The Seahorse, the only male animal that gives birth
Photo by Jules Marvin Eguilos on Unsplash
It’s more than one year in the United States since Roe v. Wade (the constitutional law that rules abortions are legal on a federal level) was overturned by the decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization when abortion became an issue to be decided on a state-by-state basis. Since that point, many states have instituted harsh laws that outlaw abortions beyond six weeks of conception or at any point. This has had very strange results for women as many medical procedures for women have become affected due to their inherent risks – childbirth is one such area that has been affected.
Ireland[1] and Poland, in years past, have also instituted some very extreme restrictions on abortion. Overall, in the Euro-North American region, making abortions illegal is viewed as a way to exert control over reproduction and women themselves.
In Asia, the politics of abortion are mirrored. In the US and Europe, Catholicism and Christianity are used as justifications to ban abortion, and there are theological arguments against birth control. Religion in Asia does not strictly forbid birth control, with some notable exceptions.[2] Abortion in general is not considered inherently wrong. China’s previous one-child policy used forced abortions and forced implantations of IUDs on countryside women to prevent them from giving birth. Forced abortions and forced sterilizations are practiced on Uighur women in Xinjiang today in China’s ongoing ethnocide against the Uighur people. A woman’s fertility and reproduction in other parts of East Asia, in Taiwan, Korea, and Japan, was determined by her marital family in the past. There are a few locations on the coast of Taiwan called “baby girl cave” because they were places where people would dispose of their infant female children in the 1800s. In the most stereotypical idea of the patriarchal East Asian family, “family planning” was just top-down decision making in which the elder generation attempted to determine the gender and age balance of their family. It was an economic decision with some religious/ritual aspects. When a woman had children, how many she had, and what happened to them was all determined from above her. Her input and her best interest were rarely, if ever, part of the equation.
God can be a woman in the Chinese system, but she often serves the aims of men on earth. A prominent female goddess, the Lady of Linshui, a goddess of childbirth, was worshipped and prayed to in order to make women good vessels for the children that would run through them. An individual’s personal development was not a consideration in the traditional family structure. Fertility and childbearing were always considered a family’s prerogative and choice. The choice being how many males versus females. Unmarried women are pressured to have abortions, and newlyweds sometimes are as well if their family cannot afford it. Sex-selective abortion was such a problem in China that the gender imbalance is so lopsided today that some have argued it has led to China’s militarization and overseas construction projects; this is a way to keep the excess men busy and prevent domestic instability. India has had similar problems with sex-selective abortion and an overabundance of men. In East Asia, reproduction was always an act of choice, but the choice was not the woman’s or even the couple’s. It was a choice made by the elder generation in a multi-generational family. In modern times, it is a social decision, a top-down one that is led by the government’s desire for demographic control.[3]
In Western Christian and Catholic ideology, reproduction is not considered a choice, but an unavoidable consequence. Children, no matter when they come, how many there are, are always considered a blessing and god given. Fertility and reproduction are transposed into acts of god rather than simply the result of sex, and sex is an obsession. The Philippines, which has adopted the Catholic views on birth control and abortion (with the strictest laws against it in the world) struggles with providing a decent standard of living to a growing population and sends them to be exploited abroad.
In the US and the more stringently Catholic countries in Europe and in Latin America, the idea that one could choose how many children to have and if to have them at all is anathema. The most recent Pope, during a trip to Latin America, did address that the Church’s doctrine might evolve to include the use of contraception in certain cases, but, overall, the idea that a person should have complete dominion over their body is against the teachings of Catholicism. Abortion is still considered unjustifiable, as are IUDs, condoms, the hormonal birth control pill, but Catholicism allows the use of the rhythm method. Catholicism and Christianity both define sex as a procreative act above all else, and the sexual act must necessarily have the possibility of pregnancy. The ideal is a married couple who surrender themselves to god when they give themselves to each other.
Christianity and Catholicism is sex-focused, whereas in East Asia, they are family-focused. The sexual act doesn’t take center stage.
After the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US, and after the blanket bans that occurred in Ireland and Poland, many feminists have positioned abortion as an unalloyed good for women, as a form of medically necessary health care that can only have the power to help women. However, as we see in many cases in East Asia, abortions are weaponized to control and hurt women. The common denominator between the issues on both sides is exterior control over reproduction. Having a child is not determined to be an individual’s choice but either the prerogative of a family (in East Asia) or the necessary consequence of sex (in Christian/Catholic Euro-America).
What is difficult about life is that both reproduction and death are possible choices that human beings can make. It is difficult to come to terms with the fact that life itself, a gift given to us, can be given back. Whatever way a person may feel about this morally doesn’t negate the fact that this is our shared humanity, which we struggle against with religion, tradition, and civilization’s ideology. We are free to choose to live, to create life for others, to improve life for others, to kill people, and to kill ourselves. It is a heavy burden to bear, and I would probably be much more comfortable to live within the dictates of an ideological system that made these decisions for me. But one can’t give back such a heavy burden.
Reproductive control has been a tool used to control women in societies where women are dominated by men. It is no surprise, then, that in the Euro-American context, abortion has been coded as good for women, since in that region, it is generally a tool that is unilaterally chosen by women. In Asia, it goes both ways, abortions are performed on women without their consent or choice or to perpetuate a male-centric worldview in the case of sex-selective abortions. On its own, abortion lacks a value of good or bad. The common issue that is shared between us is that when a woman’s life is continuously sacrificed in the service of others, she is denied the development and full citizenship accorded to others (adult men and possibly even post-menopausal women). Making sacrifices and living a life in the service of a society outside of oneself and even outside of one’s family is something beautiful when it is a freely made choice. When it is forced or conditioned onto others, it is nothing more than servitude.
Further Reading: Happening by Annie Ernaux, the story of a college student seeking an illegal abortion in Paris, 1963.
[1] Ireland has since reformed their abortion laws. [2] The Japanese Buddhist idea that an aborted fetus comes back to haunt its mother is a fringe concept, but some women will pay “priests” thousands of dollars to soothe the soul of their unborn child. (Moscowitz, The Haunting Fetus). In Thailand’s Buddhist traditions, abortions generate bad karma. [3] "Abortion rights are seen as an issue for international politics, far removed from Japan. Here, [abortion] is more about population control." … “In China, too, access to abortion is shaped by demographics.” Abortion in Asia: The Limits of Choice.
Comments