On Abortion

(I wrote a version of this essay first in 2018, and then published it as a video which is still available here, on instagram.)

I don’t care about the Texas abortion law, or any other abortion laws.

Women have the innate power to create and destroy.

Abortion is not a legal issue—it certainly doesn’t have to be.

Women have an inalienable right to bodily integrity, and by extension, we have the God-given capacity (if not, in the opinion of some, the moral right) to make the choice to kill our unborn children.

For whatever reason.

Life begins at conception. This is a literal fact.

That there is, or has ever been, any argument about this is both ridiculous and disturbing. The notion that there is some sort of arbitrary or debatable “starting point” to life, other than conception itself is, in my view, a thought-virus designed to both demonize and normalize abortion.

An embryo, a fetus, a baby in utero, is dependent on, and interdependent with, their mother for life and sustenance.

Women’s bodies are the domain of women. Always, and only, and forever.

Pregnancy is the realm of the pregnant mother, entirely.

***

Abortion is simply a reality—women will always, in certain situations, seek out, procure, or enact upon ourselves, abortion. Miscarriage often occurs spontaneously, and it is by virtue of our female bodies—by virtue of our biology— that we have the capacity and the power to choose to terminate a pregnancy.

Abortion is not actually a right that can be bestowed on us or taken away by the state, or (effectively) prohibited by law.

Abortion is a possibility intrinsic to being female.

Executing an abortion is generally very straightforward, easy to learn to do safely, easy to perform, and easy to teach. There are also very safe, discrete medications available that result in symptoms that are indistinguishable from miscarriage, and these are widely accessible, especially through increasingly proliferating underground abortion networks.

The story that independent, non-medicalized abortions are necessarily life-threatening is a lie, fabricated by the industrial medical cartels which profit from clinical abortion, and from women’s perceived dependency on the system.

It is the medical industrial complex that has actively perpetuated mass hysteria over independent abortion.

Women have been procuring abortions for themselves and other women since the beginning of time.

The so-called “back-alley” abortions that have been hysterically propagandized in the media over the past several decades and which became symbolic of the supposed danger of abortion outside of an institutional setting were not dangerous because they weren’t performed by doctors—they were dangerous because they were performed by abusive, venal, (primarily male) doctors who hated women, and who, under the cover of both anonymity and anti-abortion laws, took our cash, then brutally and punishingly inserted dirty instruments into our bodies, leaving us bleeding and in some cases, dead.

It was lay-women (non-medical practitioners) in the 1960s and 70s, who began to perform safe abortions underground, and who taught other women to do the same for each other so that we no longer felt that we had to submit to indifferent or sadistic males whose medical reinforced the view that our bodies were, at best, problems to be solved, specimens to be experimented on, or vessels to be emptied and then discarded.

Following roe v. wade, and similar legislation in Canada, the history of independent abortion in the 70s—like the truth about independent midwifery after midwifery regulation and legislation—has been largely erased, and we are left with the monolithic fallacy that the only safe place for abortion is in a hospital or a clinic, and that we have to beg or petition politicians to grant us what nature has already freely given.

Our dependency on, and subordination to, the obstetrics and gynaecology industry is a lie when it comes to childbirth, and it’s a lie when it comes to abortion.

***

Women have the power to de-industrialize, de-politicize, de-medicalize and de-colonize our bodies and our reproductive lives, NOW.

The option to sidestep institutional, medical, and state domination is available by simply opting out of systems that have been developed to manufacture our subjugation for profit.

Anti-abortion laws are demeaning to be sure, but the fact is that women’s bodies cannot ever be legislated.

The primary purpose of passing laws to control women’s fertility is to obscure the fact that it’s not possible to control our fertility.

The womb is a dark, wet, secret world. It’s where each of you came from, but I’m sorry— you can’t go back.

The power to dictate our reproductive lives is already ours.

It’s simply ours for the taking.

And this is precisely why politicians (and their minions) try so hard to program and reinforce the belief that their approval is required.

If you still believe that you need permission from your governor or your prime minister or doctor to have an abortion, you’ve been played.

***

Mothers have the innate authority to create and destroy. This has always been, and apparently always will be, terribly threatening to weak men and tyrants.

The idea that any man, including the sperm provider, might have a say in how, when, or if women expend our energy doing reproductive labour is laughable to me.

My body isn’t part of your system. You can’t bind me with your laws. I know plant magic, and sisterhood, and our blood will always be a mystery to you.

***

I once suggested to a man that if he were opposed to abortion and to a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy without the sperm provider’s input, that he should ensure he doesn’t put his penis in any vaginas.

He replied with characteristic misogynistic rage by telling me to “sew my vagina shut”. (I wonder if that might have prevented the rape I experienced 16 years ago?)

I object to the crime of rape being used as a justification for abortion. To do so negates the preciousness and legitimacy of the lives of those who are conceived through sexual violence, and the validity of the choice some women make to birth, raise, and love those children. It also conceals the fact that abortion—right or wrong—is simply our birthright.

And, it’s a mistake, in my view, to believe that the choice to terminate a pregnancy, to abort a baby, to kill an unborn child, is ever possible to make without incurring significant spiritual costs.

The notion, to my mind, that one can end what is absolutely A Life (from the very moment of conception) with impunity, or immunity from repercussions on a soul-level is an abdication of responsibility, a delusion, and a fantasy.

My private, personal conviction is that abortion is morally wrong.

And I accept my own experiences of abortion, knowing that I will continue to contend with those experiences for the rest of my life.

I don't dwell on it, and it hasn't wrecked my life, and I'm definitely not sitting here feeling melodramatic about it. I also don’t have any regrets.

Everything that came after those choices, created My Life as it is now.

I'm at peace with the choices I've made, especially as I recognize that those choices inform the decisions I make now, and into the future.

And all of those choices have impacted my soul.

I acknowledge that abortion is the extinguishing of life.

Abortion is Killing.

***

I love, respect and appreciate my many Catholic friends and others, who also believe abortion is immoral.

That is a perfectly acceptable position; even an understandable, and honourable one, in the absence of personal judgement and condemnation.

I too wish we lived in a world in which abortion was never considered, or desired.

Let’s actively work towards that, beginning with extending compassion and generosity towards all mothers, which requires an acknowledgement that there is no one with any authority over and above her own, who should or can, impose their moral perspective on her when it comes to her womb.

We might want to start by minding our own business, and our own reproductive organs.

Abortion is beyond the moral purview of anyone other than the woman herself.

This is true on the level of ideology, spirituality, in real, physical terms, and politically.

***

I’m uninterested in engaging with legislation or law-making. Those structures are meaningless, irrelevant and corrupt, and are fundamentally designed to sow discord and dependency. We all have a different perspective on how best to use our time and energy.

My focus is, instead, on sharing the message that in the realm of the material and the spiritual, we women inhabit our bodies, and the power to control our reproductive lives is already within us: to prevent pregnancy, to end pregnancy, to nurture a pregnancy, and to give birth.

None of these need be mediated by bureaucrats or scalpel-slingers, not priests or pundits, not nurses or doctors.

Women, awake.

• Join The Bauhauswife Birth Circle, my private online community for women (at every stage of life), where I show up to offer direct support and weekly live conversations as you move through pre-conception, pregnancy, birth, motherhood and beyond—HERE.