then no amount of saying “choice” is anything other than selfish will be heard. Murder of life is murder. Then, the choice of having “a life,” is selfish.
We talk past each other when we don’t understand the various framing of these terms.
What is a woman’s life?
Science and biology can help us out here. We are one animal among many others in complex networks that support this thing we call “life.” But if your definition — as in “pro-life” — sees only fetal, human life, it will never ever make sense to recognize the whole biosphere of life that is real.
Our shared DNA proves we are connected to a whole food web and natural cycles, but that is as simple to deny as any other natural spectrum of being.
In everyday terms, the binary is accepted. Even though in actuality, there are no Black or white people, or only males and females, for just two examples.
Life, actually, falls along a spectrum, from the life cycle of a galaxy to the life cycle of most cells. A blastocyst, like any other seed, is made of cells that usually die — or go into dormancy — before they ever become full organisms.
Matt Walsh famously asks what is a woman, but what is less often asked is what is a woman’s life. A woman’s life, like any other inter-connected life, has to be seen as something other than just one role. Her personhood, and autonomy, must be seen as needed in a much larger context than just childbirth.
“A life “ is quite a different thing than “life.” And, when the whole world grows up this will be seen as common sense.
With social ecology and the ecology of systems we call actual “life,” a great diversity of people is needed. We need all men and all women, so innovation, creativity, collaboration, and leadership influence all aspects of having life be full, sustainable, and of high quality.
Give me …liberty?
Women’s liberation at least had the root word of liberty within it.
Our language shapes us, and we continually shape it. Using the “pro-life” term to create emotion and outrage is effective. “Pro-choice” is not as effective because it does not appeal to the giant emotional rhetoric that Patrick Henry appealed to for liberated human beings.
In his day, however, an emotional appeal for womanhood meant motherhood, purity, servitude, grace, obedience, godliness, and being as chaste as possible.
When we turned instead to the idea of liberating women to vote and participate, in earning and learning, that all should have changed.
We are still so behind our walls of language.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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