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The Uterus and Politics
By Harry T. Cook
1/11/13
 | | Harry T. Cook |
The word "uterus" is of Greek derivation: ὑστέρα. From it the word "hysteria" comes. For centuries it was thought that abnormal behavior on the part of women arose from disturbances in the uterus.
We now know that it is mostly men who suffer from hysteria, even though they are not equipped with uteri. Male obsession with the uterus seems to center on the idea that, while uteri are parts of women's bodies, they must be subject to male management.
Males know, that despite the might of their testosterone and appetite for sex, they cannot leave the mark of their seed upon the world without the cooperation of the uterus. A typical male is likely to resent the idea that a woman should be able to decide if the seed he planted should be in any way interfered with pending the harvest.
How else explain the obsession of male legislators and members of Congress who go out of their way to prevent women from making their own decisions about reproduction, who, in fact, seek to limit women's reproductive rights.
For nearly 40 years since the U.S. Supreme Court discovered in constitutional law the right of a woman to seek termination of a pregnancy, albeit under a rather complicated set of mays and may nots, men have stewed about it. Some women, too.
Yet, the scouting parties, the main force and the rear guard of the anti-choice movement are made up largely of men, as in the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The latter should in Freudian terms be disinterested. The hierarchy's argument, however, proceeds from what is termed natural law, viz. that a being given life by natural methods has a natural right to it from the moment of conception all the way to a natural death. Ergo: A woman must cede control of her uterus to any life developing in it and to those who supervise her pre-natal care.
Becoming pregnant by rape -- or "forceable" rape, as one justly defeated politician put it -- cannot be considered "natural" by anyone who acknowledges and respects the dignity of the individual. Pregnancy caused by incestuous sexual intercourse is widely understood as unnatural, except by another politician who suggested that any pregnancy was "intended by God." And, while we're at it, may we inquire as to whether celibacy and chastity might be unnatural?
The cultural evolution of the developed world has given us the reality of the woman liberating herself from gender inequalities of all kinds, from dignity-destroying expectations laid upon her by backward-looking people who yearn for "the good old days" when women were consigned to the kitchen and, as the saying goes, "kept barefoot and pregnant."
It has not yet been 100 years since women attained suffrage in America's political life. And now it is possible, even realistic, to envision a woman being nominated by her party for President of the United States in fewer than four years from now. I dare anyone to take on Hillary Rodham Clinton in a debate over reproductive rights. She has faced down tyranny in nations far more dangerous than our own -- even with our primitive gun culture.
Clinton was raised in the United Methodist Church, a denomination with a solid biblical ethic. As I understand it, that communion honors a woman's right to choose, not on whim, of course, but across an array of circumstances that, taken together, finally point to the termination of a pregnancy as the best alternative.
Over more than 40 years as a pastoral counselor, I talked with and listened to a number of women who had reached that conclusion. I never knew one for whom the decision was anything but painfully difficult. In instances that the woman was unmarried and the man involved was out of the picture, the idea of putting an infant up for adoption was offered as an alternative, even the prospect of working with the woman's own supportive family to give birth to the child and raise her or him in the bosom of such a family. However, those alternatives were not offered as being morally superior to termination.
It was no easy task for this father and grandfather, who loves his own children and grandchildren so very much, to arrive at that ethical construction, i.e. being able to see that in some situations surgical abortions turn out to be the best for all concerned -- yes, even for the unborn ones. Such decisions are never made without the shedding of tears.
It will be said that the Bible equates abortion with murder and, hence, is forbidden. The Bible also says that eating shellfish and pork is forbidden. The proscriptions in the biblical text clearly apply to those who believe Torah is the express will of Yahweh or Elohim or El Yireh or El Olam or whatever such numinous deities might be called. And in most cases, it was just fine to annihilate members of opposing tribes, who worshipped different gods. Ah, religion.
In this nation that began its life as a secular republic and that has become manifestly a multicultural society, there are plenty of Americans who do not confess belief in the deity of the Hebrew Bible or of its Christian appendices. More and more, Americans are searching nonsectarian texts for guidance in ethical matters. However, you wouldn't know that to hear what many politicians have to say about reproductive rights.
In my own state of Michigan, the governor has recently signed into law measures that on their face suggest that pregnancy termination will be made safer by requiring that buildings in which such procedures are conducted be built or remodeled according to new and expensive standards. The fact of the matter is that the laws were proposed and enacted to make a woman's choice much more difficult, with legislators largely following the NRA-like dictates of evangelical clergy and the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
The Michigan Legislature and other law-making bodies like it are very proud of themselves for -- wink-wink, nudge-nudge -- "protecting women." Such pride is a kind of hysteria born of male insecurity, macho "we're-in-chargeness" and political pusillanimity -- a very weird mix.
The limited freedom afforded women under Roe v. Wade is being increasingly circumscribed by those who otherwise demand that government should be kept, as their hero Ronald Reagan once put it, "off the backs of people." If only such sloganeers would see the irony of their position where those other body parts known as uteri are concerned.
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POSTSCRIPT
On Sunday, Jan. 6, The New York Times published an op-ed piece by free-thinker Susan Jacoby in which she reprised her commitment to atheism, implying that only those who disassociate themselves from organized religion can enjoy atheism's alleged freedom from cant and hypocrisy.
I have been an Episcopal priest for 45 years, and all that while an atheist, which was no secret to those equipped to understand it in congregations I served over those years. In adult education and confirmation classes, I taught that theism is a particular philosophy of religion that belongs to the prescientific era before the likes of Bacon and Galileo taught us to seek truth through experiment and experience rather than by dutifully embracing the dictates of creeds and catechisms.
In sermons, books and articles, I have made clear that I am an atheist in that I am not a theist, that I am agnostic about many things that are unknown and, at least at this juncture of the human epoch, seem to be unknowable. I am also allergic to isms, including theological ones, and have come to see that they cramp efforts of honest inquiry.
Some years ago I was threatened with a heresy trial. It never came to pass. In truth, it would have been a good thing as it would have exposed the Potemkin-village nature of the church's theological positions and freed its better minds to do their work in the light of what the late philosopher Richard Rorty called "contingency," i.e. the obvious principle that language and ideas are, at best, tentative and imperfect representations of what may be the truth of a given thing.
And, yes, this applies to the political theologies of the so-called "pro-life" lobby.
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