Sex and the Female
There was this episode at the first season of Sex Education where Maeve decides to have an abortion. The young girl got accidentally pregnant but was not sure about her feelings towards the boyfriend or motherhood altogether. She was the traumatized child of a drug addict mother, so charismatic yet so confused. The abortion clinic was a place where she could find comfort and care during this horrifying moment in her life..
In case you have been wondering - I know I have - clinics about birth control are not newly established facilities. The first ones were mobile clinics established by Marie Stopes, a controversial yet most influential figure in the British birth control movement. Stopes had published the book Married Love back in 1918, one of the first books ever to explain sex and sexual pleasure openly which was very much denounced by medical professionals, even though loved by the public.
Women back then you see didn't have the right to choose whether or not they wanted to be mothers. Sexual pleasure was out of the question for them as well. Even by early feminists who believed that a wife had the right to refuse sexual demands of her husband as a way of limiting the size of their families. Contraception existed of course but it was condemned by church and society in general. Methods included vaginal sponges soaked in quinine, injections of alum and water into the vagina and sheaths. All the above leaded to the fact that most women were almost always pregnant or breastfeeding.
Margaret Sanger knew all about that reality as her mother had died at the age 49 after 18 pregnancies. Qualified as a nurse, she saw impact of multiple pregnancies in a poor women. So she decided to act. In 1916, Margaret opened America's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn where the newly developed diaphragm was promoted. The clinic was of course illegal and 9 days after its opening Sanger was arrested. The publicity around this though kickstarted a birth control movement throughout the US.
No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body.
Margaret Sanger
Sanger was of course a person of her time. She favored birth control - actually the first known use of the term was included in her radical feminist magazine ‘The Woman Rebel’ - but condemned abortion. She considered it a dangerous and something that should be prevented by proper use of birth control methods.
Biography of Margaret Sanger as a comic
by cartoonist
Peter Bagge
We should note here that both Sanger and Stopes were accused of eugenics. I understand this can frustrate you quite a bit. But before condemning a person about a certain behavior, we should consider the actual establishment they were acting through. Eugenics unfortunately was a common attitude among intellectuals at that time. No one though can deny the fact that their work on birth control was pioneering. They set the pace for birth control and abortion rights demands which re - emerged in the 1960’s to this day. Sanger as matter of fact was the founder of Planned Parenthood that continues to offer sexual health care globally. There is an organization's written opposition about her racist beliefs of course…..
Poster by Britain’s Health Education Council in 1969
But is birth control the only solution? I am thinking of Maeve again. A young girl who accidentally became pregnant. Birth control methods didn't work out as expected. How many women out there have been facing the challenge of an unwanted pregnancy every day? Becoming a mother means so many things - the impossibility of unbecoming a mother being one of them. You can’t go back you see. Motherhood will stick with you no matter what. So you should at least be able to understand and consider facts before you decide to take action…
Human beings with wombs have been in such a different place from those without them since the dawn of time. In the first book of German criminal law Constitutio Criminalis Carolina written in 1532, abortion was punishable by drowning. Yes, women were drowned. Only them of course. Not their male counterparts. They were usually not even exposed. Because their body, incapable of pregnancy and giving birth, was giving them the right to do so. But what about a woman’s rights?
As women keep on dying or being seriously injured by committing to illegal abortions to this day, abortions have become central issue in feminist movements. Abortion laws have gradually been reforming over the years from early 1900s to 1970s, which was the decade with the most significant changes over this issue. The legal case that led to abortion being legalized at federal level in the US was Roe v. Wade in 1973. It concerned Norma McCorvey, who had become pregnant with a third child in 1969. Her case was constructed by Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, two lawyers who filed suit on her behalf under the alias Jane Roe. The case finally reached the Supreme Court which ruled in favor of Roe declaring Texas laws unconstitutional. Abortion fell within the parameters of the right to privacy.
For more information about the case you can click to the buttons below:
Abortion had been legalized beyond the States as well. In 1971 the Manifesto of 343 was signed by 343 women who had had illegal abortions in France. The text which was written by Simone de Beauvoir was the following:
“One million women in France have abortions every year. Condemned to secrecy they do so in dangerous conditions, while under medical supervision this is one of the simplest procedures. We are silencing these millions of women. I declare that I am one of them. I declare that I have had an abortion. Just as we demand free access to contraception, we demand the freedom to have an abortion”
Those women had the courage to declare publicly what was held a secret since forever. And it had a huge impact because three years later the first female minister in the French government, Simone Veil, was appointed Minister of Health. Veil drafted and pushed through the Veil Law which legalized abortion during the first trimester despite all the violent attacks by the far - right.
I will share a conviction of women, and I apologize for doing it in front of this assembly comprised almost exclusively of men: No woman resorts to abortion lightheartedly.
Simone Veil
Little did these remarkable women know about what the future held. The Roe v. Wade case has been recently overturned…In a historic and far-reaching decision, the U.S. Supreme Court officially reversed Roe v. Wade on June 24, declaring that the constitutional right to abortion no longer exists.
Writing for the court majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that the 1973 Roe ruling and repeated subsequent high court decisions reaffirming Roe "must be overruled" because they were "egregiously wrong," the arguments "exceptionally weak" and so "damaging" that they amounted to "an abuse of judicial authority."
The decision, most of which was leaked in early May, means that abortion rights will be rolled back in nearly half of the states immediately, with more restrictions likely to follow.
The news rapidly spread around the world. Marches were organized, TV panels were on fire, forecasters gave their opinions out loud…Even in countries like Greece where abortion laws seem to be unchangeable for the near future, people became peculiarly numb. And worried. And angry.
I, for sure, became worried. And angry at the same time. How was I suppose to process this? My mind was flooded with images of women like Maeve trying to find a solution for dealing with an unwanted pregnancy in a country were abortions are illegal. Images like the paintings of Paula Rego’s Abortion pastels series that were favored around the web these days.
I googled the triptych and stared it for a few minutes. Such despair…These women so strong yet so devastated. Looking into the void. As you can tell by the surroundings, they have been under procedures which were no legal nor safe. You can also tell that these women are not passive. They own their decision and the pain that comes with it.
But they deserved better, didn’t they? They shouldn’t have been alone. They should have had proper medical care. They should, in Paula Rego’s own words, have had the right to choose:
A woman’s body can never be considered her own after all. Patriarchy and its manifestations has intruded into the way the female body exists and dominates it. Somehow, after all these years, we keep coming back to same notions. I try to find the root of this need to exploit and suppress. Could it be intimidation by the Other? The one that has no male genitals. The one that bears the ability to bring new life into this world. The one that is sexually more complicated yet quite fascinating..
Maybe this is where it all comes to. Females shouldn’t express their sexuality because it threatens the conservative ideals about them. They should not express their desires nor their fears. They should be obedient. And were they daring enough to act, they should deal with the consequences of a sexual encounter all by themselves. Them sluts!
As I was starting to get even more frustrated, I came across this article in the 13nth issue of Riposte. It was about academic Katherine Angel and her book Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and Desire in the Age of Consent . There was something about her witty smile that instantly made me feel like there is hope. Made myself a cup of coffee and went through her interview.
-In recent years two requirements have emerged for good sex : consent and self - knowledge, she mentions. Consent as a yes or no dichotomy can’t be everything we want it to be. Language cannot say everything, especially for women, who have not been given the chance to shape it according to their own needs and desires.
So I am beginning to get it now. Consent is a way of making sure the sexual act should move forward but most of the time women do consent under the fear of taking a huge risk. Fear of being called sluts, of facing some kind of violence, of becoming pregnant. That can be worsen by the fact of not being free to decide over the unwanted pregnancy, even though it is her own body under that circumstance. All in all, a woman never feels truly free to experience pleasure …
Why is it so terrifying for our society to admit that women want to experience pleasure without wanting to become a parent? Why do we keep punishing them for being sexual beings like the rest of the animals on the planet? And let us not forget - Katherine notes, the long history of considering sex as something (mostly heterosexual) women give in exchange for other things. Like there is no female desire, they only act on gaining profit to get what they really want. And they should be punished for such behavior. Absurd but true.
Is there any hope? I am thinking yes. There is. Stay with me here…
We should consider that women still feel the need to be sexual, to find joy, to move forward and beyond stereotypes. They fight, and push and demand change. Researching for this article made that quite clear. I began to smile.
It is really difficult to upturn beliefs that have been established for centuries. I can understand that now. People tend to fear change. They feel safer doing what has been done. Those who are privileged lack the tones of empathy that it takes to step back and acknowledge the inequity. We see it literally everywhere. What started in the US this summer has allowed voices from the darkest corners to rise again and spread their poison. We witnessed that from a man of the cloth recently in Greece claiming that raped women who got pregnant enjoyed the intercourse…These are dangerous people who belong in the past.
We need to survive. Women need to survive. Should you ask for my point view, they also need to thrive. So we will do whatever it takes to save the hardly gained rights and push for more. Until every human female on the planet has the right to own her body and her choices. Until equality becomes reality.
Maeve chose to have the abortion alone. But there was a gentle male friend of hers who decided to be there, who wouldn’t leave her helpless. Who supported her choice. Who even stood up against anti abortion protesters outside the clinic. Who gave her a hug afterwards and asked nothing in return.
Maybe there is still hope.
*If you are facing the abortion dilemma yourself and are in need for some privacy, click here for useful information.
