Saying "Abortion is Healthcare" is Bad for Women

This lame and disingenuous slogan hides what abortion is really about: women taking power away from men.

Most abortions are not due to health problems of a mother or a fetus.

Macabre stories like, “Woman carrying fetus without a skull to seek abortion in another state following Louisiana ban” are supposed to highlight the desperate position abortion bans put women in and to highlight the ‘medical’ necessity an abortion can become. But these stories do nothing to “normalize abortion,” particularly since they so shocking abnormal.

Stories like these are also part of the left’s bizarre tactic of trotting out the most esoteric, alien and, yes, vulnerable example to prove a point instead of engaging in a fight about what would do the most amount of good for the most amount of people.

Abortion is not about treating medical aberrations, it is fundamentally about healthy women taking full control over their bodies regardless of pregnancy’s viability. Abortion is about power over your own body. Without abortion we are lashed to our bodies, to nature, to men.

The other side is very clear about why they oppose abortion: they believe women should NOT have the power to terminate a pregnancy after X week (or ever).

Instead of saying, well, uh, women SHOULD have the power to terminate the pregnancy whenever we want, the left uses this dumb slogan to sidestep the issue. I assume because it’s considered distasteful or unsettling to cop to what abortion can be: the stopping a beating heart.

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This insistence of linking abortion to healthcare further separates women from having power over their bodies and in society.

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I know a better slogan won’t win back abortion rights, and slogans in general emerge from the political slop of ‘messaging’ and ‘branding’ but this insistence of linking abortion to healthcare further separates women from having power over their bodies and in society. Make no mistake, the right to abortion is part of a liberation movement. And when you’re honest about what you are trying to achieve, then some pretty great slogans can emerge. To wit:

And this ain’t it:

What does healthcare actually mean in this context?

“Pregnancy is a medical condition,” Leah Torres, an MD, also known as ‘The Gynecolumnist’ for Self magazine writes. She goes on:

People often say to me, “it’s not a disease, it’s a natural part of life.” Yes, well, so are bacteria, yet we call having an infection a ‘disease.’”

Very cool take, doc.

Firstly, pregnancy is not a medical condition. Women have been getting pregnant and safely giving birth while:

• doctors didn’t believe in germ theory enough to wash their hands.

• doctors thought it was a good idea give a laboring mother chloroform and tie her to the bed.

• doctors recommended treating nausea with thalidomide.

Women have lost power over our bodies partly because we’ve allowed natural biological occurrences, like pregnancy, to be medicalized.

Medicalizing (and pathologizing) pregnancy, birth, and abortion takes power away from women and puts in the hands of experts. Experts who become intermediaries between women and their bodies and chose stupid names like The Gynecolumnist. This sort of rhetoric pushes women even further way from repossessing our own bodies.

Of course, OF COURSE, craven right wing politics and policy are the biggest threat to women’s autonomy. I’m not trying to underplay that. But if you think this sort of soft-boiled bullshit from ‘our side’ doesn’t cause problems, just look to the Leana Wen and Planned Parenthood fiasco from a few years back.

This is truly incredible to think about: during the Trump administration, one year after the Gestational Age Act (what would later be known as Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization) was signed into law, when there was a hydra of anti-abortion bills snaking their way through state house legislatures ready plop on the docket on a right leaning Supreme Court, Planned Parenthood put a doctor in charge of it’s organization who wanted to ‘play down’ the whole abortion thing. Here’s a fun headline from the time:

She lasted a fraught 8 months. What was lost during that time? We certainly lost plenty in the months after!

Continuing to talk about abortions in terms of medical care obscures the larger problem: without abortion, women are powerless against our own bodies. Motherhood, Adrienne Rich writes, creates the “most fundamental and bewildering contradictions, it has alienated women from our bodies by incarcerating us to them.”

There’s now surging demand for the abortion pill which can be taken in the privacy of your own home and it effects can kick in while watching Netflix and mindlessly scrolling on your phone. Much like pregnancy, an induced miscarriage typically needs no medical intervention.

On a personal note, I had an abortion at 23 and like a good 17th wave feminist I went into the procedure fully embracing the “abortion is healthcare” mindset. Why is this any different than a tumor or a molar? I reasoned. I didn’t even ask for my boyfriend OF THREE YEARS at the time to come with me. I didn’t need emotional support to get a mole removed why would I need support for getting a clump of cells removed from my uterus? I wasn’t a lip trembling brood mare, I was a modern woman! This was, astoundingly naive and made coping with the surging hormones, physical changes, and gigantic emotions 10x harder.

The future of abortion must be decentralized, must be de-medicalized, must be talked about in terms of power if we are ever to win this fight.

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