JEN ZORATTI, a columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press (as if there is such a thing), recently hailed the movie Obvious Child which “finally opens in Winnipeg this weekend.” The movie, she writes, represents a positive cultural development. For it is a romantic comedy that portrays abortion in a positive light.

Donna decides to have an abortion. And nothing bad happens to her.

Zoratti considers it outrageous that some people in this era of enlightenment still oppose abortion. The “subtlety of right-to-life tropes” is especially annoying. Anti-abortion activists are even arguing that terminating life in the womb is psychologically and medically harmful to women!! Do you believe it!?

From where I’m sitting, these are new tools of an old oppression under the guise of being “pro-woman.” All the more reason we need films such as Obvious Child to help de-stigmatize what is a common — and, in this country, legal — procedure.

Zoratti fails to mention that the overwhelming majority of these public critics of abortion are women themselves. Minor detail.

Don’t be fooled by this column into thinking Zoratti’s callousness towards women and children, her sense of superiority and condescension toward anyone who would not easily eliminate a human life in its formative stages, means she is devoid of maternal sentiments. She is not. In fact, she is extremely maternal. In another column, Zoratti effuses over of her dog, Samson:

Full disclosure: I am a dog mom.

My baby’s name is Samson. He’s a two-year-old Maltese/shih tzu cross — a handsome little fella with a wonky underbite, soulful brown eyes and a big personality. The kindly neighbour calls him “Mr. GQ” when he wears his charcoal grey J. Crew-esque turtle-neck sweater. (Yes, he owns a charcoal grey J. Crew-esque turtle-neck sweater.)

I regale friends and co-workers with what I think are adorable, witty stories about his various quirks. I flood my social-media feeds with photos. Samson in the porch. Samson in the park. Plaintive Samson. Artsy Samson. Samson in repose. On my desk at work is a framed photo of Samson and his dad, my partner. Our mothers refer to him as their grandchild. We’ve raised him from puppyhood. We can’t imagine our lives without him.

I am sure her friends are eager to see every last picture of Samson.

The nice thing about canine children is that they don’t stand in the way of a brilliant career as a newspaper ideologue. Samson, with his wit, his soulful eyes, his artistic depths, his interesting quirks, his “wonky underbite,” will never be an ornery teenager reminding his mother just how imperfect she is or keep her up night after night or require extensive moral education or be the subject of intense conjugal disagreement. As far as maternal investment goes, Samson is a remarkably good deal. Something tells me that Ms. Zoratti would be happy to oppress Samson’s real mother if abortion had been under consideration before her little darling was born.

— Comments —

Joe A. writes:

Purging the Gene Pool is not pleasant work but Darwin will not be mocked! We shall have fewer Canadians but better Canadians.

It’s not like we didn’t warn them.  Over and over and over again.

(There – said that without a single reference to God so they’ll listen this time, right?  I don’t think so!)

Abigail writes:

Your post about the so-called “dog’s mommy” is one of your more topsy-turvy ones of late. Is your argument not contradictory?  In responding to Zoratti’s claim that current pro-choice arguments are made under the guise (but not reality) of being “pro-woman,”  you state that “Zoratti fails to mention that the overwhelming majority of these public critics of abortion are women.”   The clear implication of your statement is that female anti-choice activists must be pro-woman because they themselves are women.  Yet, you accuse Zoratti — herself a woman — of “callousness towards women . . . ”  My head is spinning.

Given your statement about Zoratti, I think you have to concede that not all women are “pro-woman.”   Indeed, there are plenty of misogynist women in the world, and plenty of women who may not be misogynist but who lack respect for other women.

You can frame the type of  anti-choice activism under discussion as “pro-woman” only if you believe anti-choice activists know better than individual women themselves what is best for them.  In doing so, you are demonstrating a complete lack of regard for the decisions and desires of individual women, and their own individual definitions of their best interests.  Unlike such anti-choice activists, Zoratti demonstrates respect for women by supporting the position that the individual woman herself is in the best position to determine what is best for her.  (And, yes, I am leaving the potential child out of the discussion because the question I am addressing is the notion raised in your post and Zoratti’s column of the WOMAN’S best interest.)

Another topsy-turvy aspect of your post is that you accuse Zoratti of a “sense of superiority and condescension” towards those who would not easily choose abortion.  Yet, there is no such serntiment expressed in her column whatsoever.  Zoratti’s position is that of supporting a woman’s right to choose and noting that happiness and relief are among the responses women have when they terminate a pregnancy; nowhere do I see her argue that all women facing an unwanted pregnancy should choose abortion, lightly or not.  It is you who express a sense of superiority and condescension over Zoratti’s life choices – her career as a columnist, her effusive love for her dog, and her presumed childlessness.   Again, who cares how Zoratti wants to live her life or use her talents? Apparently, being “pro-woman” means the total disregard of the desires, dreams, goals and preferred lifestyle of any woman who does not fit the traditionalist mold.

Laura writes:

Gee, I’m sorry to make your head spin. May I ask why you are reading a writer of topsy-turvy essays and spending so much time responding to her topsy-turvy points?

By the way, “anti-choice” and “pro-choice” are idiotic, Orwellian phrases with which to refer to something as grave and irrevocable as abortion. Do you refer to those who have terminated the lives of adults as “pro-choice?” Yes, I guess Jack the Ripper was pro-choice from his perspective.

It was not contradictory to point to Zoratti’s failure to identify women as the primary opponents of abortion. She referred to “tools of oppression” which is a classic feminist phrase for oppression by men. Nor was it contradictory of me to then turn around and accuse Zoratti of insensitivity toward women. After all, I wasn’t the one complaining of patriarchal “tools of oppression.” She was.

You write:

In doing so, you are demonstrating a complete lack of regard for the decisions and desires of individual women, and their own individual definitions of their best interests.

No, I’m afraid it is you and Zoratti who are demonstrating the “complete lack of regard” for women.  Abortion harms a woman whether she knows it or not. Choosing something objectively immoral — as well as physically harmful — is not an expression of freedom. Quite the contrary. It is a manifestation of enslavement. All sin is bondage. Feminists are female slave drivers. As Mallory Millet, sister of Kate Millet, recently wrote:

The goal of Women’s Liberation is to wear each female down to losing all empathy for boys, men or babies. The tenderest aspects of her soul are roughened into a rock pile of cynicism, where she will think nothing of murdering her baby in the warm protective nest of her little-girl womb. She will be taught that she, in order to free herself, must become an outlaw. This is only reasonable because all Western law, since Magna Carta and even before, is a concoction of the evil white man whose true purpose is to press her into slavery.

….

I’ve known women who fell for this creed in their youth who now, in their fifties and sixties, cry themselves to sleep decades of countless nights grieving for the children they’ll never have and the ones they coldly murdered because they were protecting the empty loveless futures they now live with no way of going back. “Where are my children? Where are my grandchildren?” they cry to me.

You write:

(And, yes, I am leaving the potential child out of the discussion because the question I am addressing is the notion raised in your post and Zoratti’s column of the WOMAN’S best interest.)

Yes, you would.

As to your point that Zoratti has no sense of superiority regarding the after-effects of abortion, she simply dismisses the evidence of physical and psychological side-effects. She writes:

Seems “Won’t someone think of the children?” has been replaced with “Won’t someone think of the hysterical women who don’t understand the decision they’re making?”

Don’t you think it’s a tad condescending to refer to women experiencing trauma after having eliminated the children in their wombs as “hysterical” and to criticize them for not understanding the implications of their decision when they live in a world in which newspaper columnists never inform them of the pain of abortion? That’s how oppressive patriarchs dismiss the emotions of women.

I didn’t criticize Zoratti as a columnist per se. I criticized her as an ideologue. I would be delighted if she devoted her literary talents to fighting the evil of abortion and wrote a column every other day (while Samson was in good care) on other forms of feminist slave driving. Then I wouldn’t have so much darn work to do and could go paint my kitchen.

By the way, she is not childless. I never said she was. She has Samson!!

Karl D. writes:

“Dog Mommies” and women eschewing children for dogs has long been a pet peeve of mine. No pun intended. Here is a recent article from the New York Post as to how bad this problem has become. Of course in the minds of these women this is not a problem at all. Make sure to read the comments section if you really want to get a feel for how vile, selfish and anti-child/human these harridans really are.

TroperA writes:

C’mon, Laura! You can’t expect a lesbian to understand the value of motherhoo—….wait… that lithe-limbed, smirking beak-nose is a GUY???!!!!

Abigail writes:

I will respond to some of your points.

[Laura writes: Fine. But because of the length of your comments, I will interpose my responses in brackets.]

You ask: “May I ask why you are reading a writer of topsy-turvy essays and spending so much time responding to her topsy-turvy points?”

Answer:  I believe you represent a certain strain of anti-feminist thought, particularly anti-choice (or if you prefer, “anti-abortion”) Catholic thought.  I am interested in understanding this strain of thought better since I believe such thinking is influential among my ideological opponents.

 [Laura writes: Very good. But if I were truly guilty of topsy-turvy-ness,  there would be no value in reading me, even to get a sense of the opposition. You accused me of incoherence. There is no value in reading incoherent thoughts.]

You ask: “Do you refer to those who have terminated the lives of adults as pro-choice?”

Answer: No.  Technically, you are quite correct that murder is also a  choice.  But we are talking about a woman’s right to choice over her own body – quite a different thing than Jack the Ripper’s imposition of his choices on women’s bodies.  We could say “pro-abortion,” but that would feed into the lie that those of us on our side of the fence actively prefer women  to have abortions.  In reality, we support a woman’s right to choose, including the right to choose childbirth. The point is that whether to have an abortion should be an individual choice.  The term “pro-choice” is an accurate shorthand for that philosophy, and is thus not an “Up is down” Orwellian term at all.

 [Laura writes: “Right-to-choose” is one of the most egregiously deceptive phrases in the feminist lexicon. First of all, in this rhetoric about choice, feminists fail to note that even without abortion, women have plenty of control over their own bodies. No one is forcing them into bed or forcing them to marry or forcing them to keep a child. Women are immensely independent without the “choice” of killing their own children. That’s what most deceptive about “pro-choice.” I agree that Jack the Ripper was guilty of greater crimes, but a woman who has an abortion does indeed impose her choice lethally on another human being — and creates consequences for others too. So the idea that a woman has complete and totally autonomous “right” over her own body is a lie. That autonomy doesn’t exist no matter how easy it is to get an abortion. Her body is indeed not hers alone. Not only does it belong to God, as the precious organism he created, but it is of immense value to her family first and her community. It is not the possession of her husband, relatives and society; it is their treasure. It is their incalculably precious pot of gold. All of society is affected by the choices women make and who is denied life. Now, as far as your not preferring abortion, you are saying that abortion is not objectively wrong and therefore is a valid choice. We don’t hail choices when we believe they are wrong. So basically you are pro-abortion even though you might never choose one for yourself. You say women on your side don’t actively prefer women to have abortions. You mean you don’t support the billions of dollars of funding that go into the abortion industry, which by its very existence encourages women to have abortions? That surprises me. In the absence of active discouragement of abortion from your side and the presence of pervasive pro-abortion rhetoric, your side does indeed encourage abortion. One good example of this encouragement is the failure of abortion clinics to present the evidence to women that abortion often causes lasting physical harm to them.]

You say:  “It was not contradictory to point to Zoratti’s failure to identify women as the primary opponents of abortion.  She referred to ‘tools of oppression’ which is a classic feminist phrase for oppression by men.”  

Answer:  It was contradictory.  Nowhere did Zoratti state or imply that only men oppose women’s right to choose abortion.  Oppression is oppression regardless of who is advocating the oppression.  (As a side note, I also question your assertion that most public critics of abortion are women.)

[Laura writes: I already adequately explained myself on this point.]

You say:  “Abortion harms a woman whether she knows it or not.”  

Answer: This right here is the root of our disagreement.   You think you know better than an individual woman herself what is best for her. I make no such claim.  Certainly, women are the ones choosing to have abortions; those who do clearly perceive abortion as the most desirable of the options before them.  To second-guess that choice on the basis that you know better than the woman herself is the height of condescension.

 [Laura writes: “You think you know better than an individual woman herself what is best for her.” This is truly a weak point. After stating what you believe is best for women — that it is good for a woman to have the absolute “right” to dispose of the child in her womb, you suggest that you are making no judgments as to what is good for women. You have already said the option to get an abortion is good for women. As for my knowing better, truth does not belong to me anymore than the sky belongs to me. The fact that a fetus in the womb has all the potential to become an independent human being, that a woman’s body is sacred and has inherent dignity, that it should not be brutalized by needless surgery or chemicals — these are not my opinions.]

You say: “Don’t you think it’s a tad condescending to refer to women experiencing trauma after having eliminated children in their wombs as ‘hysterical and to criticize them for not understanding the implications of their decision when they live in a world in which newspaper columnists never inform them of the pain of abortion?”

Answer:  Nice try  You can’t possibly think that Zoratti was calling any  actual woman hysterical or criticizing actual women who regretted their abortions! She is obviously characterizing what YOUR PEOPLE think about women who get abortions — that they are too hysterical and don’t understand the decision they are making. SHE is not making that claim; she  is claiming the opposite — that women are sensible human beings who are competent to make their own choices.

 [Laura writes: Okay, I see. Jen Zoratti was saying that in presenting statistical evidence that abortion causes depression, suicidal thoughts and even suicide itself, they, the researchers, are themselves accusing women of being hysterics who don’t understand the decisions they are making. You’re right. I misunderstood her point. It is even more outrageous than I thought. In other words, she thinks it is wrong to present this evidence or use it to resist abortion in any way because women are tough, real tough, and they do indeed know that they might become suicidally depressed after abortion and actually don’t mind that possibility. Wow. This woman is mind-blowingly insensitive to other women.]

I will say vis-a-vis the alleged second wave feminists now crying out to Mallory Millet over their own childlessness . . . yeah, right.  (Amazingly, most feminists actually DO have children, and even get along pretty well with the men, boys, and babies towards whom we are supposedly so hardened.) But that said, there are doubtless many women (and men too!) who regret their life choices — having children, not having children, marrying, not marrying, choosing a particular career or not, attending college, not attending college, etc.  The fact that people feel regret — including, sometimes, regret over an abortion — is not a basis for stripping people of choice.

[Laura writes: Let me get this straight. So in response to Millet’s point that women are crying for their lost children, a phenomenon that has been well-documented in the many first-person published accounts of women desperately seeking to have children in their early forties that describe their distress when they realize it is too late, you have this to say — “yeah, right.” I repeat my earlier point. Feminists are female slave drivers. They do not care about the welfare of women. They care about power. They are perfectly willing to let women suffer invisibly as long as some few women have power and money.

You write: But that said, there are doubtless many women (and men too!) who regret their life choices — having children, not having children, marrying, not marrying, choosing a particular career or not, attending college, not attending college, etc.  The fact that people feel regret — including, sometimes, regret over an abortion — is not a basis for stripping people of choice. I rest my case about insensitivity. Yes, it is right to strip people of a choice, especially in their youth, that seriously harms them and others. But, again, you fail to mention that women have plenty of choices over their bodies even without abortion. No one is forcing them to have untimely sexual relations. If they don’t want children, they can refrain from marriage and intimacy with men or give up their child for adoption to the many couples who are infertile. It’s as simple as that.]

Abigail writes:

It may be tough to keep responses short, so I will just focus on the key points that stood out at me:

1) You want me to admit that I am pro-abortion — to which, I say, yes, of course.  I am grateful that it is an option and, yes, a morally valid choice.  I am also pro-childbirth.  Most of all, I am in favor of the woman’s right to choose.   Stating that I am pro-choice is accurate and encompasses all facets of my position, and that of many or most pro-choicers.

2)  You mention that women have plenty of choices before getting pregnant in the first place — whether to marry at all, whether to have sex, etc.  Of course, historically that was not the case at all.  You are correct that now women in the west have more choices, absent rape or illegal coercion.  The choice you posit between lifelong  celibacy and marriage with likely frequent pregnancy-and-childbirth does not seem particularly great for women, though (except for those particular women attracted to those two options).

3)  You say: “[A woman’s] body is indeed not hers alone.  Not only does it belong to God, as the precious organism he created, but it is of immense value to her family first and her community.  It is not the possession of her husband, relatives and society; it is their treasure. It is their incalculably precious pot of gold.”  

Thank you for this.  THIS is the reason I read your topsy-turvy blog — for these types of statements that illuminate the fundamental assumptions underlying our different points of view, that help me understand why someone might reach the conclusions you reach.  To me, however, this statement is utterly horrifying and chilling –  a very pretty way of justifying slavery.  Indeed, if this it is true that a woman’s body is a precious treasure belonging to her family and the community, why should lifelong celibacy even be a choice for a woman?  Surely choosing such an option would be to deprive the community of the value her uterus could provide. Yours is a view that degrades women completely — positing that any individuality, thoughts, hopes, dreams, preferences, talents, ambitions and desires a woman may have must be subordinated to the function of her womb.

Laura writes:

I will respond to your points briefly as they are numbered.

1. A culture that tells women they should only have children when it is convenient and that there is nothing wrong with tearing the child from their womb necessarily devalues children, motherhood and its own future in all kinds of ways.

A society is either committed to life or it is committed to its own extinction.

In any event, being pro-abortion and pro-childbirth, you should support telling women of the documented physical risks of abortion, which include infertility.

2. No, the choice isn’t just between lifelong celibacy and 15 children. A woman who delays marriage and sexual relations until she is 25 or 30 is limiting her fertility. If she marries when she is 32, she is unlikely to have many children and may not have any children.

3. You’re welcome, but you are completely distorting my meaning. As you know, I am not a materialist as you are. The reason why a woman’s body is precious is precisely because of the spiritual value of human beings and the power of a woman’s love. It’s not just her womb obviously, it is the love and interpersonal influence that go with it — and it shouldn’t be wasted on puppies.

Only those who don’t know what it is to nurture human beings and community life would consider this slavery. That’s not to say it’s easy.

In any event, hell is terrifying too. The fact that you don’t believe in eternal life and don’t believe God has any rights at all in this matter makes it impossible for us to agree. Since you believe this life is all there is, it is hard for you to understand why great sacrifices are sometimes necessary and why they are worth it, not just in a utilitarian sense (i.e., we will go to heaven or we will be part of a real community not a society of autonomous and lonely hearts) but out of sheer love of God and his creation. To you, creating human beings is potentially slavery.

Mary writes:

If we could somehow hit the reset button on abortion, and if its supporters could discuss it honestly and openly – which of course will never happen because if it did support for abortion would rapidly fade, but let’s pretend – if the realities of abortion were, from the very beginning, known and told and taught in full truth and accuracy – without inflating the numbers of home abortions, without political machinations to position it as a “Catholics only” issue, without the trumped-up grassroots support, without any of the sort of gross misrepresentation it required from the very beginning to have even the slightest chance of being accepted by the general public – if that were to happen and we were to do it all over again, it would only be logical that the burden of proof as per the safety of abortion would not be on abortion’s opposition but on it’s promoters, who would be required to prove that something that has since the dawn of civilization been considered a grave social and moral evil is actually harmless and should be made legal.

If we could look back to look forward, they would have to prove, in no particular order: a) that abortion does not cause any physical or psychological harm to the mother and that no mother will lose her life as a result of an abortion; b) that it doesn’t cause moral harm by increasing promiscuity; or spread disease at an epidemic rate as a result of that promiscuity; c) that it doesn’t increase incidents of adultery or teenage sexual activity or otherwise break down social order;  d) that the temporary relief some women feel after abortion will never morph into crippling remorse and that from the time abortion was legalized the incidence of depression in women wouldn’t grow exponentially; e) that it won’t be forced on victims of incest, sexual abuse or sex slavery, or on young girls by their boyfriends, or by pimps on their workers, with the complicity of the provider; f) that it absolutely, positively doesn’t cause breast cancer or harm a woman’s fertility; g) that it will never be used as a form of birth control and lead to many women having multiple abortions; h) that “fetuses” won’t be killed through the ninth month and that some babies won’t be born alive and left to die or outright killed by the doctor;  i) that it won’t be imposed on the population of any country by their government;  j) that the major provider of abortion won’t be hired to teach sex ed in public schools and that this public school employee won’t be allowed to give instruction on its teen website to use degrading sexual practices and sex toys to avoid abortion and disease; k) that we have absolute proof that abortion is not the taking of a human life.

Unfortunately all of the above has come to pass. It is not plausible that with this information freely available abortion would ever have been legalized. But self-styled sociologist Jen Zoratti, using pop culture references to form the basis of her thesis, has now assured us that women walk away from abortion feeing “happiness and relief”. No need here for even a backward glance at history or a peek under the rug at abortion’s darker aspects – just to be sure, for the sake of all women – before trumpeting the great advancement this movie ostensibly represents. No, she will help women emerge from the oppression of being told how they should feel, into the light of regret-free abortion – by telling them how they should feel. That’s right: she is denying them even the simplest process of mourning. Jen Zoratti is missing a piece of her humanity. Women will suffer more for her article: if they feel really sad, they will be compelled to bury those feelings and “put on a happy face”. Some help that is.

The abortion industry, built on lies, surviving by lies, and dealing in darkness, has managed to dodge the truth for 40 years with the help of the media, academia and sadly, articulate young feminists like Jen Zoratti (and the poster Abigail, unfortunately) who have myopia on the subject, so successful has their indoctrination been. They can’t see that abortion is not a woman’s issue at all but an issue of sexuality, with unhindered sexual license as the goal. So they turn a blind eye to abortion’s tie to promiscuity and the resulting nightmarish scenario, affecting millions of women: the epidemic levels of female depression and sexual disease, myriad abuses, resulting poor fertility, etc. etc. etc. Abortion is pro-woman? I think not.

But hope is never lost. With enough good information available people can slowly rediscover their humanity once again and stop saying silly things like, “I would never have an abortion, but I can’t tell women what to do with their bodies.” Because those people – not the very few radicals who love the idea of abortion for any reason up to the ninth month – are the ones who keep abortion laws on the books.  And they are legion.

Laura writes:

Thank you for your excellent points.

The truth is, women who are not part of the educated elite are rejecting the pro-abortion rhetoric in large numbers. They just don’t buy it. They don’t sit around talking about women being forced into slavery. They are viscerally against abortion. They are viscerally maternal in some intuitive way. Talk to them. They are everywhere. This is why there are so many single mothers all across the country. Elite women are promoting (or at least affirming) promiscuity and abortion. They (the uneducated) get pregnant and they refuse to have abortions. They accept the sexual freedom part of the package but not abortion. This is why abortion leads to family breakdown. It has cosmic effects on society as a whole. The elite couldn’t care less. They drink their lattes and write their checks to Planned Parenthood while family life for the rest of society implodes. This is one of the things that is truly staggering about the feminist cause — the willful refusal to look at the results for women who are never going to be lawyers or doctors or columnists.

Women like Jen Zoratti support sexual “freedom” and what that means for them is a career and a spoiled dog, as well as typically delayed family formation. (Zoratti probably will have children — or at least one — when she realizes Samson has his limitations.) What it means for lower-class women is years of single motherhood, the desperate search for a man who will marry them when they already have a child by another man and a job at Walmart.

Abigail writes:

You are right that your religious belief and my lack thereof are great barriers that will prevent us from ever agreeing.  And I appreciate your clarification that the delay in marriage and the start of family life is a viable option for women (and men) who would prefer fewer children.

The discussion has been long and is petering out, but I will just respond to this:

“Only those who don’t know what it is to nurture human beings and community life would consider this slavery. That’s not to say it’s easy . . .To you, creating human beings is potentially slavery.”   I do find this to be a very odd statement.  Most women who support choice and abortion ARE mothers, or will become mothers.  We certainly do know about nurturing human beings and community.  Your statement seems to be overlooking the key point of the individual woman’s desires.  Creating human beings can be a great joy when embraced voluntarily; it is slavery when forced upon a woman against her will.

Laura writes:

That’s one heck of a statement.

I can just imagine the slave mother you have in mind:

“Gee, honey, I was free until I got pregnant with you. Ever since, I’ve been nothing but a slave. I could have given you up for adoption. Then you wouldn’t have had to go through the living hell of being with a mother incapable of loving you or of seeing you as anything but a form of bondage. But I decided to keep you instead. I wanted all the world to know just how much of a victim I am. Get over it.”