Germaine Greer on Abortion
The following are quotes from Germaine Greer's book The Whole Woman.Feminism is supposed to be pro-abortion. There are some who fancy that feminists used to march shouting, "What do we want? Abortion! When do we want it? We want it now!"
Those same people think that, for once, marching and shouting were effective. Reluctant authorities gave in to the women's screaming, and allowed a tide of feticide to sweep the world.
This is not what happened.
In the United States, the crucial factor was a decision in the Supreme Court in the case of Roe v. Wade, which upheld the principle that, as the law had no part to play in what passed between a woman and her doctor, intervention by the state to prevent an abortion was a breach of the patient's privacy.
Any feminist who saw abortion as an assault on women and agitated for a concomitant right to bear children without being
con- demned to poverty, misery and failure was suspected of being a
crypto- right-to-lifer.
Feminism is pro-woman rather than pro-abortion; we have always argued for
freedom of reproductive choice. But a choice is only possible if there are
genuine alternatives. In Britain, the anti-abortion lobby in the House of Commons brings Private Members' Bills year after year, apparently unaware that the medical establishment has no intention of allowing any curb on its right to dispose of blastocysts, fetuses and embryos as, when and how it sees fit.
Feminists react to each successive attack on the availability of abortion with grave concern, fighting a battle on behalf of the richest and most powerful organisations in the world. The pharmaceutical multi-nationals will not allow any wholesale revision of abortion rights, in case the mode of operation of their so-called contraceptives should be called in question.
In the British elections of 1997, the "pro-Life" alliance hoped to field 50 candidates, thus qualifying for a party political broadcast in which to alert the unconscious public to the horrors of pregnancy termination?but they were fighting a rearguard action. A poll conducted by a Sunday newspaper found that, even after a series of pregnancy-related scandals, 81 percent of people still thought that a woman had the right to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy.
If we accept every instance of abortion as the outcome of unwanted and easily
avoided pregnancy, we have to ask ourselves how it is that women are still
exposing themselves to this risk.
If she undergoes the tests, say for Down's Syndrome, and refuses the
termination, she will be asked why she had the test in the first place. And she
will probably be talked into the termination. avoided pregnancy, we have to ask ourselves how it is that women are still
exposing themselves to this risk.
Her agony of mind is increased by the regular publication of results of research to establish whether and when human fetuses become aware, feel pain, can learn. In March 1998, we learned that fetuses are alert and can learn at 20 weeks gestation, before the formation of a cerebral cortex. The evidence was unconvincing, in that reaction was being construed as consciousness, but it had the desired effect?which was to worry women.
Feminists have argued that delaying abortion is immoral, but all measures to put in place speedy and non-traumatic abortion procedures, which would be embryologically identical with what passes for contraception, have been blocked by the same authorities who regularly produce evidence about the developing sensibilities of the fetus.
A woman who is granted an abortion does not get to choose between abortions: abortion is presented to her as a single entity, when there is a bewildering array of options.
A woman is led to believe that contraception is her duty and that the available techniques are easy to use and completely effective.
IUDs are clearly abortifacient: these devices work by creating inflammation of
the uterus, often accompanied by infection. Women who accept them as
contraceptive devices are actually being equipped with a do-it-yourself
abortionist's tool. The outcome is frequent occult abortion, heavy bleeding and
pelvic inflammatory disease, with the accompanying elevated risk of ectopic
pregnancy. Whether you feel that the creation and wastage of so many embryos is an important issue or not, you must see that the cynical deception of millions of women by selling abortifacients as if they were contraceptives, is incompatible with the respect due to women as human beings.
You must also see that expecting women to be grateful for the opportunity to have inserted into their bodies instruments for sucking and scraping out the products of avoidable conception shows them as much contempt.
Fake contra-
ceptive technology manipulates women in ways that we are coming to
condemn when they are practised on members of other species.
Fake contraceptive technology manipulates women in ways that we are coming to
condemn when they are practised on members of other species. What women don't
know does hurt them. condemn when they are practised on members of other species.
If we ask ourselves whether we would have any hope of imposing upon men the duty to protect women's fertility and their health, and avoid the abortions that occur in their uncounted millions every day, we will see in a blinding light how unfree women are. Women, from the youngest to the oldest, are aware that to impose conditions on intimacy would be to be accorded even less of it than they get already.
The women who refuses to enter the gynecological abattoir, which extends into every bathroom in the country, must be prepared to do without male approval and attention.