Lake of Fire

From a Salon review of the three-hour film about abortion in America:

In a pair of sequences guaranteed to unsettle any viewer, Kaye shoots two abortions in intimate detail, one of them a late-term intervention and the other a much earlier, more routine procedure. In both cases, we see exactly what comes out of the women's bodies into the doctor's steel tray, an assortment of chopped-up "tissue" that must then be pieced back together to make sure the entire fetus has been extracted. The principal difference between the two procedures is a matter of size and quantity, but the removed material is recognizably and shockingly human. For much too long, the pro-choice movement has relied on comforting euphemisms suggesting that early abortions result in nothing more than unrecognizable globs of goo. That was always sophistry; when you see tiny severed legs, arms and other body parts in that tray, it seems like something worse than that.

"I was very curious to learn what an abortion actually looked like," Kaye says, "and I quickly became aware, in terms of the structure of the film, that I needed one, and that I needed the story of a woman who goes through one. But I never thought in my wildest imagination that I could film one and that I could get so close. When I did film it, which was after five years of working on the film, I was in" -- here a long pause; he's having trouble getting the words out -- "an altered state when I came out of that place."

Hold those calls and letters, defenders of choice. Throughout the film, Kaye is extraordinarily sensitive to the painful decisions of women who seek out the procedure. If the abortion scenes are shocking, so are Kaye's interviews with the bloody-minded, Bible-pounding zealots of the so-called pro-life movement. These people constitute an entire universe of loner white guys with pinched faces and extremist interpretations of a few passages in ancient Hebrew religious works, perversely devoted to controlling female reproduction but totally unconcerned about the health and welfare of already-existing women and children. As interviewee Noam Chomsky puts it (he's seen here as a logician rather than a polemicist, and in that role he has few peers), the pro-lifers might have a valid moral point to make, if there was any seriousness or consistency or concern about poverty and human welfare in their position.

Exactly.  And that's the tragedy.

Maybe someday sane people can talk sanely about what is really going on with abortion.  Right now it's not possible. For me it's a lot like trying to talk about the Iraq War in its early stages.  Everybody was caught up in the ideological reasons pro and con; only a few people were focused on the carnage that is always associated when the dogs of war are unleashed.

There's always some abstract greater good that is worth the price of all the bloodletting.There are almost always very good, very compelling reasons for doing the wrong thing, but the bottom line is the carnage.  In an insane world you take the exception and make it the rule. Are there sometimes, necessary wars?  Yes, but in a sane world they are the rare exception.  Are there sometimes necessary abortions? Yes, but in a sane world they are the exception.  In an insane world wars and abortions and torture are routine, nothing out of the ordinary.  We are being progressively numbed to accept them as normal.

When the policies you support are responsible for unthinkable carnage, you do your best not to think about it.  It's much easier to stay in the reality-filtered, abstract, bloodless level of ideological debate. When you live in an ideological bubble--whether left, right, or center--you are sealed off from the consequences of your thinking.  It's comfortable, and you never have to change your mind. And that's why nothing ever seems to change. The ideologues change places in an eternally swinging pendulum of action and reaction. 

Most Americans have no idea how American and British policies in the Middle East in the last century have caused the violent blowback we're experiencing from enraged Muslims now.  In the same way, the typical pro-choice liberal has no idea of how abortion policy in this country has caused the violent blowback from enraged right-to-lifers.  Just easier to dismiss them as crazy. And they are crazy, but why?  What's at the root of it?.  I see it as the action/reaction dynamic in a fallen world that has propelled the human tragedy from time immemorial. The only solution is to find a way somehow to stand outside it, to refuse to participate in it. Until enough people do, the insanity, the violence, carnage, and the tears continue.

Along those lines let none of us soon forget the courageous effort of the Buddhist monks and nuns of Burma to stand outside of it.  In the short run it looks as though they have failed, but in the long run we just don't know.  But for now, it's just all so terribly, terribly sad.

Comments

[forestwalker]

Good post (though the article grossly mischaracterizes the vast majority of pro-lifers).

I'm sure you're familiar with Naomi Wolfe's infamous essay that made a similar argument back in '95?

http://www.priestsforlife.org/prochoice/ourbodiesoursouls.htm

[Jack Whelan]

FW--That's what's so ironic about the Noam Chomsky comment. There are huge swaths of people, including all Catholics who take Church social teaching seriously, that "have a valid moral point to make" precisely because they are serious and consistent in their "concern about poverty and human welfare in their position."

That's what I find so crazymaking about the abortion issue. The whole concept of defending the weakest and most defenseless is a supposedly "left" value. While the motivations are complex, I don't think enough attention is given to the elitist agenda that lies behind the the abortionist movement. To what degree has liberalized abortion been driven, for instance, by the ambitions of women concerned about their and their daughters' corporate careers, on the one hand, or on the other, the fears of rich white people frightened by underclass population growth?

But it doesn't matter because the propagandists have established their narrative in the public imagination. The crazies now take up all the space there, and either you're pro-choice or a religious fanatic. Sane people who want abortion to be the exception rather than the rule have no voice because they are immediately grouped with the crazies. That's certainly reflected in Chomsky's comment.

I wasn't familiar with the Wolfe article. Interesting, and a breath of fresh air which apparently didn't change many minds. But when dealing with the mentality of NARAL, you're dealing with people who are as entrenched as the NRA. Or George Bush in Iraq. Can't give an inch.

[forestwalker]

Wolf was the source of Clinton's "safe, legal, and rare" rhetoric during his first campaign. This article was a fuller treatment of the idea behind it leading into the second campaign. She was immediately, loudly, and virtually unanimously condemned by her fellow feminists when it was published in New Republic. She's still regarded with deep suspicion because of it.

And I don't understand the pro-Choice elite's resistance to such a sane argument. If they were to adopt the ideas and rhetoric Wolf proposes here the re-criminalization of abortion would become impossible virtually overnight. I honestly try to be charitable when speculating on their motivations and soul-quality; but I have to admit that it's tough to do so. I've always thought their slogans were just a legal strategy, that they couldn't possibly believe their own rhetoric. The more I listen and read from them the harder it is to maintain that generosity.

Chomsky's comment is off, sure. I was commenting on the review's author's aside about pro-lifers, though. Willfully ignorant and hateful.

To the post's larger point, abortion was just the issue that first led me to start questioning the rationality mythos. Once that chink in the cultural armor was recognized I began seeing more and more. We're not allowed to see what abortion is. We're not allowed to see what war does. We're not allowed to see the poverty of our neighbors. We're not allowed to see where our food comes from or what it actually is. We're not allowed to see the damage that our gross over-consumption wrecks on our world and neighbors. We're neither the free actors nor the rational actors we're told we're believed to be. There's obviously a great deal of self-delusion going on. But when we stop listening and start looking it also quickly and painfully becomes clear that we are being lied to.