In a week like this one, it’s difficult to write about anything else.
I mean, look, I certainly tried. But do you really wanna read about how Machine Gun Kelly isn’t representative of rock as a genre, or how Hollywood’s dire fascination with green-lighting music biopics is mainly just an excuse for celebrity wish-casting and rehashing dated fantasies about the rock’n’roll lifestyle as a forlorn romanticised ideal? Of course, you don’t.
So let’s talk about bodily autonomy, ethics, and pro-choice as an act of protest.
This recent furore concerns a leaked draft majority opinion document from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, which outlines a vote to strike down Roe v. Wade, the crucial 1973 decision that granted women the right to seek abortion of their own volition.
“The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision — Planned Parenthood v. Casey — that largely maintained the right. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes.…
Deliberations on controversial cases have in the past been fluid. Justices can and sometimes do change their votes as draft opinions circulate and major decisions can be subject to multiple drafts and vote-trading, sometimes until just days before a decision is unveiled. The court’s holding will not be final until it is published, likely in the next two months.”
If this ruling is published, then the repeal of Roe v. Wade would return the U.S. to the system of individual state laws, each with different regulations and requirements, wherein women would only be able to access abortion in certain states and face criminal prosecution for it in others.
Suffice to say, this shit sucks.
Their Body, Their Choice
I have, for as long as I can remember, been a pro-choice advocate.
I’ve never understood the need to dictate and control other people’s bodies, particularly when it comes to something as monumental and life-changing as pregnancy.
I’ve known many people who have had abortions, and I'm of the belief that access to safe abortion procedures is a fundamental human right that should be available to anyone as part of a free and just society. Earlier this week I was shocked to learn that in my home state of Queensland, Australia, abortion was only made legal upon request (outside of medically dictated requirements for life-threatening circumstances) as recently as 2018.
This knowledge is also grounded in the acute awareness that having an abortion is something that I, a cisgender man, have never had to experience directly. And, admittedly, there’s a patriarchal privilege at play here in that acknowledgment that still makes me feel uneasy. With all this in mind, I wanted to use this week’s column to speak to someone more intimately connected to this topic in ways that are forever remote to me.
What follows is an extended conversation with my wife, Paige, as we discuss the philosophy of morality and ethics that play into the abortion discourse, and a selection of feminist protest songs that speak directly to abortion, bodily autonomy, and power.
The (Anti-)Logic of State Forced Pregnancy
One of the most convincing explications of the philosophy surrounding the abortion debate, and its interconnection with questions of morality and ethics, comes from trans YouTuber Abigail Thorn aka Philosophy Tube:
Thorn’s video provides a dramatic retelling and framing of moral philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion”: a 1971 essay that grants for the sake of argument that a fetus has a right to life.
Thomson then constructs a thought experiment from this premise that involves an unconscious violinist, kidney failure, and kidnapping to argue that the fetus’s right to life does not override a pregnant woman’s right to bodily autonomy. If you have 40 minutes spare, it’s well worth a watch and highly recommended.
Here’s what Paige had to say about it:
“I watch [the video] as a pro-choice person and I feel like it was very much affirmative for me. So, I'm not gonna have any sort of like nuance or an interesting thing to say because I just agree. But I will repeat that when I first watched this before, realizing that this was just another role that Abigail played, it was annoying that a man was discussing another man discussing women having autonomy over their bodies.
That’s before I realized that Oliver [Abigail's birth name prior to her transition] was just a character. I definitely feel more comfortable with the video now, knowing that it’s actually a woman just playing a man (laughs). Before we met Abigail, I was definitely just like, I don’t think I absorbed it as much, which is funny. I think that that’s kind of given me a bit more of a reflection of myself, just because it’s a man doesn’t mean that his opinion isn't interesting.
However, knowing that this actually is a woman, it’s nicer. It's easier to digest the discourse here, which is back to that original discussion that I think that we just had about, you know, the panel of Fox News being all old men, talking about women’s bodies and their rights over them. I disagree with pro-lifers but I wouldn't mind more discourse between women pro-lifers and women pro choices. Like, it's just tiring to continue to see this conversation being had exclusively between men.”
Pro-Choice as Protest
After our discussion on Thorn’s video, I played a small selection of feminist protest songs (some more pro-choice oriented than others) to Paige, and we talked about how music can act as a valuable form of catharsis for frustration and sadness, ultimately turning passion into power.
“Oh, the vibe is there. It speaks to the soul, you know? That secret little horror in all of us. I’ve talked to you before about the Zoomer ‘bimbo’ movement and how these young women on TikTok and in culture are bringing back the bimbo to basically just be like, ‘Fuck conservatives!’
It’s a wider discussion on how people treat Marilyn Monroe or Kim Kardashian as fame whores or money hungry or whatever you wanna call them. They’re kind of like taking it and just putting it on blast and like only wearing pink and glittery shit and bells. And I just think that’s fun.
That was a weird aside but this particular band really made me think about that. Just like embracing the bimbo, the slut, just being like, ‘Yeah, call me a slut!’ It’s taking the power of that word and using it and just being like, ‘Fuck you. I’m not offended by that. I am a SLUT. I do like sex. I'm a woman. We're all just animals.’ You know what I mean? It’s carnal satisfaction.”
Lunachicks – “Fallopian Rhapsody”
“I think with Lunachicks, the subtext was text. They were just saying very poignant things that were true. I think that it raises an interesting point about criminalizing things in general. Like, it doesn't work. So they talk about botched abortions. That's all that's gonna start happening. You know, like making abortions illegal will not stop abortions. It will just cause more deaths of infants and women, particularly young women.
I do think it’s interesting, like the Ben Shapiro point in the video about contraception and eugenics and how they were like designed to kill out those who are ‘not intelligent enough’ or ‘smart enough’ to have babies... like, okay, you know, history is a thing, so what do you mean? Like there’re many medicines that were designed that way. They made amphetamines to fucking boost super soldiers in the war, you know?
It’s such a bizarre thing to put forward, like to just say, ‘Well, it came out for nefarious reasons. Therefore it has no use in modern day society.’ Like yeah, shut the fuck up. Fucking frog sounding dude. (I’m whispering that so it won’t get picked up.)”
War On Women – “Roe V. World”
“Well, I think she might have had an abortion (laughs). I think it brings up a completely different topic again, which is smart. I'm not sure if you curated that on purpose...
It’s the more extreme perspective of some conservatives where emergency contraception is also conceived as a form of abortion. Like by that definition, I’ve had so many abortions (laughs). It also means that contraception in itself is not preventative, but abortion somehow isn’t... like what dude? Yeah, just stop your eggs from dropping. That’s stupid.”
Svalbard – “Pro-Life”
“Man, this is one of my favourite songs. The music just gets me there. I have been in the car, you know, mid-cycle, mad hormonal and just cried to that song one day by myself. It is fucking mad powerful.
I mean, all of these songs are mad powerful but aggressive melodic music like this unites emotions in me that I can't explain. So yeah, I think that phenomenon paired with the message of the song is really special. That run that it does there in the outro, she has very purposeful choices in how she screams, choosing to give certain parts more air. The words come out a little bit more crisp than in previous parts of the song.
It’s like, you know, ‘Let me say this a little bit more fucking clearly. Let’s put it on a run, and give it the air in the mix that it needs. Like, ‘Yeah, it is my fucking body.’ I think it’s a really powerful song.”
Bright Eyes – “Miracle of Life” feat. Phoebe Bridgers
“It makes me think about, obviously, we’re not in America now, but in this specific state a few years ago we couldn’t even get an abortion. I was embarrassed. I remember being like, ‘Fuck, I can’t believe this is in the headlines.’ Like the rest of the world is gonna be like ‘Only now? You guys have just legalized abortion in your state?’ I just remember feeling so cringy about it. Now looking over the shit that’s happened over the last week, everyone’s backwards.
I think it’s easy to cast stones, but you know, it’s important to reflect on our legislation and our laws and our attitudes on women’s bodily autonomy, and the fact that we’ve only just seen a change in those areas. I think even then it’s still quite rigid in Queensland. Previously people that were getting terminations prior had to be deemed ‘medically unfit’ to have a child. Then you had to walk through a picket line of people; every day they’re there, every day, unrelenting every fucking day.
Having to see people like criticize my opinion about my own body and know that some women have to walk into that clinic, some of them for legitimate medical reasons who couldn’t carry a child to term, so they need to have an abortion and have to deal with that. Some of those women might actually want that baby and have to go in there and get that operation done and walk through that picket line. It’s fucked. Horrifying.”
