The “Pro-Life” Movement Aborts Dignity

"No matter what I thought I knew before, my primer in reproductive law started during my wife’s miscarriage, has continued ever since, and is woefully incomplete."

Image via Healthline

by Rich Herschlag

As we brace ourselves for a Supreme Court ruling that will probably gut Roe v Wade, I ponder my own rage and try to compartmentalize it into the abstract and the personal. On the personal side, I found my thoughts for the first time in many years drifting back to the opening days of 1990. Sue and I were living in New York City in the second full year of our marriage, renting a railroad-style first floor apartment in Queens and commuting to Manhattan. The rent was $800 which in today’s currency is about $1,800. Days were packed, life was good, savings were negligible, and Sue got pregnant. It was neither planned nor unplanned but rather in that gray area where a young couple feels secure enough to let their guard down. One thing for sure, the baby was wanted.

We did the math and quickly figured out, assuming we could find the down payment for a conventional mortgage, that her job as a PC analyst and mine as a civil engineer would at the very outer limits of our self-discipline buy a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan or a two-bedroom apartment in Queens or Brooklyn which we would spend the remainder of our useful lives paying for. Once there was one kid there would be another shortly after and we would be “racking and stacking them” as Sue put it.

So we went rogue and started looking into FHA loans and houses due west at the New Jersey/Pennsylvania border, nearer her family. By early February we were in contract on a three-story, five-bedroom brick house built circa 1900 in the West Ward of Easton, Pennsylvania. The small city from which heavyweight boxing champion Larry Holmes hailed was a kind of miniature Brooklyn in both positive and negative respects, and at $89,000 the sale price was subcompact.

But one morning Sue found blood spots. By the next day we were having an ultrasound at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan. There was no heartbeat and the OB/GYN resident advised that Sue have a D&C procedure rather than wait for a natural miscarriage and risk the mother’s life. My head was spinning but I thought it had no right to spin. I wasn’t the one going home overnight with seaweed implanted in my cervix to promote dilation, the “D” part of the dilation and curettage. It was week 15 of the pregnancy.

I split the next several hours at home between tending to Sue on the couch and making calls in the kitchen to a couple of friends in medical school. This was the internet of the day. Sue had at least one friend who had gone through something like this. She understood it better than I did and through the sharp pains was resolute.

After checking in early the next morning at the OR and seeing my young wife sad and resigned on a gurney, a nurse asked me to step into an adjacent room and sign some forms. Since Sue and I were both on my insurance the hospital required my initials in several places. I skimmed and signed the way one typically reviewed the fine print on a car loan until I saw the word ”abortion.” In a literal sense I was being asked to consent to a procedure that had never crossed my mind. I stepped over to the desk and asked if I was given the correct form. Yes, the administrator said. If the birth is induced prematurely it’s an abortion. I signed.

The D&C was successful, we took a taxi home to Queens, and I silently thanked a God I never fully understood for my wife’s safety. The next several hours were disorienting for me. I felt distracted while performing amateur grief counseling on my wife and decided to head back to the office late in the day to wrap up a few items from earlier in the week. I asked a close friend who lived nearby to stay with Sue till about 7 PM. When he arrived at the apartment I exited, and I couldn’t seem to shake the confused and disappointed look on my wife’s face.

I got a lot of work done at the office but none of it was billable. It took an empty cubicle with everyone else gone for the evening to begin sorting it out. As upset as I was to lose our baby and to watch my wife go through hell, I was tormented perhaps as much by having to consent in writing to an abortion. The notion of being so self-absorbed in such a trying time was perhaps even worse than the event itself, because in the end what sort of pain rivals guilt? By around 8 PM I had it sorted out at least to the point of being functional again, so I took the R train home and braced for the blowback. I stood on the train even though there were a few seats open and thought about two other distraught women near Sue earlier that day dressed for surgery. I wondered what kind of procedures they were having and was strangely upset I would never know.

Flash forward three decades plus. In the midst of grief we decided not to pull out of the house contract. We raised two beautiful daughters, first in that house and then later in a more rural house nearby. We made Easton, PA our home though I have logged enough commuter miles over the years to go to the moon and back. The triumphs and defeats of our lives are woven into a tapestry resembling a memorial quilt, but we’re alive and well and wryly appreciative of the decisions and serendipity that made the whole odyssey possible. And today a bunch of rightwing so-called pro-lifers want to snuff it all out.

No matter what I thought I knew before, my primer in reproductive law started during my wife’s miscarriage, has continued ever since, and is woefully incomplete. To say it’s complicated is to say life can at times be difficult. One could get a degree in reproductive law if such a thing existed and still not know what legally constituted a rape in Georgia or a viable fetus in Kansas. Even if you did know, a state court could redefine it next Wednesday and the means to prove or disprove it might not be available. The progressive state of New York in which I was first schooled made it legal up to 24 weeks in 1970, a full three years before Roe v. Wade. Prior to 1970 the hodgepodge of preconditions and exceptions was so long and malleable the only thing a woman could be sure of was that money helped. If you’re feeling particularly masochistic search the Wikipedia article on state by state reproductive rights. There are millions of arrogant American opponents of free choice but not one who can rattle off the full contents of that spreadsheet and the infinite complexities it represents.

Anyone who has fought through a horrific moral decision and come out human at the other end knows the really tough stuff goes beyond generic right and wrong. When survival of your loved ones not to mention your own survival is in jeopardy your continued humanity depends upon your ability, with counsel, to make that decision. You may vacillate. You may or may not regret it later. You may never attain permanent peace of mind. But the one thing that will provide some degree of comfort is the knowledge that you measured up to the task. This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you no one can take that away from you. But they’re trying.

The deluded right wing in this country cares not for your baby. They care not for that baby at any stage of its development nor for you at any stage of yours. They care not for your spouse or co-parent or family or rights or about the darkness that may swallow you whole in times of utter crisis. They care about one thing and one thing only—the void in their own lives from the personal decisions of which they themselves never took proper charge. It turns out robbing the dignity from women and men in the throes of crisis is a powerful substitute for establishing a beachhead for your own dignity and, thankfully, much easier. When the absence of personal courage may be obscured by a farcical barrage of edicts and lawsuits, it is a tempting scam indeed.

The abstract and the personal represent a dichotomy for any thinking individual, and the line between the two is often blurred. In my own intellectual evolution I began as a pro-choice advocate largely because that’s the way I was raised. As I took science classes, read religious texts, and pondered the notion of a woman carrying life, I came to see both sides of the never-ending reproductive discussion a little more clearly. But only a confrontation with the absolute in the form of a genuine emergency gave me any real clarity. Rather than recognize the sacred nature of such unavoidable conflicts in the life of an individual the deluded right concocts bizarre, litigious schemes whereby those providing tangible assistance when it is needed most are dragged into court to be sued by people with no standing other than being moral weaklings.

As a distraught 27-year-old husband in February 1990 I might have settled such a lawsuit with the borrowed strength, quickness, and rage of a young Mike Tyson in the first round, and in doing so brought on yet another lawsuit or worse. When you rob someone of their humanity the worst of what’s left may take over. This is why the cowards of the new millennium have in the extreme opened the door to court action against a whole host of potential supporting figures but not against parents themselves. The right is clear on one thing—the only life they care about is their own.

Read an excerpt of this week’s Members Only article. You can get a 3 month free trial and read it for free:

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

So called "sensible" right wing commentators like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro are pandering to anti-vaxxers to maintain their fanbase despite being vaccinated themselves. Why?

Image via Twitter

by Ben Cohen

Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro are regarded as the conservative movement’s preeminent intellectuals. They are omnipresent on social media and have woven themselves into the fabric of political discourse in America. The two routinely interview each other for their respective podcasts/tv shows and rarely disagree on anything.

Both Peterson and Shapiro engage with those they disagree with and are for the most part reasonably civil. While both men are engaged in an on and off flirtation with the Trump Right, they are by no means affiliated with the MAGA crowd and define themselves as traditional conservatives. For that reason, Peterson and Shapiro are taken seriously on all sides of the political spectrum and deservedly so.

That is until it comes to Covid and the desperate battle to contain the virus.

Peterson and Shapiro have now morphed themselves into medical experts with apparent knowledge of epidemiology and public health, purely by virtue of their popularity. The two regularly disseminate advice to their fans, urging them to defy lockdowns and not take the new Covid variant seriously. This despite having no background whatsoever in science, public health, or medicine.

When you examine Peterson and Shapiro’s stance on Covid, vaccines, and lockdowns, one thing becomes abundantly clear: they have a very strong incentive to misinform their followers.

“The Reds Are Coming!”

Both Peterson and Shapiro are waging a new war on government policies designed to curb the spread of the virus and relieve overburdened emergency rooms. Peterson and Shapiro claim that civil liberties are at stake and the public must rise up to challenge liberal governments vying to take away their freedoms.

"Look, I got vaccinated, and people took me to task for that.” Peterson opined to Dave Rubin on his Youtube channel last month. “And I thought, 'All right, I’ll get the damn vaccine.' Here’s the deal, guys: I’ll get the vaccine, you fucking leave me alone. And did that work? No. So, stupid me."

"That’s how I feel about it,” he went on. “So, like, well, I have to get tested for Covid when I come back into Canada. I have to get tested before I leave Canada…..Why did I get the vaccine then, if you’re not going to leave me alone?"

Peterson believes the battle against lockdowns is part of his broader war against tyrannical Marxists in the government:…

This is an excerpt from today’s Members Only piece. You can continue reading for free by getting a three month free trial here.