A single sexual transgression can force a woman into secret, solitary abortion.

Evidence

Number 7, thirty-five, explained: “I’ve been married twenty years. I never loved him: for twenty years I behaved properly. Three months ago I took a lover. One time, in a hotel room. I got pregnant … So what else could I do? I had it taken out. No one knows anything, not my husband, not … him. Now it’s over; I’ll never go through it again. I’ve suffered too much … I’m not speaking about the curettage … No, no, it’s something else: it’s … it’s self-respect, you see.” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1423

Categorization

• DEFINE: Beauvoir’s ‘woman as Other’ takes concrete form: the abortion is hidden from husband and lover alike, endured entirely alone — a stark instance of a woman denied subjecthood.
• STORYSTEM: The hotel-room affair, the one-time lapse, and the sentence ‘I was behaving properly for twenty years’ could seed a story about the moral economy of female self-punishment.
• XREF: connects to: Coerced and clandestine abortion attempts physically and psychologically scar young women. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1425; Illegality transforms the physical anguish of abortion into moral punishment for women — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1430

Broader Connections

• Illegality transforms the physical anguish of abortion into moral punishment for women #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1430