Abortion: Sweet Brutality/Loving Dispassion

For this article, I have chosen to look at Sallie Tisdale's article "We Do Abortions Here" in relation to the being/possessing/deploying paradigm you offered us and the implications that this view has on our understanding of reproduction. This was not an easy choice to make for me, namely because no article in this unit represents my worldview. However, this article was the most challenging for me to read because of its expressly visceral style of authorship and the responses it seeks from its readers. And that is why I have chosen it; if a reaction is that strong, I simply have to explore what made me react that way. I believe that part of my reaction is based in the way that Tisdale looks at the role of the body in regards to abortion. Let's begin by looking at the ways in which a body can be viewed/expressed in the above paradigm.

There are three ways of viewing/expressing the body in the examples you gave us. The first is the "being" stance which states that one is their body. Next is the "possessing" stance which states that your body is your own possession; you alone own it. The body is a house for the actual person in this view. Last is the "deploying" stance which takes the position that the body and identity are not distinct from each other. The body is one way by which we articulate our identities. The body and identity work in tandem here.

In the Tisdale article, I believe that the author takes the stance that we "possess" our bodies. Understand that I did much deliberating before I came to this conclusion. What follows are the reasons that I came to this conclusion. First is the author's insistence that if we were more animal-like, more "primitive," if we were our bodies so to speak, then abortions would not take place. Tisdale states that "there would be no abortion because there would be nothing more important than caring for the young and perpetuating the species, no reason for sex but to make babies (153)."

Likewise, the author does not believe that we are deploying our bodies in relation to reproduction. In the deploying model, our sexuality would be expressed because it is part of our identity and our identities cannot be separated from our bodies. There is no mind/body split in deployment. And Tisdale believes in this split. She has to.

Tisdale only refers to fetuses and never babies. She speaks of choice and of the women who have so few choices in other areas of their lives who choose abortions again and again. She speaks of the rich women who cannot deal with a child at this point and those who already have children and cannot afford more mouths to feed. She speaks of all kinds of women in all kinds of circumstances, but she never speaks about the entire woman.

The woman is never given a spiritual/metaphysical dimension. They are rarely given a mental life aside from the decision to choose. That may sound as if she believes in the being model, but look again at the author's words in regards to the fetus and the effect it can have upon its carrier: "The fetus, in becoming itself, can ruin others; its utter dependence has a sinister side." She also writes, "It is a burden, a weight, a thing separate (emphasis added by me)." If she truly believed that we are our bodies, then such statements could not be made because if we are our bodies, then our offspring are also our bodies; they can never be a thing separate from us.

This leads to the further implications of what "possessing" the body offers us in regards to understanding reproduction. And what my mind keeps coming back to is this: the issue of choice. Those who are being their bodies do not seem to really believe that we have any choice in regard to our bodies. They believe that we are what we are and that we are what we were meant to be. Sex changes or abortions are simply not options in this worldview. If I am my body, I am also very limited in the ways in which I can walk through this world...

In the possessing model, if I own my body, then it follows that I should be able to do what I want with it. It is, after all, only housing, a casing, a meat-sack, in which my actual person/mind/spirit resides. I have all the choices I need in this view. I own my body. I can do anything with it because it is mine! This view very much reminds me of teenagers as they struggle to become an individual apart from their family and community units.

"Possessing" also very much correlates to capitalism for me. In a capitalist society, if you pay for it you own it; if you own it, you can do whatever you wish with it. And for centuries this has included women. Women were property gained in marriage, the offspring belong to the father, and all sorts of problems arose from this worldview. For instance, the notion that women cannot be raped by their husbands arises from this worldview. The notion of the "rule of thumb" in which a wife can be beaten by her husband as long as the object is no wider than the man's thumb springs from this view. Does either sound logical or ethical? Well I fucking hope not! If they do, I suggest you head straight to the nearest psychiatrist; do not pass go, do not collect $100.

What does this have to do with reproduction? If we posses our bodies, then we can choose abortions, contraception, reproductive technologies, etc...because our bodies are ours to do with what we will. The major problem with this view, for me, in regard to reproduction is that the offspring can never be fully realized as people. This is due to the fact that the parents themselves are not fully realized as people. The person they are is trapped, encapsulated by the body. This view will certainly skew the way they see their offspring and the way that the offspring will come to view themselves.

If we did away with the mind/body split and deployed our bodies, if our bodies and identities were always and inexorably linked, then this skewing, this war between body and mind could finally be put to rest and our whole selves could view the reproduction issues from a Gestaltist perspective. Looking at the whole instead of only at the details is not something done often or well in Western societies, but hell, its worth a shot.