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« Learning something new. | Main | Just a Quick Note. »
The Sanctity of Marriage?
October 31, 2005
A commenter on Rox's post about the Scalito Nomination had this to say in answer to Roxanne's question about the defensibility of SPOUSAL notification prior to abortion:
It is not rational to simultaneously expect marriage to mean something, to expect a man to be responsible, and yet give choice within a marriage solely to the woman.The left wants choice without responsibility, the right wants responsibility and no choice. In any case, it is a sorry state of affairs when a married woman would undergo an abortion without talking to her spouse. Why fight for the gay right to be married when marriage is increasingly meaningless?
...and gave me my first Halloween Scare* today.
It's as if the whole world has been sprinkled with magic pixie marriage dust, where all married women are secure and happy with their spouses. The implication of this, of course, subtle though it might be, is that those who have real reason to NOT discuss an issue such as abortion with her spouse are at fault for that situation and, therefore, can go fuck themselves.
I mean, the fact that this person could even say this without considering the myriad reasons why a woman might not want to discuss her choices with her spouse confirms a lot to me that I already knew. And while it's usually nice to get validation, it's not at all nice to have it proven to me again and again that abused women are absolutely invisible to society at large.
I've seen this play out to some extent in my personal situation. I've seen people move cautiously away from me out of fear of my situation, and I've experienced the difficulty in finding refuge from my relationship due to prohibitively expensive attorneys. Marriage already gives an abusive partner an unbelievable amount of power to abuse, without forcing women to get SPOUSAL CONSENT before making a choice that will potentially tie her to her abuser for the rest of her life.
So FUCK your fucking "sanctity of marriage" bullshit. I'm calling for SANCTITY OF A BASIC RIGHT TO SAFETY that most men feel absolutely entitled to, without question. And many women only dream of.
*If the words SPOUSAL CONSENT don't give you enough of a scare as it is.
ETA: Damnit, it's SPOUSAL NOTIFICATION, but it sounds equally fucking scary to me.
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Comments
"yeah babe, i know i make about twice the money you make, and of course i'm never called a stupid whore or a fake. and i don't structure my life around fear of murder, dismemberment, or rape, but i hardly see what that has to do with our relationship." (spoken section from "gon b4 yr home" by le tigre)
as long as there are large-scale inequalities in society, any laws that try to enforce equality are only going to punish those in unequal situations.
For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure that the commenter is just repeating something Instapundit wrote. Then again, maybe Instapundit got a talking point email from the GOP. Hard to say.
Regarding the underlying debate, I think that both sides are suffering from an empathy deficit here. I mean, it's obvious from the rhetoric of the right that they don't really try to understand the point of view of women who consider abortion. On the other hand, I also think that it would devastate me if a woman I were in a relationship with (even a failing relationship) chose to have an abortion without at least talking to me about it.
Now, don't misunderstand me, I think the spousal notification requirement is a terrible policy both in principle, because whether it pains me or not the right to make the decision lies with the woman whose body is affected, and in practice, because a notification requirement will obviously subject vulnerable women to increased abuse.
That said, I think it's important to recognize that men who are tempted by spousal notification policies are responding to a real emotional need. The fact that those needs are outweighed by competing rights and concerns doesn't make them go away and doesn't make them illegitimate. And my point is just that you can't convince someone to sacrifice something that they value without first acknowledging that what they're giving up is worth something.
I don't really mean this as criticism -- your post is pretty clearly not an attempt to engage and persuade the Right, and that's ok. But I am responding to the way this argument seems to be playing out in the parts of the feminist blogosphere that I keep track of.
(and, yeah, I grok there's something unfair about asking those whose voices are marginalized to listen more closely to those whose voices aren't, but there it is)