Abortion and Dentistry, and Other News
Or, how I told my daughter that someone getting an abortion is no big deal
Yesterday, Kansas citizens resoundingly rejected an effort to amend the state’s constitution to remove abortion protections in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. We’ll talk about this more in the coming days, but the three immediate takeaways are:
(1) Riffs on “Bleeding Kansas” and “Breeding Kansas” are going to be overused on Twitter. But some will be clever so keep an open mind.
(2) What a person says when their church friends are listening and what they do in the privacy of that voting booth can be two very different things.
(3) The GOP is not going to let any further statewide votes on abortion go forward if they can help it. Democracy, after all, is only useful when the people agree with you. As Mississippi (Mississippi!) in 2011, and Kansas yesterday have made abundantly clear, the people are just fine with abortion rights. So, expect the GOP to double down on ramming their radical religious agenda down the people’s throats without bothering to ask.
Because what do the people know anyway?
We’ll talk a lot here in Barfville about “micro” and “macro” for no other reason than I find these to be useful buckets to distinguish between systems with which we can engage locally as individuals (micro) and systems that are too far flung or two massive for us to have much individual effect (macro). Knowing the difference is the only way to stay sane in an Internet-driven national (global?) news environment.
But in the micro realm, abortion is an issue on which we can have an immediate, tangible, and lasting effect simply based on how we talk to our children about it.
Around the time that maybe Grandpa Alito and Clarence Thomas’s wife** maybe decided to leak the then-draft of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion to the media, my nine-year old daughter encountered the concept of abortion for the first time.
Like most Americans, my daughter just wanted to watch Wheel of Fortune. Sometimes, though, she turns on the TV early and watches Lester Holt on the NBC nightly news. I allow it because Lester has a soothing presence, and because network news isn’t as filled with rabble-rousing horseshit as its cable alternatives. On this particular night, I maybe should have paid better attention in light of wider events. While frantically trying to get the kitchen cleaned before Wheel came on (hey, I like it too!), I heard a voice from the living room ask, “Dad, what’s abortion?”
Well, shit.
There are two schools of thought on this. School #1 says “provide your children with balanced information and let them learn to reason and make their own decisions.” School #2, to quote a friend, says, “Hell, if you don’t indoctrinate your kids, some other bastard will.” I prefer School #1 and apply it frequently. But…the long-term dangers of letting a child, especially a female child, be exposed without preparation to the anti-abortion side of the debate are pretty stark.
Accordingly, I said:
“It’s when a pregnant woman doesn’t feel ready to have a baby and she ends the pregnancy before it turns into a baby. It’s a pretty basic procedure. If you do it early enough, it’s like going to the dentist or the drug store. Anyway, some people think the government should tell women whether they can end their pregnancies and some people think women should make that decision for themselves. That’s what the fight is over.”
She thought about it for a second and, budding (and often strident) feminist that she is, said, “I think women should choose.” Then she returned her attention to Lester.
But really to marking time until Wheel.
No muss, no fuss, no moral ambiguity. Like going to the dentist, is both abortion and the explaining of abortion. I don’t even think I stopped cleaning while I talked.
Now, is my own position on abortion so cut and dried? Not entirely. What I left out is my belief (shared by a majority of Americans, at least according to polls) that, as time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future, a fertilized embryo can become a fetus can become a viable fetus can become a pre-born baby and things become a little more ethically fraught. Because at some point prior to birth, said fetus very plausibly becomes a person. Which is why I qualified, “If you do it early enough…” We can put a pin in all that.
That said, 90+ percent of abortions occur in the first trimester. That percentage probably increases if you remove all of the instances of medically necessary later-term abortions. Moreover, since even blue states during Roe strictly limited elective (read: medically unnecessary) abortion procedures after the first trimester, I’ve never seen much value in litigating where personhood begins on the continuum. I know personhood doesn’t begin before brain structures develop, because how can something without a brain be a person? And since most abortions, particularly the drug-induced variety, take place well before that point, no person, no foul.
Still, is how I explained abortion to my daughter overly simplistic? Maybe. It at least leaves out some of the story, whether I believe that part of the story to be salient or not.
So, why’d I liken abortion to dentistry? And why will I continue to make that comparison? Three reasons.
Reason #1: Abortion is super common
You know someone who has had an abortion. You know multiple someones who have had abortions. You may not know you know them, but you know them. It doesn’t matter if you live in a big city or a small town or a secular community or an evangelical community. You know many, many people, who have had abortions. Because it is common. Because anyone can have an unplanned pregnancy. Because not everyone wants, or can afford for, that unplanned pregnancy to become a child they then have to raise.
Yet, despite the commonality of the procedure, abortion lives in the shadows. To me, the stigma is the worst part about the abortion, and if I can do my bit to instill a “no big deal” ethos in my kids as relates to abortion, then I’m helping. Abortions aren’t going to stop, and post-Roe regulations are going to be like squeezing soap. Forcing people who get abortions to hide out in shame has zero value and to the extent that I can train my kids to not be part of that problem, I’m all in.
Sure, my kids have to learn to be sensitive and not invalidate or minimize genuine feelings if they encounter someone who does feel bad about having obtained an abortion. But I’d rather their default state be one of blasé detachment then one of assuming something terrible has taken place.
Reason #2: I’m trying to insure against future recriminations
While the vast bulk of the studies demonstrate that abortion does not have negative psychological consequences on women, I have always been concerned that those studies don’t entirely control for women (or men) who grow up steeped in evangelical culture. It’s at least arguable that if you grow up being beat over the head with the idea that abortion is immoral, you’re going to have a tougher time if you need to go get one. Or take your pregnant significant other to go get one. I suspect this is true whether you buy into the anti-abortion message or not. And Heaven forbid you have to obtain an abortion and then go back to live in an evangelical environment where you can either never talk about it, or only talk about it from the position of seeking absolution from your neighbors. I imagine that would lead to some negative psychological consequences.
I’m an active practicing Christian, a lifelong United Methodist, and I have believed since I was a teenager that abortion was none of the government’s business. There’s no law or rule or commandment that says you have to be anti-abortion to be a Christian. I don’t think abortion ever came up on Sunday in Methodist church growing up. But boy howdy did my small-town evangelical community have strident anti-abortion opinions the other six days of the week. So, by osmosis, I picked up on this idea that abortion was “wrong” or “sad” or “regrettable,” whether I thought it should be illegal or not.
In fact, while discussing the issue growing up, I’m sure I professed some derivation of “Well, I’d never want a girl I got pregnant to get an abortion, but it shouldn’t be illegal.” I could get away with that, but nobody in the community would have tolerated, “What? It’s like getting a cavity filled.” And if I’d been unlucky enough to get a girl pregnant in high school, I likely also would have been steeped enough in the groupthink to derail two lives and encourage her to maintain the pregnancy. Because I had this powerful idea—whether from misplaced/over-inflated notions of “personal responsibility,” or a belief I’d never sufficiently interrogated that abortion was biblically “wrong,”— that if I was involved in an unplanned pregnancy, abortion was not something God would want me to participate in.
I didn’t come up with that on my own. And I didn’t get it from my church or the Bible. Ergo…
Which leads back to my broader point. If I’m being perfectly honest, the part of me that isn’t governed by logic still gets squeamish about abortion. But I have no idea whether that part of me is channeling some bedrock moral principle, or just reacting to “go along to get along” indoctrination from my teenage years. I’m 98% it’s the latter, but I don’t like not knowing for sure. Still, having had that experience, I have no intention of letting either of my kids, but especially my daughter, develop any ambiguity with regard to abortion. If she runs across some person or group that wants to tell her, “Abortion is murder,” I want her to be able to come home to a safe place where a trusted authority figure smiles and rolls his eyes and happily and confidently says, “No it’s not. If you do it early enough, it’s like going to the dentist.”
Reason #3: My kids need to know I’m on their side no matter what
For every person I know who has experienced an abortion, I also know a person who didn’t tell their parents about it. As with Reason #1 above, abortion is a thing enough people do that it shouldn’t carry the stigma it carries. And even if my kids reach a point in their intellectual and moral lives where they have misgivings about abortion, I don’t ever want them to think I have misgivings about abortion. Because, if an unfortunate circumstance occurs and my kids ever have to obtain an abortion, or, in my son’s case, be involved with obtaining an abortion, I want them to understand that there’s absolutely no judgment coming from me. Need money? Need a ride/plane ticket? Need advice or a good listener? Want me to come with? Of course I’ll help.
Because, if you do it early enough, it’s like going to the dentist.
Elsewhere in Barfville
- The San Diego Padres traded away the farm, figuratively and literally, to acquire three years of Juan Soto from the Washington Nationals. This has a bit of a Herschel Walker-to-the-Vikings smell to it (except that Soto is in his prime), and one hopes San Diego can capitalize now before they have to pay later. Of course, as one tweet I saw noted, “The Padres just traded all their prospects to guarantee three years of finishing second in the NL West.” Ouch.
- Sadly for Braves fans like me, the Nationals may end up being the 1990s Dallas Cowboys of this trade. I was rather enjoying their current minor league status. Ah well.
- As noted above, there were elections yesterday.
(1) Play stupid games and win stupid prizes. Peter Meijer, one of the ten Republican House members who voted in favor of impeaching Trump for the January 6 insurrection, barely lost his primary for re-election to a Trumpy Trumper and 2020 election denier named John Gibbs. This was close enough that it’s impossible to believe that Democratic meddling didn’t play a role. In that regard, the Dems ran ads to boost Gibbs over Meijer, figuring that Gibbs will be easier to beat in the general. That is beyond clownish and amounts to playing with fire. And, unfortunately, we all suffer if it comes back to bite them.
(2) Eric wins! Trump’s non-endorsement in the Missouri Senate race bore fruit as the less crazy Eric beat the more crazy Eric in the primary. It probably didn’t help that the more crazy Eric’s ex-wife helped cut an ad accusing MCE of abusing her and their child. As we learned with Roy Moore, even MAGA doesn’t tolerate alleged child abusers. So far.
(3) Trump and the Devos family put aside their differences over former SecEd Betsy Devos trying to shiv Trump with the 25th Amendment back in the bad ole’ days, and pushed Tudor Dixon over the finish line in the GOP gubernatorial primary. She’ll face incumbent Gretchen Whitmer in November.
- Nancy Pelosi tells the Chinese to shove it. Given that two Presidents in a row sort of stood there and let Putin do whatever he wanted, it’s understandable that the Russian president went for broke by invading Ukraine. In light of that aggression, anything we can do to back the Chinese off the plate with respect to Taiwan is worth doing. Plus, the one thing Donald Trump got right when he blew up that Iranian general is that bad actors won’t usually retaliate whole hog if you only fuck with them at the margins. Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan was a risk, but a calculated one, and I’m betting it sends enough message without sending too much message.
- Speaking of blowing people up, my pro-tip to aspiring wanted terrorists is to read indoors.
Have a great Wednesday.