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Articles on this page:
Abortion: A Moral Choice
Having an ``Open Mind" …
a Psychological Asset or Liability?
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Abortion: A Moral Choice
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My daughter is a murderer. She killed my unborn grandchild. I will never forgive her. I refuse to have any contact with her.
I hate my son. It's because of him that I had to get married. I have resented him ever since. He robbed me of my youth.
I have never gotten over the guilt. I had an abortion as a young adult. I carry this guilt with me every day.
I grew up in a large family. My parents worked double shifts just to put food on the table. They didn't have time to enjoy us as children. We were burdens on them. They were bitter and fought when they were together. I had a terrible childhood.
My sex life has been dead. I know it is because I lived in terror of getting pregnant. I could never have had an abortion. When I made love, I felt like I was playing Russian roulette with my life. I was too anxious to ever enjoy sex. I can easily live without that stress.
As a family planning counselor for the church, I had to tell many girls that it is immoral to kill their unborn child. You know, I saw the pain on their faces. I saw the life drain from them. Although I acted sure of my point, I couldn't help but wonder if I was destroying their lives.
I was raped, resulting in a pregnancy, when I was 14. My grandmother insisted that I have the child and that she take care of it. I tried to have an abortion but I was seriously scolded for even considering this. When I look at my daughter, I remember the rape. My life is a nightmare.
I have performed abortions and have spoken out publicly for a woman's right to life. I live in fear of these churchgoers. They picket my home, they hurl accusations and threats at my family. I no longer feel as though I live in a civilized country.
Individuals who oppose abortion usually do it on the grounds that all life is sacred and you and I have no right to decide whether or not an embryo or fetus should live. Often, such people have heard this all their lives and it becomes sacrilege to do ones' own thinking and challenge religious dogma. The word of some authority is final. One spokesperson from Operation Save America and Last Call Ministries said, ``We feel we need to honor God's law first. No man's law can be worthy unless it first honors God's law." To allow themselves to become freethinkers is often terrifying, since that would challenge the whole structure of their authority-based lives. They typically appeal to a higher power or to the value of life as such, any life, under any situation.
Those who oppose a woman's right to her body reflect a philosophical view that your life is a gift given to you and you have no right to tamper with the desires and choices of a god or of the universe. ``You don't want a child? Well what if your mother said that – where would you be today? A child at this point in your life would mess up your future dreams? Your selfish desires or goals in life are subordinate to the life of the child – especially since this is a precious sacred gift. You don't want the gift? Well then, you are a murderer. What is the consequence for murder? To be treated as such." Some use this point of view to justify going so far as to promote the killing of doctors who perform abortions.
Many women can not answer these ``moral" arguments and end up in the tragic situations described at the start of this article – having unwanted children, feeling invisible in a painfully large family, afraid of sex since it can lead to unwanted children. Many of them had abortions and are now drowning in unearned guilt, or are labeled murderers by those close to them.
Those who are pro-choice typically have a different outlook on life. They focus on the value of the life of the individual woman. Happiness, not suffering, is to be expected in life. Thinking for yourself is healthier than blindly accepting ideas that you've heard in your youth. Loving a man of your choice, yet not wanting a child, is healthy, not a selfish sin. From this outlook, a woman's decision of whether or not to continue or terminate her pregnancy is a private concern and her right alone to determine. A woman's happiness is not to be sacrificed to something that is now controllable. Just as some religious sects do not allow their members to seek medical assistance for a dying child since, they claim, it is not ``God's will", some anti-abortionists do not want women to avail themselves of safe scientific advances which have expanded our ability to choose the timing of having children.
From this point of view, if you have a passionate, romance-filled evening of sex, and one sperm connects with an egg, this is not the equivalent of a child. You don't diaper and burp an embryo, which looks more like a salamander than a baby. The removal of an egg and sperm is not the equivalent of murder, just as removing sperm after self-pleasuring is not the equivalent of mass murder. Individuals from this philosophical viewpoint observe a difference between a potential life and an actual child. They observe a difference between a part of a mother (e.g., a wart, a tumor, a toe) and the entity, the mother. A tumor has no ``right" to stay in your body and neither does any other mass of cells. Neither has a soul; neither has a life in the human sense.
According to this viewpoint, women are not breeding animals. Mr. St. Lawrence, in a letter to the editor of The Providence Journal(8/28/97), said ``If a woman cannot decide whether or when to have children, she is in a slavery situation…. And debating whether a woman should have the right to terminate a pregnancy, at any time, is like debating whether blacks should have the right not to be slaves. It is as fundamental as that. …Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy is similar to rape… women are not incubators for boyfriends, judges or preachers." In the opposing view, the woman doesn't own her own body, but a fetus does have rights to her body.
If you are genuinely confused about this issue, you are not alone. It's important not to be swept up in your emotions and the emotions of those around you. Give yourself the advantage of doing your own private thinking. Here are some questions to ask yourself.
- Is a potential life the same as an actual life? Is a potential walnut tree (e.g., a walnut) the same as the walnut tree? When we eat walnuts, are we eating trees?
- Does a part of the woman have rights that supercede the rights of the woman? Does a malignant tumor have a right to live in its host body?
- Does the woman's happiness and health matter? Or can her life be sacrificed? Think of actual cases you know of in which a woman did or did not have an abortion. Do you notice whether those who overflow with compassion for the fetus also overflow with compassion for the woman's happiness?
- Think of those close to you who express a strong opinion about abortion. What do you think about these individuals? Do they have the happiness and best interest of a woman at heart? Do they see sex as healthy or as primarily sinful? Are they controlling? Do they preach dogma rather than genuinely think independently about a topic? Do they tow the party line?
- Do you carry the religious belief that a ``soul" is inserted into the egg/sperm mixture upon contact? Have you ever given yourself the freedom to question this? Is your fear of God serving or undermining your happiness? Do you feel guilty even reading this?
- Do you view morality as requiring that a woman sacrifice to serve others, or does she have a right to pursue her own goals and dreams?
If you allow yourself to think independently, you might discover that you are carrying guilt that you have never earned – unearned guilt. If you allow yourself to think through the abortion issue, you may discover that you are able to think through many other issues on your own.
You may discover that you disagree with the authorities who have told you that life involves suffering. You may realize that you don't agree with the idea that the more you suffer, the more moral you are. This idea is one of the most psychologically damaging ideas that individuals can hold.
Also, think of the tactics used by self-proclaimed ``right-to-lifers". U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun was a passionate defender of the right to abortion during his 24 years on the Supreme Court. Since his opinion in the Roe vs. Wade case he received lots of hate mail (e.g., ``Murderous madman" ``I am praying for your slow torturous death"). Another example of these tactics is the case of Dr. Rodriguez. When he was the medical director of Planned Parenthood of RI in 1998 and a clinical assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Brown University, anti-abortionist groups targeted him. He left his wife and his son in the morning and headed to work wearing a bulletproof vest. He received nasty letters, graphic pictures of dismembered fetuses, packages with dolls inside, subscriptions to gun magazines, advertisements for hunting lodges showing pictures of dead animals hanging by their limbs. The harassment continued, unabated. He found ``Wanted" posters with his name on it taped to the front door of the clinic for patients to see. The doors and locks to his clinic were glued several times. Protestors outside his office weren't arrested. Later when charges were brought against them, fines were minimal and no one received jail sentences. He discovered 45 nails embedded in his tire when he was driving his mother to the bus station – he had been driving over 50 mph. His wife stepped on one nail left in their driveway. He received a bill for an insurance policy on his wife's life, insurance that someone had fraudulently applied for in her name, he received an identification card for catastrophic health and dismemberment policy. ``Pro-life" is a sickening label for the anti-abortionist movement.
Dr. Rodriguez states, ``…the solution doesn't lie only with more protection. It lies with people of good will and good conscience everywhere, who must come forth to condemn the violence. We need to change people's hearts, not build bigger walls. And that includes those people who are opposed to abortion and who become suspiciously silent or claim wide-eyed innocence when these tragedies occur (Providence Journal 11/5/98).
On a positive note, Justice Blackmun received wonderful support and favorable mail , ``Some of the most beautiful letters I've ever received in my life" (Providence Journal 3/3/99).
If you have had an abortion and are struggling with guilt – I want you to know that there many individuals who would love to help you see that the guilt you are carrying is totally unfounded. If you made a knowledgeable decision, within the context of your own life and values, to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, I view that as a source of pride – if you thought the situation through rationally, with your long-range happiness as your goal. You will need to do your own thinking on this topic. Pause before you rush to condemn yourself by some authority's decree. You might choose to congratulate yourself instead as a champion of individual rights. In Dr. Andrew Bernstein's1 words, ``Only when achievement, success, self-fulfillment and personal happiness are held to be the proper ends of a person's life, and when duty, sacrifice, unchosen obligations and slavery are rejected—only then is it possible to uphold an individual's inalienable rights to ``life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
I support a woman's right to bear children, to enjoy the delight of nurturing and raising them – when it is by her own choice. Happy mom's and wanted and loved children will be the result of such a policy.
1Recommended reading: The Philosophical Basis of a Woman's Right to Abortion by Dr. Andrew Bernstein. Available through Second Renaissance Books 1-800-729-6149
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Having an ``Open Mind" …
a Psychological Asset or Liability?
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We've all heard that's it's great to have an ``open mind." It's sometimes offered as a compliment , ``My mother's got such an open-mind; she's really cool."
However, more frequently it's used as a weapon, ``Ah come on! There's no harm in trying a little pot – you've got to be more open-minded. You don't like Picasso? Don't be so close-minded." ``You won't pierce your bellybutton? You are so old-fashioned. Get with the times and be more open-minded!"
Open-minded conjures up images of an adventurous, spontaneous, fun-loving, vivacious person. Closed minded conjures up images of a pea-brained, dull, dry, pathetic individual whose mind and body have entered a pre-mature state of rigor mortis. Recalling my years at Brown University, I have to report that I was one of the close-minded ones.
In April of 1971, I was with my family visiting Israel, Lebanon and Egypt. It was a risky trip; Egypt and Israel were on the verge of a war. I was in Egypt when I received a telegraph from my aunt. I tore it open and read in cryptic form ``Congrat – Accepted into Xbroke." I had been accepted into Pembroke College, which within the year was to merge with Brown University. I was ecstatic. Although we were surrounded by danger, (Cairo was ``blacked out" in the evenings to make it a more difficult target were war to break out and Russian MIGs were in the airfield next to us), I thought only of my good news. Acceptance into Brown University, my dream, had come true.
My experiences at Brown, however, were to be a strange philosophical journey. In exploring a possible future career, I decided to take art classes. I was full of enthusiasm to learn how to draw and paint. I first had to take an introductory art course nick-named ``spots and dots." A delightful, famous cartoonist taught the class. The first day we were told to bring in one cork (such as one from a wine bottle), a black inkpad and a large pad of newsprint. Class two: we sat up high on stools with drawing boards in front of us. Our first assignment was to put one circular black cork mark somewhere on the large newsprint. We each followed this unquestioningly. I love surprises: something seems pointless, but then you learn an exciting principle in a new way. Well, I was about to learn a new principle, but not a healthy one. The professor walked around looking at our one dot on newsprint masterpieces. He smiled and picked up mine. I had randomly placed my black circle near a corner. He commented how good mine was. I felt a puzzled flicker of pride. Mine was good! But the puzzling feeling grew and the pride faded. I felt like a fool. Why was my dot superior? He gave no answer – just his engaging smile. Did he want us to ask why I had the superior dot? No. Was this a sick joke? All of the placements of black dots were arbitrary – no standard was ever offered as to why one was ``good" and one was ``bad." The principle I was starting to learn was that standards were not welcome.
Okay, give the professor a break, Ellen. Maybe he had a bad day and was unprepared for class. What else would I learn from his valuable introductory art course? Future assignments were to draw more and more cork pictures. I cut up my cork into a leaf shape so I could draw a forest scene. He didn't like that; realism was out. Just patterns or dots. What assignment followed? Covering a deck of 52 cards with mini-collages. I complained that I was learning no painting techniques, no drawing techniques, no methods of blending colors, no method of how to draw in perspective. What was his response? His warm, mocking laugh. He told me that I was passe, too old fashioned and warned me that no one teaches that stuff anymore. I needed to be more ``open-minded." I recall meeting him, a few years later, while he was bike riding. He stopped and asked me if I still hated modern art. I said yes, absolutely. He smiled. I felt like a sucker, a victim, but of what? What harm can one useless ``mindless" course do to a person? Were my parents paying big bucks to send me to a school that nourished my ambition – or that laughed at it? I was sorely ``close-minded."
Was my art history class much better? Yes, in one sense; it was a survey course and it fueled my mind with great artworks, images of what was possible, if one had the skills. In another sense, our assignments were a bit odd. For example, I had to compare Michaelangelo's glorious statue of David to six, flat, orange Plexiglas shelves in the List ``Art" Museum. This seemed silly and annoying: another sick joke. What are the similarities between six shocking-orange Plexiglas shelves and Michaelangelo's David? They both reflect light? They both have weight and take up space? One was art and one was a mockery of art! Again annoyed, I wrote a longer paper expressing my distaste for this assignment. I got a B and some helpful feedback – I needed to be more ``open-minded."
At this point, I was finally ready for my advanced studio art course – oil painting. Again the professor was a smiling guy who painted smudged, blurry, pretty, pastel blotches. This should have been a warning. I bought the expensive tubes of oil paints and the required enormous canvas. My first memory of this class is the professor telling us to ``express ourselves" on that oversized canvas. He would add nothing else. To teach would impede our ``natural talent." I told him to take that chance and teach me perspective and color blending and drawing for starters. He smiled, amused. I remember sitting by the window, seeing the statue of the Independent Man on top of the RI State House dome. I decided that I would draw that scene. With little talent and a lot of enthusiasm, I started. He came by and his smile vanished. He told me that I didn't understand his assignment to ``express myself." He took me by the arm and brought me around the sterile studio. My classmates were smarter than I was. They stood at their canvases, with palates full of expensive oil paints and splashed them irregularly on the canvas. The resulting products looked like vomit. He told me that I should try to paint like Jackson Pollock, the artist du jour. He laughed at me. I broke into tears and went to speak to my art history teacher who attempted to pacify me with a reminder to be more ``open-minded." Something was wrong with that term, but I would not grasp it until years later. I gave up and went in search of a new major.
Psychology seemed fascinating. I took the introductory course. Maybe I could understand why I was so ``close-minded". Well it turns out that B.F. Skinner was the psychologist du jour. In my introductory course I learned how to feed rats Rice Krispies. I was taught that, much like the mice, man's mind is insignificant, controlled by his environment. My desire to be a psychology major dwindled.
I turned to biology. My friends, looking at how I could not handle spots and dots and feeding rats, shook their heads and wondered how on earth I would handle histology (the microscopic study of every cell in the body). I recaptured my enthusiasm, not for art or psychology at Brown, but for the sciences. I loved histology. I was introduced to the microscopic world of cells – and every aspect of every cell made sense. The teaching was organized, interesting, and rational. I thrived. I was eager to spend late night hours studying my histology textbook, or sneaking into the lab to study slides of cells. It was fascinating. I discovered an ambition that I could never have experienced when given a senseless project of drawing random dots on paper. My enthusiasm flourished and I got an easy A in the course.
During my years at Brown, my mind had been a fervent battleground – a war between conflicting philosophies. I set goals to major in art and psychology, only to discover irrationality ruling those areas. This spots and dots course is loony, I thought. My psychology course doesn't help me understand myself at all. Why do I seem like odd man out? Why am I seen as the ``close-minded" one? What's wrong with that criticism? Why did my ambition falter in ``easy" courses? Why did I flourish in challenging, difficult courses? I was still feisty: ``They are wrong and I can't explain why – but I know that there is something wrong with being `open-minded'." The answer remained elusive.
My Brown University experiences were sometimes joyous (e.g., biology courses, good friends, and a chorus trip to Eastern Europe), but they were also tainted with irrationality. From the classes I've mentioned above, to learning from ``open-minded" professors that America is a bad, imperialistic country and that the third world countries are to be admired, my uncritical acceptance of these notions, in an effort to be ``open minded," would have destroyed me. I would have lost the capacity to judge ideas and works of art by a rational standard. The antidote I needed was the power of an explicit rational philosophy, which I would soon find.
One day I was watching Donahue. He was interviewing a short, elderly woman, with a thick, Russian accent, named Ayn Rand. I sat ironing in front of the television, not knowing that that day would change my life forever. I found her fascinating and I read her books, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. They energized me more than any Brown University class had. Why? Brown University is an Ivy League school, with a fabulous reputation. But inside its ivy walls it had a philosophical cancer.
Later I read a small book by Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto, and I understood what was going on philosophically in my ``spots and dots" class and in my rat psychology class. The ``virtue" of the ``open-mind" mystery was solved. I felt vindicated. An open mind was a non-judging mind allowing irrationality and rationality the same status. In her essay, Art and Moral Treason, Ayn Rand discusses the case of a good man who loses his motivation for no clear reason – he is depressed. What would explain this? She explains that people need to develop healthy values, and that need is ``not merely left unaided, it is all but stifled and destroyed" by some parents and by some educational systems. I thought of my art classes and other irrationality I experienced at Brown, when my desire for knowledge and for learning skills was mocked and I was seen as pathetically ``close-minded." I was close-minded, I learned from Ayn Rand – close-minded to irrationality. And better yet, I discovered that my ``rebellion" against open-mindedness represented a fight to preserve my active thinking mind.
What type of student did such professors want to train, take ``pride" in training? ``Open-minded" ones splashing paint on canvases? Ones who would spend valuable study time making collages on 52 cards? Ones who agreed that man has no free will as proven in rat experiments? The assault on my ambition, on my active mind was a subtle one – the attack ``being close-minded" was used as a weapon to silence my rebellion against a lack of standards (e.g., orange Plexiglas slabs on par with the art of Michaelangelo). Ayn Rand describes such an assault: ``His spirit is not broken at one sudden blow: it is bled to death in thousands of small scratches." I received many of those scratches at Brown.
Why then did I excel in histology, a tough course? It gave me hope on a deeper level that life could be challenging, full of difficult, interesting goals, and graspable. There I was not bled to death, but recovered by my re-discovery of a goal-oriented, rational, causal world. After college, Ayn Rand helped me understand the fallacy of the ``open mind." An open mind is like a sewer that lets in any ideas uncritically. It is an active mind, a thinking and questioning mind, that is a value, not a passive, uncritical, open dump. Brown's ``open-mind" climate encouraged praise of irrationality and mockery of rationality. Fortunately, my biology professors offered a rational climate – and Ayn Rand helped me solve the mystery of the philosophical war going on at universities across America and in my own mind.
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