The General Assembly and Our Daughters

When the North Carolina State Senate sneaked abortion provisions into a bill with the attempted aim of preventing the use of Sharia law in domestic disputes, I joined many of my fellow North Carolinians in their outrage.  Adding abortion provisions at the last minute into the oddly named "Family, Faith and Freedom Protection Act of 2013" was an underhanded attempt to subvert the democratic process and pass new abortion restrictions without public scrutiny.  That right-to-life groups were apparently in the know enough to be in the room when the bills were combined reeks of a conspiracy to get these restrictions passed under the radar.  Fortunately in the age of social media, this is difficult and a protest was hastily organized.  It was ultimately unsuccessful, but the sight of hundreds of my fellow citizens coming out in this cause gave reason to hope.

I am forty-one years old.  I have never protested anything in my life, though I have been incensed by a great many things.  This morning I got into my car and drove the short distance to downtown Raleigh to participate.  I'm not much for slogans or chanting, but I decided I could at least stand up and be counted.  Among the crowd there was a real sense of purpose and a sense of crisis, as North Carolina became the latest battleground in a struggle over abortion rights that has recently become ugly not only here, but in Texas and in Ohio.  Throughout the country, abortion rights are under attack, a sign that I have suggested elsewhere points to a fraying in the fabric of American public life.

There are many reasons to take up (figurative) arms in the struggle for abortion rights.  Others can enumerate the political posturings that lay behind the Republican led assault on choice and can refute the lies told in its support.  My main reason for taking to the General Assembly was because I am about to become a father to a baby girl, due in early October.  Her mother and I have named her Gabriella, and we look forward to meeting her.  She was not expected, and this may not be the best time for her arrival, but once we knew she was on the way (before we knew she was a she) we knew that, barring the most extreme circumstances, we were going to have a child.

Neither my wife nor I are "pro-life," a heinous term; they are at best "pro-birth" or "pro-pregnancy."  We simply agreed that, all other things being equal, once she was pregnant we would prepare to have our lives upended, happily, by a child.  We had a choice, and we chose Gabriella; an abortion as a matter of convenience was never an option for us.  But it was nice to know if there was some lethal abnormality or my wife's life were to be endangered, that there would be a choice.  Because, however much we may look forward to meeting Gabriella she is not yet, at least in my mind, a person due the same respect as my wife.

Bills like HB 695 and like attempts to enshrine fetal personhood attempt to whittle away at the choices available to women (and, incidentally, their partners) on such matters.  If the bill is passed in its current form, the clinic requirements will lead all but one clinic to shutter its doors.  These are clinics that not only provide abortions, but also an array of women's health services, many to those who can least afford them.  For this reason among others, we must fight to preserve, even to extend, abortion rights.

Because this fight is not about women's rights or women's health, though these are part of it.  It is, ultimately, about what kind of society we will be.  Will we be a society where all adults are thought competent to make decisions regarding their bodily autonomy?  Or will we designate certain citizens as junior partners in the social enterprise, whose interests must be guarded by those who "know better?"  History has shown we are a better people when we tend towards the former.  This is the message I would like to teach my daughter, that when she is an adult she will be empowered to make her own decisions.  That her mother and I trust her.  People like the Republicans of the General Assembly want to tell her a different message.

Abortion restrictions, in the end, signal a lack of trust in women.  They neglect the fact that as women's freedom to vote, to work and, yes, to choose contraception and abortion, have been a source of our nation's economic and social strength.  When we attempt to reduce women's options, we tell them that they are not trustworthy.  This lack of trust diminishes those who attempt to enshrine it, even as it may increase their power over women.

It will also send a message to our daughters, that they are not the equals of our sons.  It will send the message that in sexual relations and in matters pertaining to pregnancy, women come behind the fathers of their children, the clump of cells in their wombs, and the interests of the state in importance.  Yet though we will also tell our daughters they are capable of being whatever they want, our words will be belied by the  lack of trust society shows in their mothers.

Our daughters will see through the lies and, rightly, curse those who tell them.  Our daughter will be taught the importance of standing firm for her beliefs and that her worth is not diminished simply because she was not born with a penis.  Until she can do that for herself we will have to stand for her.  All of us will have to stand for all of the daughters until they can take the baton from us.  She is the future.  They all are.