Birthing & Abortion
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"Abortion as a
Sacrifice to Artemis"
by Ginette Paris From Pagan Meditations : The Worlds of Aphrodite, Artemis, and Hestia, Ginette Paris, Spring Publications, 1991.
"Toward a
Womanist Analysis of Birth"
Background on the context in which this essay was written.
Date Reading Was Discussed: October
5, 1992
This month's discussion on birthing and abortion compelled
the women present to contemplate the themes of life and
death. Voicing our sentiments, Arisika Razak writes:
"Birth is the primary numinous event . . . the
first act of magic." Although much of the magic has been
lost through male-dominated obstetrics, we were clear that
self-determination of the birthing process must be reclaimed.
As an alternative to anesthesia, one woman told of an
acquaintance who is a stand-up comic. By cracking jokes
during her daughter's labor, spontaneous laughter released
endorphins, facilitating a smooth joyous birth. Another woman
intrigued us with an article which suggested that ancient
mothers may have eaten their placentas in a postpartum feast
of renourishment. One woman intends to ask her mother, a
midwife, whether it is true that hospitals sell
placentas—rich in hormonal nutrients—to drug
companies. We felt this was an unethical expropriation of
women's magic.
Complementing Razak's essay on birth, Ginette Paris's
article on abortion confirmed that the goddess is
paradoxically both "protector of life and giver of
death." Women offered examples from nature of the ways
in which death often sustains life. One woman explained that
to ensure a fertile garden, excess sprouts are pulled so that
the overall crop can thrive.
Another woman mentioned a recent
scientific article describing how certain animals eat their
young so that the rest of the litter will survive. In this
vein, we agreed with Paris that "the excessive use of
women's fecundity brings about ecological catastrophe."
One woman remarked that it would be a planetary disaster if
every human egg conceived actually survived. In affirming
women's innate ability to self-regulate, she declared that
many miscarriages are natural forms of abortion. Although
most of us believe that a fetus at a minimum has a psychic
consciousness, our support for abortion was grounded in a
profound understanding that, as in nature, the taking of life
is sometimes necessary.
One woman remarked that for millennia
abortion was carried out responsibly, conscientiously, and
sacredly. A woman's decision to sacrifice a fetus was
contingent upon the resource capacities of the woman, her
community, and the earth. As Paris writes, "Birth
control and abortion may be highly developed forms of
feminine conscious, upon whose exercise and refinement the
equilibrium of the entire human community may depend."
One woman philosophized that with the rise of patriarchy
humans began to conceptualize themselves above and apart from
nature and the cycles of life. The control of death became an
obsession inevitably matched by an impulse to control life
and, by extension, those who produce life, i.e. women. As men
muscled in on that exclusive female domain, women's power to
make sacrificial choices for ecological harmony became
stigmatized and eventually usurped. One woman asserted that
war, genocide, mass starvation, and targeting females for
infanticide are but a few of patriarchy's unconscious and
perverse versions of population control. She also speculated
that womb envy may have been a seminal cause for the rise of
patriarchy.
Several women longed for a society in which it
would be truly safe for women to share reproduction and
abortion decision-making with men in both the public and
private spheres. Most of us, however, were adamant that the
actual birth-givers themselves should always have ultimate
say-so over whether to abort a fetus or carry it to term.
Although we all unequivocally support women's legal right
to abortion, a few women were ambivalent about the politics
of defending clinics which, for the most part, practice
AMA-oriented gynecology. They wondered how productive it is
to expend so much of our energy buttressing technological
solutions instead of struggling for a revival and
proliferation of effective natural means to limit births. One
woman said chemical birth control is just one big toxic
experimentation on women.
Other women expressed dismay that
so many feminists and health activists regard hormonal
technologies such as RU486 as beneficial to women. The last
thing women need is more corporate pharmaceutical
colonization of our bodies. We recognized that for thousands
of centuries women practiced birth control respectfully and
safely with an array of natural herbal remedies. Ancient
wise-women techniques are practical, inexpensive, and still
work. Instead of tethering ourselves to the misogyny of
modern science, we advocate actively supporting
women-identified groups.
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