In the Internet age, readers are not lacking in information, but some content that has real dissemination value is often submerged in the flood of information. Strive to quickly present the most valuable information, the most sharp, warm, in-depth and multi-dimensional thinking and expression, and the most worthy of reading high-quality original content on the Internet to readers, is the original intention of "World Culture". [Reading by "Everyone"] Each issue will select the latest articles of well-known scholars and columnists in the Chinese circle gathered on the excellent official account, and share with readers the "world culture" in the eyes of "Everyone".
"Roe v. Wade" party McCovey (left) and lawyer
On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court officially overturned the "Roe v. Wade case" with a 5-4 vote, canceling the constitutional right to abortion and leaving the legalization of abortion to the states.
In 1973, the Roe v. Wade case became one of the most important judgments in modern American society for its establishment of women's right to reproductive choice. It guaranteed women's legal abortion rights from the perspective of constitutional privacy rights for nearly 50 years, during which it also triggered numerous cases. Controversy: Is the "life" of the fetus in the womb more important, or is it more important for women to have the freedom to choose fertility?
The overturn of Roe v. Wade was foreseen in a leaked preliminary draft of Dobbs (Mississippi Department of Health official) v. Jackson Women's Health about two months ago. . The case, which ruled on the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi law "prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy", was drafted by the anti-abortion majority citing the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which allows states to decide on abortion on their own. whether the content is legal.
Signs may appear earlier. Time continues to turn back, in September 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who dedicated her career to advocating for gender equality and women's rights, died, and Amy Barrett, who was considered anti-abortion As her successor, quite a few conservative states have gained momentum to introduce stricter anti-abortion bills and push the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade.
Today, the overturn of Roe v. Wade seems to be a foregone conclusion. Although this does not mean that the United States has become an anti-abortion country, there must be quite a few conservative states restricting women's abortion with strict laws. This retrogression is enough Over the decades, especially when compared with the history of women's struggles for their rights, it is even more painful and angry: after so many shouts and tears, why can't they have the right to physical self-determination?
To oppose abortion, is to respect life?
Before Roe v. Wade was overturned, even though the Constitution provided a legal right for women to have an abortion, there were still some states that either introduced cumbersome abortion procedures or passed fairly conservative laws to limit women's abortion. The Heartbeat Act should be considered one of the most famous examples.
The so-called "heartbeat bill" refers to whether the fetal heart sound can be heard to determine whether an abortion is legal. The tricky part of this bill is that the fetal heart sound can basically be detected at about 6 weeks of pregnancy, but most women. The choice to have an abortion is also after 6 weeks — that is, the Heartbeat Act essentially outlaws abortion in most cases.
The moral core of the "Heartbeat Act" is that once a fetus can hear a heartbeat, it is equivalent to a complete life, and choosing an abortion at this time is no longer a medical procedure, but murder - even if the pregnancy was conceived through rape or incest The fetus is no exception. This view actually stems from the Christian tradition of cognition of life, that the soul will enter the body of the fetus at a certain point, so abortion is equivalent to killing life.
The French writer Beauvoir (1908-1986), who supported women's right to abortion, briefly combed the history of the abortion controversy in her "Second Sex". It is true that abortion is officially permitted in very few cases: in Roman law, the embryo was not considered a whole person, but a part of the mother's body, akin to an internal organ; abortion was also a normal practice during the decline of Rome , If a wife is unwilling to obey her husband and bear children, she is not charged with murder, but for disobedience to her husband.
However, Christian ethics believes that the fetus has an independent soul. The theologian St. Augustine (354-430) once said: "A woman who cannot bear children according to her own ability is as guilty as murder." Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), a representative of scholastic philosophy, held the same principle as the "Heartbeat Act". "A similar argument might be considered a "fetal movement law": when the fetus starts kicking the mother's stomach, abortion means murder. In American society, Protestantism, which occupies a considerable number of believers, also opposes abortion.
french writer beauvoir
Religious views are also reflected in many classic literary works: the unformed fetus in "The Divine Comedy" will go to the "frontier of hell" because it has inherent original sin - but also on the frontier of hell are Homer, Austrian Vader and other poets and sages, this is very intriguing. In "Tess of the D'Urbervilles", Tess, who was seduced and pregnant by Yale D'Urberville, was forced to have an abortion due to the religious concept of the Victorian era, and gave birth to a child who died at birth. This child is destined not to be secular and The church admitted that Tess had to baptize and bury him herself. Hardy, with his usual sympathetic strokes, made an indictment of hypocritical religion and morality.
It is especially absurd today to argue that the fetus is an independent life and to oppose abortion. American talk show actor George Carlin's famous question is simple enough: "If fetuses are independent lives, why aren't they counted in the census? Why isn't there a funeral for aborted fetuses?"
With respect for life The lofty ideals against abortion are naturally untenable. Respecting the rights of unborn babies as human beings, but ignoring women who become pregnant due to rape, incest, etc., is definitely not respect for life, but mistreatment of life. The current anti-abortion issue is not only a religious and moral issue, but also a socio-political issue. Like other feminist movements, support for and opposition to abortion urgently needs to be stripped away from ethereal traditional ideals and placed in a harsher reality.
Middle-class women under 'parenting punishment'
Blindly accusing the concept of anti-abortion is of little significance to the discussion itself, and those who hold anti-abortion views also have self-consistent logic. If there is a series of sound social welfare policies behind the opposition to abortion, and sufficient support for women to give birth, the situation may not be so bad. Ironically, the opposite is true, and society's support for female fertility is far from satisfactory.
Decades ago, Beauvoir had already contained the accusation against society: "Society that fiercely defends the rights of the embryo, indifferent to children once they are born; The notorious agency of the Public Relief Service; ... not so long ago, in the same week, a surgeon committed suicide because he was found to have performed an abortion, while a father who nearly beat his child to death was sentenced to only 3 months in prison with a reprieve.” This paradox persists to this day, as American author Alyssa Quarte describes society’s lack of care for pregnant women and children in “Survival in the Crack: The Overwhelmed Middle-Class Family.”
Take "parenting punishment" as an example, a theory that encompasses a wide range of social phenomena. Discrimination against pregnant women, regarded as "motherhood punishment", can be seen everywhere in the workplace. According to Alyssa Quart's statistics and observations, from 2005 to 2011, there was an overall upward trend in pregnancy-related discrimination allegations, an increase of 23%. Many women are afraid to tell their employers about pregnancy plans because they lose the right to negotiate. As a mother, there are fewer opportunities for promotion and salary increase in the workplace. The existence of these "glass ceilings" is precisely because the society's contempt and prejudice against parenting are deeply rooted, and they believe that it is not real "labor". For parents, including men, there is a "parental punishment". The federal and local governments in the United States have been strongly opposed to the implementation of parental leave laws, and when fathers propose to take parental leave, they are mostly rejected. A third of male respondents to a survey of adult workers released by Deloitte said they would not take paternity leave because it would jeopardize their workplace status.
In terms of living, the scarcity of child care services and the high cost of child care are also increasingly becoming a burden for middle-class families. The existence of "parenting punishment" has pushed the American middle class into the abyss. In order to protect the family income, they put in "24×7" hard work while entrusting their children to expensive extreme day care institutions, thus forming a spiral to closed loop below. Daycare workers are also victims of the lack of social welfare, and they are still despised by giving their love and care for a meager income—feminine care work, emotional labor, in “hypercapitalism”. "In the market below, it is always despised, just as housework is not valued because it is not paid in money.
The lack of adequate federal support for child care reflects the devaluation of childcare jobs in the United States, overwhelming both childcare workers and the middle class who depend on their cheap services to go out and earn money to support their families. In such a contradictory social system, raising children has become a risky choice. The abolition of women's legal abortion rights means that women cannot freely assume the responsibility of motherhood, and even risk falling to the bottom. As Alyssa Quarte said, the middle class is still running hard today, but it is constantly being pushed into the abyss by the harsh reality. From "middle class" to "bankruptcy" is only one step away, and to oppose abortion is to add another straw to the camel.
Poor women, worse
The middle-class nuclear family, the cornerstone of American society, is still “surviving through the cracks” and overwhelmed by high childcare costs, pregnancy and gender discrimination. The situation of poor women is even more conceivable. The analogy is more intuitive in France in the middle of the 20th century, when abortion was considered a "class crime", so contraception was a popular practice among the bourgeoisie: the existence of separate bathrooms made traditional contraception more popular among the bourgeoisie; Bourgeois women are also more cautious, have less risk of pregnancy, and parenting is not a very heavy burden. Poverty, overcrowded housing and women working away from home were the most common reasons for abortion at the time.
Revocation of women's legal abortion rights will undoubtedly make poor women worse. Since the Roe v. Wade case was overturned in June this year, Disney, Meta, Netflix and other companies have said that if necessary, they will reimburse employees for travel expenses to perform abortions in other places. But for poor women, they are outside almost every possible benefit coverage.
In 1976, on the heels of Roe v. Wade, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced the Hyde Amendment, which banned the use of federal funds to pay for abortion care for the poor and low-income. In 2018, 31% of black women and 27% of Latino women aged 15-44 received medical assistance, compared with only 16% of white women, and the unintended pregnancy rate among women living below the poverty line is not medical assistance 5 times that of women.
"Survival in the Cracks: Overwhelmed Middle-Class Families"
In "The Age of the Single Woman," author Rebecca Trester traces the journey American women took to singleness as their history, culture, and education improved. However, in the 1950s, after the Great Depression and World War II, there was another wave of "returning to the family" in society. Advocating a return to the family, "is not just about kicking women out of factories and selling them food mixers. It's about re-throwing women's throats with the yoke of marriage, the marriage-centric status symbol they have eliminated over the past 100 years. , re-added to them".
But this return to the family trend has serious class differences. In 1970, the marriage rate of black women was far lower than that of white women, and the marriage age was significantly higher. This is because American society needs to ensure the growth of the middle class. One of the measures is to force white women to return to the family and limit them to the ideal nuclear family; the second measure is to exclude African-Americans from enjoying the opportunity to support the nuclear family. and community. This is similar to the concept of the "Hyde Amendment", which restricts the choice of marriage and childbirth for poor women.
The difference in education level also makes poor women unable to fight under the concept of anti-abortion. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, believes that the life trajectory of "education-work-marriage-children" is the "order of success", the foundation of civil society, and a specific order. - This has won the approval of countless people. However, Rebecca Trest points out that, in some cases, a lack of sex education and opposition to contraception and abortion means that women are rarely able to choose whether or when to become a mother for themselves. From a broader historical perspective, allowing contraception and abortion can reduce the rate of teenage pregnancies and births.
Sociologists have found that many economically disadvantaged single women do not reject unplanned conception, and that these women seek exactly the same things as their wealthier peers: meaning in life, relationships, fulfillment, direction, stability life and identity. But many of them do not have access to colleges or careers that guarantee a stable economic income in the future. They can delay having children for as long as they want, but don't expect to find satisfying jobs or fast-track career opportunities...Like their better-off peers, low-income women also worry that their premature marriages won't work Guaranteeing financial stability may even trap them without giving them emotional satisfaction.
It is not difficult to imagine that after the abolition of the constitutionality of women's abortion rights, those poor women who are unable to raise their children but cannot choose to have an abortion will return to "class crimes" again.
Faced with a series of dilemmas, we could have expected improvements in social attitudes and welfare policies, such as the establishment of a national health care system that would encourage women of different classes to better monitor and care for their reproductive health. Whether you want to have children or not, you can choose freely without restrictions. The government subsidizes or fully subsidizes day care programs, enabling more families of different structures to develop healthily, creating well-paying job opportunities for child care workers, and reducing the burden of child care. At the same time, enforce and subsidize paid family leave for parents of newborns or men and women who need to take time off to care for sick family members; universal sex education so women are not forced into a dependent relationship because of unwanted pregnancies . Women of all economic circumstances must be left to themselves when, if and under what circumstances to give birth.
The struggle never stops
Overturning Roe v. Wade and throwing the legality of abortion to the states means throwing danger on women. The history of the feminist movement is accompanied by almost every major social change in modern society: the abolition movement, the labor movement, the prohibition movement, the suffrage movement... In these actions that push mankind towards a more civilized future, there are women participating, and society is fundamentally All this should not be ignored.
In 1981, Ronald Reagan became the first president to be elected against abortion rights, and he supported the Life Amendment, which banned nearly all abortions and made fertilization the origin of life. The issue of abortion—or women's right to self-determination in marriage and childbirth—has since become a weight in the hands of politicians, fighting to tip the balance of power. As Beauvoir put it: "Feminism itself has never been an autonomous movement: it is partly a tool in the hands of politicians, partly an additional phenomenon that reflects a deeper social tragedy."
Before us is a river of pessimism, Women are fighting for the right to self-determination of their bodies.
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
