ABORTION DYSTOPIA

From the New York Times courtesy of Eschaton:

Pro-Life Nation

In this new movement toward criminalization, El Salvador is in the vanguard. The array of exceptions that tend to exist even in countries where abortion is circumscribed — rape, incest, fetal malformation, life of the mother — don't apply in El Salvador. They were rejected in the late 1990's, in a period after the country's long civil war ended. The country's penal system was revamped and its constitution was amended. Abortion is now absolutely forbidden in every possible circumstance. No exceptions.

There are other countries in the world that, like El Salvador, completely ban abortion, including Malta, Chile and Colombia. El Salvador, however, has not only a total ban on abortion but also an active law-enforcement apparatus — the police, investigators, medical spies, forensic vagina inspectors and a special division of the prosecutor's office responsible for Crimes Against Minors and Women, a unit charged with capturing, trying and incarcerating an unusual kind of criminal. Like the woman I was waiting to meet.

And

A policy that criminalizes all abortions has a flip side. It appears to mandate that the full force of the medical team must tend toward saving the fetus under any circumstances. This notion can lead to some dangerous practices. Consider an ectopic pregnancy, a condition that occurs when a microscopic fertilized egg moves down the fallopian tube — which is no bigger around than a pencil — and gets stuck there (or sometimes in the abdomen). Unattended, the stuck fetus grows until the organ containing it ruptures. A simple operation can remove the fetus before the organ bursts. After a rupture, though, the situation can turn into a medical emergency.

According to Sara Valdés, the director of the Hospital de Maternidad, women coming to her hospital with ectopic pregnancies cannot be operated on until fetal death or a rupture of the fallopian tube. "That is our policy," Valdés told me. She was plainly in torment about the subject. "That is the law," she said. "The D.A.'s office told us that this was the law." Valdés estimated that her hospital treated more than a hundred ectopic pregnancies each year. She described the hospital's practice. "Once we determine that they have an ectopic pregnancy, we make sure they stay in the hospital," she said. The women are sent to the dispensary, where they receive a daily ultrasound to check the fetus. "If it's dead, we can operate," she said. "Before that, we can't." If there is a persistent fetal heartbeat, then they have to wait for the fallopian tube to rupture.

Click here for the rest.

From the Wikipedia entry for the word "dystopia":

A dystopia (alternatively, cacotopia, kakotopia or anti-utopia) is a fictional society that is usually seen as the antithesis of a utopia.

A dystopia is usually characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government, or some other kind of oppressive social control.

If the situation with abortion in El Salvador doesn't meet this definition then I don't know what does. The above linked story is depressing, more like the kind of oppression or secret police oriented tale that I would read about East Germany or the Soviet Union back during the Cold War. And that's ultimately what anti-abortion laws are all about, government that is so repressive that it, quite literally, claims and takes the right to dig around in a woman's vagina looking for "evidence," government that would rather see a woman bleed to death than allow her what it sees as a crime, the luxury of personal physical autonomy. This is sick stuff. It's also a direction in which a not insignificant percentage of American citizens would like to see our nation move.

I think most Americans, especially those who embrace the anti-abortion movement, simply don't remember the days before Roe v Wade. The article interviews a couple of Salvadoran women who have had abortions, a couple of doctors, and a prosecutor: all of them have their own tragic tales to tell of angst and oppression. Anti-abortion laws fuck up lives. In addition to putting people needlessly into jail, robbing them of vital years of life, they drag people through some intense and hardcore emotional trauma. Back alley abortions are alive and well in El Salvador, and young, desperate women agonize over whether to turn toward them. Things weren't terribly different in the US before 1973, depending on where one lived. Granted, enforcement wasn't as zealous as it now is in El Salvador, but the same kind of psychotic dynamic was definitely in play. Pro-lifers simply aren't thinking about what their political stance actually means.

I remember a few years back watching an interview on C-Span with a retired Supreme Court Justice who was in the majority on Roe, Blackmun I think, or maybe Brennan. Previously he had opposed abortion rights, but changed his mind, and was asked what pulled him over. He spoke of a family friend who had a daughter with an unwanted pregnancy, how the situation put his friend's family through total hell. Apparently, being an insider for what was usually a completely private dilemma, witnessing first hand how devastating unwanted pregnancy can be, and truly understanding how torturous the decision to seek out an illegal abortion was, in an epiphany, he had a change of heart.

Those conditions no longer exist in America today. But they might again if the anti-abortion movement has its way, and, unfortunately, or rather, fortunately, there are no real life examples here that might cause them to reconsider their position. Like I said, pro-lifers really have no idea of what they're trying to do. Anyone who knows what's going on in El Salvador, however, does: the pro life movement is trying to create an American dystopia.

God damn them.

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