The Reality Of Abortion… The Compartmentalization Of Women
By DONALD DeMARCO
When I was young, growing up in a poor section of town, we had no central heating. When Winter arrived, we closed off the parlor to save heat. By midwinter, the parlor was like an icebox, but it’s chilly temperature did not affect the other rooms. Our apartment, like all apartments, was an aggregate of compartments, each one independent of the other.
A human being, on the other hand, is a unity. One part cannot be eliminated from another without the whole organism being affected. Worry can prevent sleep. A headache or a toothache or a stomachache can make the whole person miserable. If our heart ceases to function, we die. We are psychosomatic beings, organisms that are highly unified by nature. We are not an aggregate of compartments.
Abortion, the loss of an unborn child, cannot be isolated from the organic unity of the mother as if he were a separate compartment of her being, as if he had his own independence. But in order to rationalize the acceptability of abortion, in ideology must be invented in which abortion is somehow detached from the mother’s organic unity. In this way, abortion should have no impact on the aborting woman.
This ideology, of course, is unrealistic and is constantly repudiated by those who experience deep regret after undergoing the procedure. Nonetheless, pro-abortionists insist the abortion is a simple matter.
In the words of some counselors, a woman can have an abortion in the morning and enjoy dinner with her partner in the evening. Abortion, therefore, is akin to a tooth extraction.
Psychiatrist Karl Stern, in his book, Flight from Woman, points out that it is well-known in his field for a woman who had a miscarriage to experience a negative reaction, such as depression, on the day when her unborn was scheduled to be born.
This phenomenon attests to the psychosomatic unity of the woman, which is inviolate. Nevertheless, organizations such as Planned Parenthood operate under the ideology that a woman is not a unity, but an assembly of compartments, one capable of being shut off from the rest.
In Hungary, women who are seeking an abortion will be obliged to “listen to the fetal heartbeat” before going through the procedure. Ostensibly, this is a way in which the pregnant woman can be in touch with what is transpiring in her womb as well as in the life of her unborn child.
International Planned Parenthood, however, objects to the procedure claiming that the “heartbeat rule” is controversial, has “no medical purpose and only serves to humiliate women.”
One may reasonably argue that knowing more about what is happening, rather than remaining ignorant, cannot possibly be humiliating. But, according to the tenets of the compartmentalization ideology, the unborn child must be shut off, like the parlor when Winter arrives.
Dr. Leana Wen, as president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, might be expected to embrace the compartmentalization ideology. But when she experienced a miscarriage, the organic unity of her womanhood asserted itself.
In her book, Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health, she tells the world that “my pregnancy loss was devastating in a way that I couldn’t have anticipated. . . . I cried for many hours and could not be consoled.” Her intentional or unintentional reference to Rachel of the Old Testament is interesting.
She also shared her plight in a editorial piece in The Washington Post (July 6, 2019). She was bitterly hurt by a negative reaction to her piece in which she was accused of “stigmatizing abortion by talking about miscarriage.” Her conflict with Planned Parenthood orthodoxy grew to the point in which she was fired.
The March for Life commented at the time:
“The removal of Dr. Wen is a clear indication that Planned Parenthood is a political organization whose main goal is abortion, and not the health care of its patients.
“On Fox News, March for Life President Jeanne Mancini commented on Dr. Wen’s dismissal: ‘Make no mistake, Planned Parenthood is a political machine, and their bottom line is about abortion, not healthcare’.”
Grief over the loss of an unborn child is natural. What would be unnatural is to be unaffected by the loss of one’s unborn child. Planned Parenthood (in some circles known as SHORE) is unwilling to accept the unity of the woman. It prefers to serve a fiction. Abortion must be a casual affair even if nature rises up and refutes such a requirement.
Abortion cries out for a justifying philosophy, one that depicts the woman as an aggregate of compartments. This, of course, is not only disrespectful toward women, but harmful, in failing to honor women in their psychosomatic unity, but also in treating them as beings inimical to who they are and what is best for them.
- + + (Dr. Donald DeMarco is professor emeritus, St. Jerome’s University, and adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College. He is a regular columnist for St. Austin Review and is the author of 41 books. He is a former corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy of Life. Some of his latest books, The 12 Supporting Pillars of the Culture of Life and Why They Are Crumbling, Glimmers of Hope in a Darkening World, and Restoring Philosophy and Returning to Common Sense, are posted on amazon.com. His most recent book is Let Us Not Despair, which a reviewer praised as “based on a firm faith in divine providence, and reason, faith and the human heart agree that God is real, and He is all-good, all-powerful and all-knowing.”)