Right-wing Women

sponsibility to the fertilized egg is im aginatively and with great

conviction construed to be her relation to the adult male. At the

very least, she must not murder him; nor should she outrage his

existence by an assertion of her separateness from him, her distinctness, her importance as a person independent of him. The adult male’s identification with the fertilized egg as being fully

himself can even be conceptualized in terms of power: his rightful

power over an impersonal female (all females being the same in

terms of function). “The p o w er I had as one cell to affect m y environment I shall never have again, ” 3 R. D. Laing laments in an androcentric meditation on prebirth ego. “M y environment” is a

woman; the adult male, even as a fertilized egg, one cell, has the

right of occupation with respect to her— he has the right to be

inside her and the rightful power to change her body for his sake.

This relation to gestation is specifically male. Women do not think

of themselves in utero when they think either of being pregnant or

of aborting; men think of pregnancy and abortion prim arily in

terms of themselves, including what happened or might have happened to them back in the womb when, as one cell, they were themselves.

Women keep quiet about abortions they have had, illegal abortions, because they are humiliated by the memory of those abortions; they are humiliated by the memory of their desperation, the panic, finding the money, finding the abortionist, the dirt, the danger, the secrecy. Women are humiliated when they remember asking for help, begging for help, when they remember those who turned aw ay, left them out in the cold. Women are humiliated by

the memory of the fear. Women are humiliated by the memory of

the physical intrusion, the penetration, the pain, the violation;

countless women were sexually assaulted by the abortionist before

or after the abortion; they hate remembering. Women are hum iliated because they hated themselves, their sex, their female bodies, they hated being female. Women hate remembering illegal abortions because they almost died, they could have died, they wanted

to die, they hoped they would not die, they made promises to God

begging him not to let them die, they were afraid of dying before

and during and after; they have never again been so afraid of death

or so alone; they had never before been so afraid of death or so

alone. And women hate remembering illegal abortions because

their husbands experienced none of this: which no woman forgives.

Women also keep quiet about illegal abortions precisely because

they had married sex: their husbands mounted them, fucked them,

impregnated them; their husbands determined the time and the

place and the act; desire, pleasure, or orgasm were not necessarily

experienced by the women, yet the women ended up on the

butcher’s block. The abortionist finished the job the husband had

started. No one wants to remember this.

Women also keep quiet about abortions they have had because

they wanted the child, but the man did not; because they wanted

other children and could not have them; because they never regretted the abortion and did regret subsequent children; because they had more than one abortion, which, like more than one rape, fixes

the woman’s guilt. Women keep quiet about abortions because

abortion inside marriage is selfish, ruthless, marks the woman as

heartless, loveless—yet she did it anyway. Women also keep quiet

about abortions they have had, illegal abortions, because the

woman who has had one, or tried to induce one in herself, is never