Some weeks ago, Donald Trump commented that if abortion were illegal, then women who had abortions should be subject to some form of punishment. This is a logical position, insofar as those who violate laws are generally subject to some form of punishment. But Trump was immediately criticized by those holding both pro-choice and anti-abortion positions, and he soon recanted, saying instead that the doctor or other practitioner providing the abortion is the one who should be punished, not the no-longer-pregnant woman, who is, Trump said, "a victim."
One might suspect that anti-choice conservatives take the position that doctors performing abortions, rather than those receiving abortions, should be punished, for purely pragmatic reasons. Perhaps the threat of punishment might be more likely to have a deterrent effect for practitioners. Perhaps punishing a woman recovering from a medical procedure might seem too harsh a position to win over those who are politically uncertain.
But as Corey Robin points out in Jacobin, more is involved in that position. A political scholar who has studied conservativism, Robin has argued that “conservatism is the theoretical voice of ... animus against the agency of the subordinate classes.”
It provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to govern themselves. . . . Submission is their first duty, agency, the prerogative of the elite.
Though certainly hostile to women’s agency, Trump’s [initial] position recognizes it. He’s saying women make the choice to get an abortion, abortion is a crime, so do with women who get an abortion what we do with anyone who commits a crime: hold them accountable, punish them. If the goal is simply to constrain the agency of the subordinate class, the simplest thing to do is to punish the disobedient so that she doesn’t act disobediently again. But in doing so, you implicitly recognize her agency, particularly if your punishment is tied to a set of laws and rules you expect her to learn. . . .
Trump’s detractors in the GOP refuse to recognize women’s agency. It’s the abortionist’s fault, they say! Hold the doctor accountable, not the poor unsuspecting women, who’s just an innocent victim of the doctor’s evil ways. . . .
If the goal is not simply to constrain the agency of the subordinate class, but to deny it altogether, the far better move is not to hold the disobedient accountable but instead to blame her disobedience on some external force: Satan, the serpent, the doctor. She then becomes a vessel, the implement of another’s will (preferably a man’s will), which is precisely what so many in the conservative movement want women to be.
On the other hand, since denial does not work--since women are not what the conservative movement wants us to be, since women keep acting like autonomous agents with wills of our own--women are, in fact, punished for terminating or attempting to terminate pregnancies in the US.
As Jodi Jacobson points out in a piece on R E wire,
The anti-choice movement seeks to punish women through a web of entrapment that, spun just a little bit at a time, harms women in ways that are less noticeable to the rest of us because they don’t make headlines until women start ending up in jail.
First, anti-choice legislators pass laws to mandate medically unnecessary waiting periods, driving up the costs of abortion care and insulting the intelligence of women who don’t need to be told to wait to figure out how to deal with their own realities. Then, they pass laws to require clinics to mimic ambulatory surgical centers, though abortion is among the safest procedures a person can obtain and there is no reason not to do them in a clinic. This forces many clinics to close because providers can’t recoup the costs of medically unnecessary building renovations, and in turn it leaves women in large swaths of a state without access to care. Then, having cut off many avenues to legal safe abortion care, lawmakers pass laws to make medication abortion inaccessible, again on medically unnecessary grounds. They also pass laws mandating that only doctors can perform abortions, even though nurses and nurse practitioners are perfectly capable of being trained to perform early abortions safely and effectively, as well as to administer medication abortion. Finally, they pass laws making self-induced abortion a crime. Put these together and the anti-choice movement has made a safe, legal abortion virtually impossible to obtain. So when, in desperation, women go to any length to end an unintended pregnancy, legislators punish them further by making them criminals and putting them into jail.
In Georgia, Kenlissia Jones was arrested in 2015 for allegedly using misoprostol to self-induce her abortion. Jones was originally facing two charges: “malice murder” and “possession of a dangerous drug” (i.e. the misoprostol). The murder charge against Jones was dropped, but she still faces punishment for the drug charge. . . . in Tennessee, Anna Yocca was charged with attempted murder for a failed self-induced abortion attempt with a coat hanger. Prosecutors later dropped the attempted murder charge but said they would still pursue criminal charges against Yocca, likely for aggravated assault.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 38 states now have feticide or “fetal homicide” laws on the books, and in 23 of these states, these laws can be applied at any stage of pregnancy. While these laws were not originally created with the intent of criminalizing pregnant women for actions they took during their own pregnancy, they are now widely used to do just that. . . .
There is Bei Bei Shuai, who was charged with murder and attempted feticide for attempting suicide while pregnant. Shuai sat in jail for 435 days until she was released on bail (where she remained under surveillance by an electronic ankle monitor). In August 2013, nearly two and a half years after her prosecution began, she accepted a plea deal to the misdemeanor charge of “criminal recklessness.” There is Purvi Patel, who was charged with neglect of a dependent and feticide after having a pregnancy loss that the state deemed was a self-induced abortion. She is currently serving a 41-year sentence while her case is on appeal.
In short, "The laws and policies pushed by the [anti-choice] movement and the politicians it supports punish women both explicitly and implicitly." But it's worth recalling, too, that women's intractable assertions of agency have yielded positive, collective action, as well.
One notable example from the days before Roe v Wade is the Jane collective, which you can learn more about this week by watching the film Jane: An Abortion Service at the Clinton Street Theatre tomorrow, Tuesday April 12 at 7pm.
Jane was a Chicago-based women's health group that performed nearly 12,000 safe illegal abortions between 1969 and 1973 with no formal medical training. In the film, Jane members describe finding feminism and clients describe finding Jane, and the film uses both archival footage and recreations as well as interviews to depict how the repression of the early sixties and social movements of the late sixties influenced members of the group. Both vital knowledge and meditation on the process of empowerment, Jane: An Abortion Service showcases the importance of preserving women's knowledge in the face of revisionist history.
It is sponsored by Backline and the Clinton Street Theatre, and will be followed by a discussion with writer and activist Judith Arcana, who was a Jane, is interviewed in the film, and has written, among other wonderful works, a fabulous collection of poetry called What If Your Mother.
[Old Mole Variety Hour, April 11, 2016]
