Here are some selected literary writings on abortion and contraception, written by men and women of words. Many go back several decades when abortion and contraception were illegal in most parts of the world. They offer a glimpse into the trials and travails of women with an unwanted pregnancy often with tragic results. They offer a preview of what lies ahead if the ghouls who infest the fascist republican party succeed in dragging this country back to the dark ages.
Most of it is painful to read, but I hope you can share them with someone who is opposed, for one reason or another, to women’s reproductive rights and hope that it sparks a moment of introspection and self-realization.
Most of these articles were fetched from the website of the Museum of Contraception and Abortion in Vienna. Check out that site for lot more info on the subject.
I am no expert on this subject; I picked these articles from the muvs.org/… site; I am sure there are lot more literary and insightful writings on this subject. Please share your knowledge of such books, articles and essays with the community here.
The emphasis and bold highlights below are mine.
Italo Calvino: Letters 1941-1985 — responding to a friend’s anti-abortion article published in 1975. muvs.org/...
Bringing a child into the world makes sense only if this child is wanted consciously and freely by its two parents. If it is not, then it is simply animal and criminal behavior. A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people. If this is not the case, then humanity becomes — as it is already to a large extent — no more than a rabbit-warren. But this is no longer a “free-range” warren but a “battery” one, in the conditions of artificiality in which it lives, with artificial light and chemical feed.
Only those people … who are a hundred percent convinced that they possess the moral and physical possibility not only of rearing a child but of welcoming it as a welcome and beloved presence, have the right to procreate. If this is not the case, they must first of all do everything not to conceive, and if they do conceive (given that the margin for unpredictability continues to be high) abortion is not only a sad necessity, but a highly moral decision to be taken with full freedom of conscience.
I do not understand how you can associate abortion with an idea of hedonism or the good life. Abortion is a terrifying thing…
In abortion the person who is massacred, physically and morally, is the woman. Also for any man with a conscience every abortion is a moral ordeal that leaves a mark, but certainly here the fate of the woman is in such a disproportionate condition of unfairness compared with the man’s, that every male should bite his tongue three times before speaking about such things. Just at the moment when we are trying to make less barbarous a situation which for the woman is truly terrifying, an intellectual uses his authority so that women have to stay in this hell. Let me tell you, you are really irresponsible, to say the least. I would not mock the “hygienic-prophylactic measures” so much; certainly you will never have to undergo a scraping of your womb. But I’d like to see your face if they forced you to have an operation in the filth and without any recourse to hospitals under pain of imprisonment...
Anaïs Nin (February 21, 1903–January 14, 1977) — Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1939–1947. www.themarginalian.org/...
Lying there whispering about the pain, I had never felt such a strong kinship with woman — woman — this one I could not see, or identify, the one who was also lying on a cot, filled with primitive fear and an obscure sense of murder, or guilt, and of an unfair struggle against nature —an unequal struggle with all the man-made laws against us, endangering our lives, exposing us to inexperienced maneuvers, to being economically cheated and morally condemned — woman is truly the victim now, beyond the help of her courage and aliveness.
How much there is to be said against the ban on abortion. What a tragedy this incident becomes for the woman.
But I realized she was all women — the humility, the thoughtfulness, the fear and the childlike moment of utter defenselessness. A pregnant woman is already a being in anguish. Each pregnancy is an obscure conflict. The break is not simple. You are tearing away a fragment of flesh and blood. Added to this deeper conflict is the anguish, the quest for the doctor, the fight against exploitation, the atmosphere of underworld bootlegging, a racket. The abortion is made a humiliation and a crime. Why should it be? Motherhood is a vocation like any other. It should be freely chosen, not imposed upon woman.
Kurt Tucholsky: The Embryo Speaks (1931) muvs.org/...
They all take care of me: Church, State, Doctors and Judges.
I should grow and thrive; I should slumber nine months long; I should not worry about a thing – they all wish me well. They protect me. They watch over me. God have mercy if my parents do something to me; then they will all be there. Whoever touches me will be punished; my mother lands in prison, my father right behind; the doctor who did it must cease to be a doctor, the midwife who helped is locked up - I'm a precious item.
They all take care of me: Church, State, Doctors and Judges.
Nine months long.
But when the nine months are over, I have to see for myself what becomes of me. Tuberculosis? No doctor will help me. Nothing to eat? No Milk? – no State will help me. Torment and misery? The Church will comfort me, but that doesn't fill my stomach. And if I have no bread to break or to bite and I steal: the Judge is right there to lock me up.
Fifty years of my life no one will care about me, no one. I have to help myself. Nine months long they kill themselves, if someone wants to kill me.
You tell me: isn't that a strange way to look out for the welfare of another?
Joyce Johnson: Minor Characters - A Beat Memoir (1983)
In the late 1950s, young women - not very many at first - once again left home rather violently. They ... came from nice families, and their parents could never understand why the daughters they had raised so carefully suddenly chose precarious lives. A girl was expected to stay under her parents' roof until she married, even if she worked for a year or so as a secretary, got a little taste of the world that way, but not too much. Experience, adventure - these were not for young women. Everyone knew they would involve exposure to sex. Sex was for men. For women, it was as dangerous as Russian roulette; an unwanted pregnancy was life-threatening in more ways than one.
Bertholt Brecht: Concerning the Infanticide, Marie Farrar (1922) muvs.org/…
Marie Farrar, born in April,
No marks, a minor, rachitic, both parents dead,
Allegedly, up to now without police record,
Committed infanticide, it is said,
As follows: in her second month, she says,
With the aid of a barmaid she did her best
To get rid of her child with two douches,
Allegedly painful but without success.
But you, I beg you, check your wrath and scorn
For man needs help from every creature born.She then paid out, she says, what was agreed
And continued to lace herself up tight.
She also drank liquor with pepper mixed in it
Which purged her but did not cure her plight.
Her body distressed her as she washed the dishes,
It was swollen now quite visibly.
She herself says, for she was still a child,
She prayed to Mary most earnestly.
But you, I beg you, check your wrath and scorn...
Marie Farrar, born in April,
And unmarried mother, convicted, died in
The Meissen penitentiary,
She brings home to you all men's sin.
You who bear pleasantly between clean sheets
And give the name "blessed" to your womb's weight
Must not damn the weakness of the outcast,
For her sin was black but her pain was great.
Therefore, I beg you, check your wrath and scorn
For man needs help from every creature born.
Inge Merkel: The Other Face (1982) muvs.org/…
With pleasure the experienced one let herself hear before the animated listeners about the suffering ways which expected a deceived lover if she saw herself forced for the purpose of secret abortion of the unwanted body fruit to go to the hands of a witch-like midwife, to let her remove the tender bud of love bloody by means of hair, knitting or crochet needles, which seemed to happen exclusively on dirty kitchen tables under the pale light of a weak bulb, which sparklingly illuminated the gray curtain.
Bertholt Brecht: The Ballade of Paragraph 218 (1929) muvs.org/…
“Please, doctor. I’ve missed my monthly...”
Why, this is simply great!
If I may put it bluntly
You’re raising our birthrate.
“Please, doctor, now we’re homeless...”
But you’ll have a bed somewhere
So best put your feet up, moan lessAnd force yourself to grin and bear.
You’ll make a simply splendid little mummy
Producing cannon-fodder from your tummy
That’s what your body’s for, and you know it,
what’s more
And it’s laid down by law
And now get this straight:
You’ll soon be a mother, just wait.“But, doctor, no job or dwelling:
My man would find kids the last straw...”
No, rather a new compelling
Objective to work for.
“But, doctor...” Really, Frau Griebel
I ask myself what this means
You see, our state needs people
To operate our machines....
Loretta Lynn— The Pill (1975) — (on contraception) -
You wined me and dined me
When I was your girl
Promised if I'd be your wife
You'd show me the world
But all I've seen of this old world
Is a bed and a doctor bill
I'm tearin' down your brooder house'Cause now I've got the pill
All these years I've stayed at home
While you had all your fun
And every year that's gone by
Another baby's come
There's a gonna be some changes made
Right here on nursery hill
You've set this chicken your last time
'Cause now I've got the pill…
Digable Planets - La Femme Fetal (1993)
…
"You remember my boyfriend Sid that fly kid who I love
Well our love was often a verb and spontaneity has brought a third
But do to our youth an economic state, we wish to terminate
About this we don't feel great, but baby that's how it is
But the feds have dissed me, they ignore and dismiss me
The pro-lifers harass me outside the clinic
And call me a murderer, now that's hate
So needless to say we're in a mental state of debate"Hey beautiful bird, I said digging her somber mood
The fascists are some heavy dudes
They don't really give a damn about life
They just don't want a woman to control her body
Or have the right to choose but baby that ain't nothin'
They just want a male finger on the buttonBecause if you say, War, they will send them to die by the score
Aborting mission should be your volition
But if Souter and Thomas have their way
You'll be standing in line unable to get welfare
While they're out hunting and fishing
It has always been around, it will always have the niche
But they'll make it a privilege not a right accessible only to the richHey pro-lifers should dig themselves 'cause life doesn't stop after birth
And for child borne to the unprepared it might even just get worse
The situation surely change if they will find themselves in it
Supporters of the h-bomb and fire bombing clinic
What type of shit is that? Orwellian in fact
If Roe V Wade was overturned would not the desire remain intact
Leaving young girls to risk their healths
Doctors to botch and watch as they kill themselves…
The Meidas Touch (May 2022)
Check out this article for more literary writings and contemporary writers on the subject. By Annie Finch, Editor of Choice Words: Writers on Abortion.
Let’s keep educating the electorate about abortion, contraception, reproductive rights, the economy and the Democratic Agenda. Let’s keep hammering away at the republican agenda to strip away our rights and our freedoms and to divide the country by attacking/dehumanizing minorities, women, LGBTQ, immigrants, the young and the educated. Let’s call out the fascist ultra-MAGA goal to fill the coffers of the donor class and trickle down the bills and the pain to the working class.
Let’s channel our frustration and anger into spreading the truth and getting the vote out for Democrats. Now is not the time to play the blame game, vent our frustrations or retreat into our shells. Let’s strategize on what we as DK activists can do to get out the vote. Let’s figure out how to get women, who vote republican for one reason or another, to vote differently next time. Let’s figure out how to get our base energized and ready to cast their votes this November.